As we come closer to the Academy Awards, we’ll be posting short profiles of each Best Picture nominee, attempting, in our own ways, to not only sum up what the movie is about, but why we believe it scored one of the eight coveted nominations, and why it could possibly take home the big prize come Oscar night. Enjoy!

“Journey to the Unknown” is definitely an apt description of The Martian, which is, quite literally, a film about a man journeying into a hostile environment he understands but needs to learn to navigate. Matt Damon stars as Mark Watney, a botanist accidentally left behind and presumed dead on the surface of Mars, completely alone at a base camp previously occupied by his entire team.

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As we come closer to the Academy Awards, we’ll be posting short profiles of each Best Picture nominee, attempting, in our own ways, to not only sum up what the movie is about, but why we believe it scored one of the eight coveted nominations, and why it could possibly take home the big prize come Oscar night. Enjoy!

Of all of this year’s eight nominees, Spotlight is your Best Picture.  I don’t mean that it’s the best movie of the bunch, no (We’ll get to that one in a few columns from now). I don’t even think it’s a sure-lock for the award either (It’s something of a three-way tie with The Big Short and The Revenant right now). But of all eight of the films nominated, Spotlight is the one that most easily fits the Best Picture Oscar model. It’s an all-around great film, completely inoffensive in construction, and generally pleasing to the movie-going audience. In any other year, Spotlight would be a sure thing.

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