10 Biggest Oscar Snubs of 2017

There are only so many spots in each category on the Oscar ballot: 10 possibilities for Best Picture, 3 for Makeup and Hair, and 5 for the rest. Oscars are voted on by an Academy of about ~6000 showbiz professionals, and typically celebrate the "best" in movies each year voted on by the people that actually make them - but every year certain movies or performances get swept under the rug. Here, I present what I consider the top ten "rug swept" Oscar snubs of 2017!

10. Supporting Actor Snub: John Goodman for 10 Cloverfield Lane

Dev Patel is nominated for Supporting Actor for Lion, which is ridiculous because he plays the lead character in the film. If that fifth slot opened up, I'd like to believe that John Goodman would've had a shot at being nominated for his fantastic and terrifying performance in 10 Cloverfield Lane. He's never been nominated for an Oscar, and I was crossing my fingers he'd slip in there. Unfortunately the Academy only makes rare exceptions for genre flicks like this!

Patriots Day, Silence, A Monster Calls, Hidden Figures Reviews

Patriots Day
Dir. Peter Berg
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Peter Berg has carved a niche for himself in the movie world dramatizing our tragedies. Earlier this year, Berg's Deepwater Horizon gave us an action-drama celebrating the working man heroes on board the drilling rig that exploded in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010. Patriots Day, also starring Mark Wahlberg, similarly takes a tragedy and puts it within the confines of a manhunt thriller. Although I found the results in Deepwater Horizon to be mixed, perhaps straying too far into the land of exploitation, Patriots Day doesn't feel that way at all. It feels completely authentic to the intensity, chaos, confusion, heroism, psychology, and controversy on display during the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing and its following investigation, employing an almost documentary-level of realism to an event most of us remember so vividly, glued to the Internet or TV to check for updates. I was on the edge of my seat the entire time, and Berg perfectly walks the ethical line with a subject matter that will still feel very raw to many viewers.

Assassin's Creed, Passengers, Fences, Lion Reviews

Assassin's Creed
Dir. Justin Kurzel
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If there was finally going to be a movie that proved a good video game adaptation is possible, it was going to be Assassin's Creed. Although it's not the first with a giant budget or big names behind it, it was the first that seemed to be recruiting Oscar-caliber talent - with a cast including Academy Award-winning/nominated actors like Michael Fassbender, Marion Cotillard, and Jeremy Irons and a director whose adaptation of Macbeth last year, while not a great film, looked absolutely spectacular. After watching the film, however, why all that talent was attracted to this project in the first place is totally baffling. Assassin's Creed is largely nonsensical, dizzyingly complicated, and mostly uninteresting for its 2.5 hour run time, and proves yet again that playing video games are more fun than watching them.