Boyhood

(Actual winner: Birdman)

The IndieWire principal critic Eric Kohn wrote an open letter to the voting public shortly before the 2015 Academy Awards, arguing that Richard Linklater's 12-year labor of love "Boyhood" deserved the Best Picture award over Alejandro González Iárritu's "Birdman," which had established itself as the leading candidate thanks to its vibrant one-take aesthetic, star-studded cast, and self-reflexive Cinematic DNA.

The Academy, according to Kohn, would choose to wallow in the failures of the business rather than embrace alternatives to its limits, by letting "Birdman" win over "Boyhood." The Academy Awards, after all, have tremendous symbolic value.

However much adrenaline is pumped into us by the film's replicated crucial sequences and gonzo narrative, “Birdman” ultimately fails to disclose or teach us anything new about ourselves. It is impossible to duplicate the feelings provoked by “Boyhood”. Despite the fact that "Birdman" was eventually chosen as the Academy's best picture, "Boyhood" remains one of cinema's most important pictures of Americans in the twenty-first century.

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Year of Release: 2014

Director: Richard Linklater

Rotten Tomatoes Score: 100/100

IMDB Score: 7.9/10