Oscar Rights And Wrongs

Best Picture
What Won: Birdman. A great, ambitious movie but ultimately unsuccessful. Lots of amazing elements that didn't fully come together. Worthy of recognition but not the win.
What Should Have Won: Boyhood. Clearly the more momentous achievement in cinema and the film of the year that will most likely stand the test of time. Broad in scope, clean in execution, great performances.

Best Actress
Who Won: Julianne Moore. Seemingly a "it's her time" win. A woman battling alzheimer's couldn't be a more prototypical Oscar bait. A good performance that has no real element of greatness.
Who Should Have Won: Essie Davis(not nominated) from The Babadook. All the nominees this year were very obvious and safe. None of the real courageous complicated work done by women this year in leading roles was recognized.

Best Actor
Who Won: Eddie Redmayne. Although a physically technical performance Redmayne's turn as Hawkins is flat, he doesn't do much past playing the disease, in the already uninspired biopic.
Who Should Have Won: Michael Keaton. Ambitious, brave, and multi-layered. The clear stand out from the other pedestrian nominees. Ralph Finnes gave another of the years best leading male performances, he wasn't nominated.

Best Supporting Actress
Who Won: Patricia Arquette. They got it right.

Best Supporting Actor
Who Won: J.K. Simmons. They got it right.

Best Origianl Screenplay
Who Won: Birdman. A good script but not a great one. The conceit of the film and the actors in it made the film special, at times overcoming the deficiencies in the script.
Who Should Have Won: The Grand Budapest Hotel. Meticulous, playful, dark. The most fully formed and executed script of the year. Anderson is deserving of recognition beyond the technical.

Best Adapted Screenplay
Who Won: The Imitation Game. Boring and a bit pandering. Adequate but nothing new or innovative.
Who Should Have Won: Whiplash. The more original and unique. A favorite film of the year by many, one of the few widely seen independent films, deserving of more recognition than JK's win.

Best Foreign Language Film
Who Won: Ida. They got it right.

Best Live Action Short
What Won: The Phone Call. The most predictable and trite of the five shorts. Could easily be converted to a Lifetime movie.
What Should Have Won: Aya. Emotionally complicated and compelling.

Best Animated Short
What Won: Feast. Entertaining and sweet but the Oscar should go to a project with a bit more substance. It seems we're still operating under the assumption animation is for children only.
What Should Have Won: The Bigger Picture. A beautiful stop motion meditation about death and family. Dark and melancholic yet hopeful and humorous this short is particularly poignant given the aging baby-boomer generation.