The Oscars 2015: Academy member reveals her thoughts on all the Best Picture nominees

THE Oscar winners will be determined by Academy members — and a voter has just lashed out at one of the big favourites.

THE Oscars are on next week, and that means it’s time to speculate about the possible winners.

Of course, the voting process is so convoluted that it’s hard for any of us to know what’s going to happen. But perhaps we could gain some insights by listening to an insider.

A female Academy member, who wished to remain anonymous, has given the Hollywood Reporter her rather forthright thoughts on all of the award categories.

We’ve compiled her most striking quotes on the nominees for Best Picture below. Head over to the Hollywood Reporter for the rest.

On Selma ...

• “What no one wants to say out loud is that Selma is a well-crafted movie, but there’s no art to it.”

• “If the movie had been directed by a 60-year-old white male, I don’t think that people would have been carrying on about it to the level that they were.”

• “When a movie about black people is good, people vote for it. But if the movie isn’t that good, am I supposed to vote for it just because black people are in it?”

• “Having the cast show up in T-shirts saying ‘I can’t breathe’ (a reference to the death of Eric Garner), I thought that stuff was offensive. Did they want to be known for making the best movie of the year or for stirring up s**t?”

On American Sniper ...

• “It shows that a movie can galvanise America and shows that people will go if you put something out that they want to see.”

• “I enjoyed it, I thought it was well done, and I can separate out the politics from the filmmaking.”

On The Imitation Game ...

• “It’s a great story, well crafted, Benedict Cumberbatch is really good and it’s been a big success.”

• “When you vote for best picture, what you should try to do is vote for the movie that, years from now, people will still watch and talk about.”

On The Theory of Everything ...

• “I liked it, but I didn’t love it.”

• “It’s what I call a ‘filler’ nominee. It’s one of those movies that people write in but that doesn’t stand a chance of winning.”

On Boyhood ...

• “If you told me when I saw Boyhood that it would win Best Picture — or even be in the running — I would have told you that you were insane.”

• “I thought it was ambitious and a directorial triumph, but the kid was uneven and Patricia Arquette probably was sorry she agreed to let them film her age over 12 years.”

On The Grand Budapest Hotel ...

• “It shows that people can and will remember how much they loved a movie, even if it comes out in March.”

On Whiplash ...

• “It’s a very traditional story, in some ways, about mentoring — that kind of movie has existed since 42nd Street.”

In case you’re wondering, the Academy member in question cast her vote for The Imitation Game.