10 Possible Oscar Contenders From The First Half Of 2015

3) Youth

Paolo Sorrentino’s follow-up to his spectacular The Great Beauty is being hailed as another masterpiece, eloquent and elegant in its treatment of the human body and time’s ravages. The lensing (by Luca Bigazzi) is predictably splendid, and reviews say that Sorrentino’s setting of the film in a spa resort gives it an otherworldly, melancholy quality not dissimilar to such classics as 8 1/2 and Last Year at Marienbad.

More optimistic than The Great Beauty but just as philosophical, it’s being called one of the director’s most accessible films to date, and the Academy likely won’t pass up the chance to honor a filmmaker just now being discovered by general audiences in the U.S.