The Oscars Snark: Why some people hate the Best Picture nominees

Don’t let movie snobs and the Academy push you around. There are plenty of legitimate reasons not to like this year’s Best Picture Oscar nominees, and we’ve dug up the dirt on each one.

Maybe you’ve felt like you’re on an island with a particular movie, surrounded by people and film critics who love it, while you are absolutely convinced it’s a terrible flick. It can be tough to speak up with that contrarian stance, lest you be attacked for not “getting it.”

But don’t worry, Oscar nominee haters. You are not alone.

Every one of this year’s Academy Award nominees for Best Picture has its detractors, and they’ve spoken up online to raise some valid points.

Amazon’s customer reviews are a goldmine for negative criticism on any film, while IMDB, Rotten Tomatoes and Twitter add plenty of snark to the conversation.

Maybe you loved all of this year’s Oscars. Maybe you didn’t. Either way, it can’t hurt to take these rotten reviews with a grain of salt.

Hollywood will tell you why you should love these movies on Oscar night. Why not read to some arguments to the contrary?

American Sniper

The Clint Eastwood-directed ‘American Sniper’ faced broad criticism for glorifying the life of Chris Kyle, the most lethal sniper in U.S. history.

Several one-star reviews on IMBD slammed the film as thinly-veiled propaganda that elevated American lives above the lives of Kyle’s Iraqi victims.

“The film’s approach is to display every Iraqi man, woman and even child as intent on murdering ‘good’ American troops and therefore deserving of their fate,” wrote IMD reviewer Qrobur from the United Kingdom.

New York-based user Bolesroor called the film “simplistic propaganda masquerading as an award-worthy story.”

Iftekhar Tanveer added that the film “doesn’t have any conceivable storyline” in another IMDB review.

But while the politics of the film proved divisive, there was no debating its greatest misstep: the inclusion of an obviously fake doll meant to pass for a “real” baby.

The following scene shows Bradley Cooper as Chris Kyle in an emotional exchange with his wife. It doesn’t take an eagle-eyed viewer to notice that the baby in Cooper’s arms is quite clearly made of immobile plastic.

Pay close attention to Cooper’s right hand at the 40-second mark. You can see him wiggle his thumb to move the fake baby’s arm.

‘American Sniper’ has been nominated for four Academy Awards, including Best Actor (Bradley Cooper), Film Editing, Sound Editing, Sound Mixing, Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Picture.

Boyhood

If there was an award for Most Patient Director, Richard Linklater would win it for 'Boyhood.'

The film is, if nothing else, an amazing experiment in endurance filmmaking. Linklater filmed the same cast of actors once a year for 12 years to realistically show a boy's life as he grows from age six to 18. Unfortunately, some felt that “gimmick” to be a distraction from the film’s arguably weak storyline.

“Not worthy of your time,” said one-star reviewer Tiger on Amazon. “This is not a movie per se. It is a documentary and not a very good one.”

Several people made the joke that the ‘Harry Potter’ films already showed kids growing up one year at a time, so ‘Boyhood’ was nothing new.

Others noticed deeper problems with the film, particularly in one subplot that involved the protagonist’s mother. At one point in ‘Boyhood,’ the mother tells a Mexican plumber named Enrique that he seems smart and should go to school. Her words of encouragement come after about three sentences of broken conversation with him.

Years later (spoiler alert), Enrique now speaks perfect English and runs his own restaurant. He sees the boy’s mother at the restaurant and doesn’t charge her for her meal, while thanking her for turning his life around.

Several people called the Enrique subplot an obvious “white saviour” storyline, and criticized the film for having only two Mexican characters through 12 years of a story set in Texas.

“Lucky Enrique, all sprinkled with magic white lady approval,” wrote blogger Cara Blouin.

‘Boyhood’ received six nominations this year for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Supporting Actor (Ethan Hawke), Best Supporting Actress (Patricia Arquette), Film Editing and Best Original Screenplay.

Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)

Birdman is another film with a gimmick, though that gimmick is much different from the one seen in ‘Boyhood.’ Director Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu shoots most of the film as though it’s one single, continuous shot, without any editing. It’s made to feel like the camera is an invisible witness to real-time events at the theatre where the film takes place.

The film’s ‘rotten’ reviewers mostly took issue with this emphasis on the camera, and criticized the film in a broader sense for catering to the Hollywood elite.

“This movie is made by people, and for people, that can stare at a completely empty canvas for two hours and go ‘ooh ooh ahh ahh,’” wrote user handmadepasta in a one-star Amazon review. “You can shoot 2 hours of horse manure in one take; it’s still horse manure.”

Amazon customer John J. Bugeja said he couldn’t bring himself to watch more than 10 minutes of the film.

“When the camera tries to be the star of the movie, that’s when I turn it off,” he wrote.

Others were irritated by the constant drumbeats playing throughout the film.

‘Birdman’ was tied for this year’s lead with nine Oscar nominations, including nods for Best Picture, Best Actor (Michael Keaton), Best Supporting Actor (Edward Norton), Best Supporting Actress (Emma Stone), Cinematography, Best Director, Sound Editing, Sound Mixing and Best Original Screenplay.

The Imitation Game

Any film based on a true story is bound to upset history buffs with every departure it takes from the true story. That was the main snag for critics of 'The Imitation Game,' based on the life of brilliant mathematician Alan Turing.

'The Imitation Game' revolved around Turing (Benedict Cumberbatch) and a team of codebreakers working at Britain's Bletchley Park codebreaking school to crack Nazi encryptions during the Second World War.

Many Turing aficionados criticized the film for condensing events at Bletchley Park and playing up its commander, Alastair Denniston, as a villain.

