We had four films release this past weekend with the potential for Oscar nominations.

Shaun the Shep Movie

If there’s one thing that Aardman Animations knows how to do, it’s making witty stop-motion animated films that earn Oscar consideration.

Before the Academy introduced its Animated Feature Oscar, Chicken Run introduced wide release audiences to the brilliance of Aardman. The film did incredibly well at the box office. Before that, several Aardman short films received Oscars including Creature Comforts, The Wrong Trousers and A Close Shave, two of which starred their famous pair Wallace & Gromit. Those two also featured in Oscar nominee A Grand Day Out, which lost out to Creature Comforts. That pair also went on to claim the studio’s first Oscar for Best Animated Feature.

Oscar didn’t quite sour on the studio, but the two subsequent films the studio released were Oscar no-shows. Arthur Christmas and Flushed Away just weren’t the Academy’s cup of tea. That changed when, much to the surprise of prognosticators, the studio eked out a nomination for The Pirates! Band of Misfits, a film that had done poorly at the box office and didn’t seem to be polling well enough to make the cut off.

This time out, the studio has a much more acclaimed entry on its hands. Shaun the Sheep Movie currently has a 99% Fresh rating at Rotten Tomatoes and a strong 81 from Metacritic. The box office, however, wasn’t so kind. So far, it’s running eleventh place just outside the top ten. I suspect that the film will still do well with the Academy considering the dearth of candidates this year. If the category goes to five nominees, it should get in. If it’s only three, then I’m afraid Aardman will be left out again.

Fantastic Four

Superhero franchises don’t often get Academy respect, so can the visual-effects heavy Fantastic Four become an exception. That answer is no, but how we come to that conclusion is multi-faceted.

The first thing going against the film is the dreadful reviews from critics. Becoming one of the lowest rated comic book adaptations of all time, Fantastic Four has gotten such a negative reputation that its director has come out claiming the studio chopped his film up. Whether that assertion holds water is debatable, what isn’t is that the film is abysmally bad.

Also not questionable is the fact that the film has been a box office disappointment. Earning less than $30 million at the box office is awful for a superhero film, putting its sequels in jeopardy. Those two components would be enough to doom the film, but even if it had been exceptionally good and a blockbuster, the fact that the prior two adaptations of the property never even came close to Oscar nominations. Popularity just isn’t enough sometimes. Even the Disney/Marvel Cinematic Universe has struggled to get a toehold at the Oscars, a film like this had no chance long before it was even seen.

Ricki and the Flash

Long before Meryl Streep hit the magic 3 Oscar mark at the Academy Awards, it seemed like standard operating procedure to include her in any list of nominations for the year. With nods for films like Postcards from the Edge, One True Thing and Music of the Heart, it truly seemed like every time she appeared in something she’d get nominated.

That brings us to Ricki and the Flash, Jonathan Demme’s direction of a Diablo Cody screenplay about a touring rock star who abandoned her family to pursue her dream. When she returns for her daughter’s wedding, bitterness and recriminations force the family to adapt to the new presence in their lives and ultimately decide if they want to forgive her for leaving and will accept her getting back into their lives.

The film hasn’t been earning great notices and the box office isn’t very good, but that really won’t stop Streep from getting nominated if there isn’t enough competition. There is, though, and Streep has a separate opportunity for a nomination with Suffragette later this year. Those two facts combined should keep her from netting a nod for this film, but it also wouldn’t be surprising if she eked through.

Kahlil Gibran’s The Prophet

There are basically five animation houses whose efforts are immediately considered contenders for Best Animated Feature nominations. Disney/Pixar is one of the most consistent, followed closely by DreamWorks. Aardman Animations has a terrific record, but they are probably the weakest, and Laika Entertainment has a perfect record, but they’ve only had three films to contend. The fourth isn’t precisely a studio, but it’s a distributor and, for modest animated films from non-U.S. locales, that’s basically the same thing.

GKids has been so incredibly consistent in recent years that to bet against at least one of their films, and sometimes two, getting Oscar nominations would be folly. This year, they have the hand-drawn feature Kahlil Gibran’s The Propehet in their stable and from the looks of it, I would be suspicious if they didn’t push it. The story about an exiled artist on a journey of discovery employs a number of different animation techniques, some of which are quite beautiful while others are a bit weaker.

While the film hasn’t gotten rapturous reviews and its box office will be understandably weak, GKids knows how to promote and since there are so few traditional animated films in the marketplace, nostalgic and envious artists in the Animation branch at the Academy should still eat it up.