We had one film release this past weekend with the potential for Oscar nominations.

Snowden

There was a time when controversial filmmaker Oliver Stone was an Oscar mainstay. Today, he’s seen more as a fringe filmmaker who’s lost his way than as a serious Oscar threat. For the first time in years, he has a film that has earned decent praise, but will it be enough.

It all started for Stone in 1979 when his screenplay for Midnight Express, a film he didn’t direct, earned him his first Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay. As a director, his career began with a little-remembered film called Seizure, but it wasn’t until his second and third feature that his Oscar fortunes really took off.

In 1986, Stone released two films that would ultimately bring him to the Oscar ceremony. Salvador secured two Oscar nominations, but his other film, Platoon, picked up eight, winning four, including Best Picture and a win for him as Best Director. His next film, Wall Street scored only a single nomination, but it was for Michael Douglas, who won the Oscar for his performance.

Through 1995, he had an on-again-off-again relationship with Oscar. Between his Oscar nominated films Born on the Fourth of July, JFK, and Nixon, he had Oscar failures Talk Radio, The Doors, Heaven & Earth, and Natural Born Killers. After Nixon, his films never came close to Oscar again.

Snowden is his first film in 21 years to be talked about for Oscar. Unfortunately for him, Snowden initial burst of praise has settled into a good, not great mentality with a weak 58% Fresh rating at Rotten Tomatoes and an identical 58 rating at MetaCritic. On top of that, the film debuted fourth at the weekend box office behind far-removed sequels Blair Witch and Bridget Jones’s Baby without critics or box office in his column, the only chance his film has is if Joseph Gordon-Levitt can parlay his portrayal of a real-life person into an Oscar nomination, but I wouldn’t bet on that one.