Oscars 2018 | 14 Movies That Deserve More Oscar Buzz

Don’t get distracted by big blockbusters like Thor: RagnarokJustice League and Star Wars: The Last Jedi. The last two months of the year are when Hollywood rushes out all of its prestige pictures, the serious dramas with important messages. You know… the “Oscar Bait.”

November and December are a veritable smorgasbord of ambitious and, often, excellent motion pictures but the sudden deluge of quality (or at least, hopefully quality) films at the end of the year can sometimes overshadow earlier releases that are just as good, if not better. While everyone’s busy talking about the Oscar possibilities for films like The PostThe Phantom Thread and Darkest Hour, they’re actively overlooking films with smaller releases, breakout genre movies and, frankly, sometimes movies that simply came out a while ago and no longer have quite as much buzz.

But if Oscar punditry has any value, it’s that it’s an opportunity to keep the conversation alive for films that aren’t necessarily shoe-ins for big awards. They’re an opportunity to speak, in front of a large audience, to the incredible quality of the unsung movies that deserve a shot, whether or not they have big campaigns.

The Oscars are, if we’re being honest, largely a popularity contest. It’s wrong to only consider the films that are already popular with Academy voters and industry pundits, when we could also be using that power to make deserving films more popular than they already are.

With that in mind, here are fourteen movies that are fading from the awards season conversation, or aren’t a part of it at all, or are being forgotten in certain categories. They’re all fascinating movies, and they all deserve more Oscar buzz.

Fourteen Movies That Deserve More Oscar Buzz:

Top Photos: IFC / 20th Century Fox / Imagination Worldwide

William Bibbiani (everyone calls him ‘Bibbs’) is Crave’s film content editor and critic. You can hear him every week on Canceled Too Soon and watch him on the weekly YouTube series What the Flick. Follow his rantings on Twitter at @WilliamBibbiani.

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