As a general principle I tend to stay away from movies that are Oscar bids. They always tend to disappoint, I've found, because only one of two things can happen: a. The actors get so desperate for the award that they overact, putting so much useless drama that it ruins the film (i.e. anything Tom Cruise had done in the past few years) b. The directors themselves ruin the film by making all sorts of overly complicated angles as "independent" as possible, using pointless intricacies to make a relatively simple plot seem "artful" (i.e. films such as Cold Mountain) But…