My Best Recommendations on the Best Pictures

Tomorrow night is this year's Oscar ceremony. Best Picture appears to have come down to a two-horse race between Boyhood and Birdman. If I were forced to bet money on it, I'd put it on Birdman, counting on the Academy's reliable tendency toward self-admiration: rewarding movies about actors and/or Hollywood. (The Artist, Argo, Shakespeare in Love, etc.)

Birdman would not be my personal pick, however. Here's a list of the eight Best Picture nominees in the order I'd rank them, with links to my original reviews, and a few comments to help you decide which movie you should be rooting for.

#1. Whiplash. What I look for most in a movie is to be swept up in some feeling. The genre of the movie doesn't necessarily matter. Make me laugh hard if you're a comedy, shed a tear if you're an emotional drama, grip my chair if you're a suspenseful horror... or anything else, if you're riding the lines between simple genre classifications. Whiplash made me feel more than any other Best Picture nominee this year. It's nerve-wracking and tense. If you like to be caught up in a movie, Whiplash is the movie for you.

#2. Boyhood. I wouldn't fault the Academy for bestowing Best Picture on this. It's the one for you if what you prize in a movie is originality. The story here is simplistic; some would say it's barely a story at all. But the film is unique and visionary. The fact that it was filmed over a 12 year period sounds like a gimmick, but it really lends power and relatability to the tale. No one ever thought to make a movie like this before director Richard Linklater, and no one will soon be able to replicate the feat.

#3. Birdman. If you value good acting foremost, and consider story subordinate to performance, Birdman is the film for you. Other movies from 2014 may boast better work by individuals, but the cast of Birdman is the strongest and most consistent from top to bottom. This cast also worked with an added degree of difficulty, because of director Alejandro González Iñárritu's decision to make the film appear to be a long, single take without cuts.

#4. The Imitation Game. This is the movie for you if you like "Oscar films." The Imitation is a very well executed movie in the style of The King's Speech and A Beautiful Mind. I loved the subject matter, and Benedict Cumberbatch is excellent. It's well worth seeing... but it also feels as though it were built in the "Oscar factory." Familiar doesn't necessarily mean "bad," though.

#5. Selma. This is the movie for you if you feel films serve a role in preserving and revitalizing true history for new generations. The same could be said of The Imitation Game, of course, but The Imitation Game has been more manipulated by a writer's pen to fit the traditional three-act story structure. Despite minor controversy over the portrayal of President Lyndon Johnson in Selma, this movie is actually the truest to reality of all the based-on-a-true-story films in contention this year.

#6. The Theory of Everything. If you like traditional biopics, this is your film. The other "true story" nominees this year focus on specific points in their subjects' lives (using few, if any, flashbacks to illuminate character). The Theory of Everything follows the more conventional formula of tracking its subject over a period of decades. If you want a broad picture of an extraordinary life (and/or you're a fan of Stephen Hawking), you'll want to check this out.

#7. The Grand Budapest Hotel. Movies are hardly the only way to tell a story, and among the many vehicles for doing so, they're an especially visual medium. If this is what you look for, The Grand Budapest Hotel is the movie for you. You'll also enjoy it if you like to see the artist in the art; every frame of this film bears the quirky stamp of director Wes Anderson. With Boyhood, Richard Linklater made a movie no one else thought to make. Other directors could have made The Grand Budapest Hotel, but it would not in any way have been the same movie.

#8. American Sniper. The "war movie" has a long, proud history, from old classics like Apocalypse Now and The Deer Hunter to more modern fare like The Hurt Locker. I personally need more than "war is hell, and it changes you" in a movie. But that formula has entertained many over the years, and (judging by the box office haul) American Sniper has done the same.

Whatever your tastes (including tastes that would never qualify for a Best Picture nomination), have fun with your movie of choice.