Best actress in a leading role:

Marion Cotillard (Two Days, One Night)

Rosamund Pike (Gone Girl)

Reese Witherspoon (Wild)

Julianne Moore (Still Alice)

Felicity Jones (The Theory of Everything)

If Rosamund Pike does not win an Oscar I will cry profusely and I will do it in public.

Not only was her performance amazing, but I appreciate the fact that hers is a story about a woman holding the power. A woman plots and plans and executes and it has nothing to do with overcoming sorrow (sorry Reese), or being a better person, or making her husband’s life easier. It is about pure limitless revenge. There’s no self pitying exposition, it’s just hatred and vengeance which are often emotions reserved for males.

While Pike’s character, Amy from Gone Girl, is not exactly a shining example of womanhood, she has a level of realness to her. She brings to center these amazing commentaries about how far women go to contort their bodies and mannerisms to please men and she’s just completely done (or Dunne technically). Yeah, she played a psychopathic, vengeful wife, but in no way was she delicate, and that is a step forward in the correct portrayal of women. We can fight back.

I guess the Oscars have once again demonstrated to us the only path to success and recognition: being white, and, preferably, male, and, even more preferably, violently and psychopathically patriotic. Easy enough.