Prioritizing your must-see Oscar hopefuls

Unless you're a film critic or as Oscar voter on the mailing list for screeners, most of us don't have a chance to see every Oscar nominee. But some of us do try to see at least the top-nominated films. That can be a tall order when there's little over a month between announcing the nominees and the Oscar ceremony telecast.

Some of my fiends have asked me who I think will get nominated so that they could try to get a head start. I started to give recommendations based on anecdotal buzz. Then I tried to focus just on the more likely Best Picture nominees. 

Finally I devised a more scientific method. I went to GoldDerby.com, which handicaps predictions for entertainment-related betting. They polled 25 experts on their predictions of likely Oscar nominees in most categories (Best Original Song was omitted and other categories may have as well). In addition, each critic ranked their predictions, putting their most likely nominee first and least likely last. So I downloaded their data and assigned each film a score based on how many critics thought the film might get a nomination in a given category and how likely they felt it might get that nomination. I omitted the shorts categories but included the feature-length documentary category.

I should mention that I suspect Gold Derby's data could change. They might add more critics, they might survey more categories, or they might allow critics to change their minds. This is just a snapshot of how things measured up a week or so ago.

Based on their thoughts, here's the prioritized list of what to see. (In a separate post, I'll break the predictions down by category.) I've broken out data for the top six categories (Best Picture, Director, Actor, Actress, Supporting Actor, and Supporting Actress) for those who want to prioritize by that, and also provided data spanning all categories where Gold Derby polled experts.

Most have a range. The low end of the range is the number where a consensus of critics think a nomination is likely for a particular category. The upper end of the range includes outliers -- additional categories where some critics, but not a majority, think the film might also score a nomination.

#	Film	Top 6 Categories	All Categories
1	12 Years a Slave	(5 to 6)	(14 to 15)
2	Gravity	(3 to 4)	(10 to 12)
3	Captain Phillips	(4 to 4)	(9 to 10)
4	American Hustle	(3 to 6)	(6 to 12)
5	Rush	(1 to 2)	(6 to 10)
6	Saving Mr. Banks	(3 to 4)	(5 to 9)
7	Nebraska	(3 to 4)	(4 to 8)
8	All is Lost	(1 to 3)	(3 to 7)
9	The Butler	(2 to 4)	(3 to 6)
10	Inside Llewyn Davis	(1 to 3)	(3 to 8)
11	The Wolf of Wall Street	(2 to 4)	(3 to 7)
12	The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug	0	(3 to 4)
13	Blue Jasmine	(1 to 4)	(2 to 5)
14	Dallas Buyers Club	(2 to 4)	(2 to 6)
15	The Great Gatsby	0	(2 to 6)
16	August: Osage County	(1 to 5)	(2 to 6)
17	Fruitvale Station	(2 to 5)	(2 to 6)
18	Oz the Great and Powerful	0	(2 to 5)
19	Philomena	(1 to 2)	(1 to 4)
20	Her	(0 to 4)	(1 to 8)
21	The Secret Life of Walter Mitty	(0 to 1)	(1 to 6)
22	Frozen	0	(1 to 3)
23	Before Midnight	(0 to 1)	(1 to 2)
24	The Wind Rises	0	(1 to 1)
25	Pacific Rim	0	(1 to 3)
26	Monsters University	0	(1 to 1)
27	The Book Thief	(0 to 1)	(1 to 4)
28	Despicable Me 2	0	(1 to 1)
29	The Croods	0	(1 to 1)
30	Elysium	0	(1 to 1)
31	Enough Said	(0 to 4)	(0 to 5)
32	Ernest and Celestine	0	(0 to 1)
33	Iron Man 3	0	(0 to 2)
34	The Invisible Woman	0	(0 to 2)
35	Prisoners	(0 to 3)	(0 to 5)
36	Star Trek Into Darkness	0	(0 to 3)
37	Blue is the Warmest Color	(0 to 3)	(0 to 4)
38	Short Term 12	(0 to 1)	(0 to 1)
39	The Hunger Games: Catching Fire	0	(0 to 2)
40	Mud	(0 to 1)	(0 to 1)
41	42	(0 to 1)	(0 to 1)
42	The Past	(0 to 3)	(0 to 3)
43	Lone Survivor	0	(0 to 1)
44	Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom	(0 to 1)	(0 to 2)
45	The Lone Ranger	0	(0 to 1)
46	Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2	0	(0 to 1)
47	Labor Day	0	(0 to 1)
48	Man of Steel	0	(0 to 1)
49	Stoker	0	(0 to 1)
50	The Grandmaster	0	(0 to 1)
51	To the Wonder	0	(0 to 1)
52	World War Z	0	(0 to 1)
53	The Place Beyond the Pines	(0 to 1)	(0 to 1)

I should also mention that there are some films these critics ignored that will almost certainly make my Cosmo list, with Kill Your Darlings being the most notable.

You can download PDFs with more details here:

• Top 6 Oscar Predictions
• Full List of Oscar Predictions

I'll post the per-category predictions in a separate post.