One Amazon reviewer gave the film a one-star rating and labelled it a “travesty” that falls far short of portraying the life of its historical focus. Several others slammed it for making the code device 'enigma' the center puzzle of the film, even though the device had already been solved by the time Turing started working for the British government.

‘The Imitation Game’ was nominated for eight Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Actor (Benedict Cumberbatch), Best Supporting Actress (Keira Knightley), Best Director (Morten Tyldum), Film Editing, Original Score, Production Design and Best Adapted Screenplay.

The Grand Budapest Hotel

"Silly." "Farcical." "Absurd."

Those were the most common negative criticism of Wes Anderson’s ‘The Grand Budapest Hotel,’ which tied ‘Birdman’ with nine Academy Award nominations this year.

Anderson is well-known for his whimsical, oddball style from past films like ‘Moonrise Kingdom’ ‘The Royal Tenenbaums’ and ‘Fantastic Mr. Fox.’ That style is on full display in ‘The Grand Budapest Hotel,’ and it proved to be too overwhelming for some.

The film’s biggest bashers slammed it as a ridiculous, meandering caper from a director who is well-known for that that kind of thing.

“Cartoon movie simply stupid,” wrote Phillip R. Hinds on Amazon.

“What in the world is wrong with the movie critics these days?” said Amazon reviewer Harold Jacobs. “What a dreadful movie. We kept watching hoping it would improve, but it sank deeper and deeper. Toilet mouth dialogue, forced humor, stupid situations. There are some well-known names connected with this movie. It certainly hasn’t enriched their careers.”

‘The Grand Budapest Hotel’ has been nominated for Best Picture, Cinematography, Costume Design, Best Director, Film Editing, Makeup and Hairstyling, Best Original Score, Production Design and Best Original Screenplay.

Selma

Few people took issue with the Martin Luther King, Jr.-centered ‘Selma,’ which dramatizes a key march in Alabama during the civil rights movement of 1965.

Still, there were some detractors.

Just as we saw with ‘The Imitation Game,’ some took issue with ‘Selma’s representation of history, and with its portrayal of President Lyndon B. Johnson in particular. Others simply felt the emotional message of ‘Selma’ didn’t quite hit the right note, whether because it felt like other anti-racism movies or because of the overall tone of the film.

IMDB reviewer Danny G called MLK Jr. one of his “heroes” before comparing ‘Selma’ to a “horror movie.”

“I despised this film for being overly depressing and gloomy,” he said. “Why club us over the head with horror and fear? Was that really necessary to tell such a powerful story?”

User Arfdawg-1 on IMDB called ‘Selma’ a “TV movie” and accused it of re-writing history.

Others used the film to raise broader issues about modern-day race issues in the United States, including the deaths of Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown and the riots in Ferguson, Missouri.

Several Twitter users said the film made them want to “hate” white people.

‘Selma’ was nominated for Best Picture and Best Original Song (‘Glory’).

The Theory of Everything

Best Actor nominee Eddie Redmayne received near-universal praise for his performance as Stephen Hawking, the brilliant scientist crippled by ALS (Lou Ghehrig’s Disease) in ‘The Theory of Everything.’

But while most people loved Redmayne’s performance, some took issue with the film’s overall focus on Stephen Hawking’s struggles instead of his science.

“This movie is about a man with a horrible illness who happens to be a magnificent scientist. The story should have been told the other way around,” reviewer Christopher-172-288573 wrote on IMDB. “This movie drags the viewer through the weeds of Hawking’s pain and suffering and never lets up until the final minutes of the movie.”

User daveinlv called the film “a hodgepodge of 50% theatrics, 49% personal life drama and 1% science and even that of questionable accuracy.”

He wasn’t the only one to critique the film’s lack of science and emphasis on family melodrama.

“Its subject is more or less: how to cope and go on living with a very disabled person as a spouse,” wrote Motherspot on IMDB.

Movie Dude on IMDB offered this brief summary: “Sick guy who is famous for unexplained reasons has troubles in his relationship.”

‘The Theory of Everything’ is nominated for five Oscars, including Best Picture, Best Actor (Eddie Redmayne), Best Actress (Felicity Jones), Best Original Score and Best Adapted Screenplay.

Whiplash

‘Whiplash’ wasn’t the typical “tough teacher pushes student to find himself” film. It was more “tough teacher pushes student to the brink of sanity and exhaustion.”

The film stars Miles Teller as a driven drum student and J.K. Simmons as his taskmaster music instructor. Simmons’ character believes the only way to make someone great is to hammer them to their breaking point, and he does that relentlessly to his students, including Teller’s character.

The film’s worst critics took issue with Simmons’ over-the-top cruel character, while praising the film as a whole for the acting and technical filmmaking prowess on display.

Amazon reviewer Kate Smart hailed Simmons’ performance as the “drill sergeant” music teacher, but slammed the film for the impression it leaves.

“What a terrible message,” she wrote. “I was actually elated at one point because I thought, ‘For once the teacher isn’t the hero! He’s going to be exposed for the sociopath he clearly is!’ But alas, another hope crushed.”

Amazon user PeterRealPerson rankled at the casual slurs Simmons’ character hurled at his teenaged music students to motivate them.

“Homophobic and anti-Semitic insults, psychological and physical torture presented as working methods to motivate a teenager! Do I really need to write more to express how wrong this movie is, despite all the good acting and speedy editing?”

Connie L. Eakes had a more succinct Amazon review. “When did two hours of emotional shaming and abuse become mainstream entertainment?”

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That’s a whole lot of negativity for a bunch of films vying for the title of Best Picture. But don’t let it turn you off. The film are, if nothing else, worthy of debate and worth seeing for the conversation they bring up.

If you loved all the films, maybe you’ll see them a different way now. And if you hated them, maybe you’ll speak up the next time someone talks about that “awesome” scene that you just couldn’t stand.