By: Brooke Byrne, Lion’s Eye Staff Editor, bzb5183@psu.edu

With award season buzzing during a new semester, it can be hard keeping up with nominations and seeing the latest movies. Here is your guide to the films up for best picture at the Academy award ceremony this year!

American Sniper – Based on the true story of Chris Kyle, the most-celebrated sniper in American military history, this story depicts the challenges he endured juggling four tours of duty, his family back home and the daunting task of being a lethal legend. See review elsewhere in this edition. Starring: Bradley Cooper, Sienna Miller

Birdman – Riggan Thomas, a washed up movie star known for acting in superhero blockbusters, decides to mend his family, his career and himself by directing and starring in an edgy theater production. As opening night approaches, juggling these tasks while battling inner demons makes his journey all the more difficult.

Starring: Michael Keaton, Emma Stone, Edward Norton

Boyhood – Taking nearly 12 years to film, this unique concept follows the life of a young boy named Mason. He begins as a six year old and deals with bratty siblings, parents’ divorce, puberty, and everything else that life throws at young people as he progresses to age 18.

Starring: Ellar Coltrane, Ethan Hawke, Patricia Arquette

The Grand Budapest Hotel –When a legendary hotel in the 1930s loses its oldest and richest patron, it comes to light that she strangely left her most priceless work of art to the famous concierge. The concierge is then thrust into a whirlwind adventure of silliness and suspicion as the patron’s greedy heir uses all manner of underhanded and illegal tactics to pin her death on the concierge and gain ownership of the artwork.

Starring: Ralph Fiennes, Jude Law, Tony Revolori

The Imitation Game – The real life story of legendary cryptanalyst Alan Turing who raced against time with a team of mathematicians at Britain’s top-secret Government Code and Cypher School at Bletchley Park during World War II.

Starring: Benedict Cumberbatch, Keira Knightley, Matthew Goode.

Selma – A chronicle of the three-month period in 1965 when Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. led a campaign for equal voting rights in the face of violent opposition. The march he led from Selma to Montgomery resulted in President Johnson signing the Voting Rights Act of 1965. See review elsewhere in this edition.

Starring: David Oyelowo, Carmen Ejogo, Tom Wilkinson

The Theory of Everything – Follows the life and love of Stephen Hawking, one of the most brilliant physicists of all time. This film focuses on how he met his wife and started a family with her despite being diagnosed with a fatal illness, which at age 21, gave him only two years. He is still alive 52 years later.

Starring: Eddie Redmayne, Felicity Jones, Emily Watson

Whiplash – A talanted young drummer enrolls in a prestigious music academy and finds himself under the wing of the most respected professor at the school. The drummer and professor form an unlikely bond of a scathing teaching style and an obsession with being great.

Starring: Miles Teller, J.K. Simmons, Paul Reiser