10 Upcoming Movies With Serious Oscar Buzz

10. The Secret Life of Walter Mitty

I wouldn’t have even considered Ben Stiller’s next film a candidate for awards attention a few weeks ago, but after a first spectacular trailer, I can easily see The Secret Life of Walter Mitty serving as this year’s Life of Pi, a visually sumptuous adventure with great performances and a strong emotional undercurrent.

The film centers on a bored photojournalist (Stiller), who lives life vicariously through a series of vivid daydreams as a spy, an explorer, and a war hero, among others. Mitty must embark on a real-life adventure  when his career and the career of his secret crush (Kristen Wiig) are both threatened.

Footage screened at a convention earlier this year drew comparisons to Forrest Gump, The Apartment, and It’s A Wonderful Life, which adds some weight to the film’s Oscar buzz. The terrific first trailer, set to Of Monsters and Men’s rousing “Dirty Paws,” gives me even more hope that this movie can land squarely on the Oscar awards circuit:

The Secret Life of Walter Mitty should earn a ton of visual nominations based on the impressive footage we’ve seen so far, but a Best Picture nomination is also not too hard for me to get behind. I don’t think Stiller stands a chance in the Best Actor field, but a great performance from him would boost the film’s overall chances, and if the film achieves its lofty goals, he could easily nab a Best Director nomination.

The Secret Life of Walter Mitty opens December 25.

Well, there you have it. Those are my outrageously early ideas for how this year’s Oscar field might shape up. They aren’t based on much other than my ideas about what will play well with the Academy, and probably half of my predictions will be dead wrong. I know that there’s zero chance that all of them can be right, given how many actors I put in the mix for Best Actor, or how many filmmakers I put forth for Best Director. But that’s what makes speculation so fun – you get to be wrong, and that’s OK.

What do you think about my picks? Are there any films I made a mistake in overlooking, or ones that you think I’m crazy to put on this list? Let me know in the comments section!