“Selma” has received 100 percent positive reviews on RottenTomatoes and ranks near the top in almost every speculative analysis of Best Picture Oscar nominees.
But when you tally up the results of critics and guild awards so far, Ava DuVernay’s dramatic story of Martin Luther King’s 1965 march from Selma to Montgomery suddenly looks vulnerable, not invincible.
It has won two critics’ awards as the year’s best film, from the African-American Film Critics Association and the Black Film Critics Circle, compared with 16 wins for “Boyhood” and five for “Birdman.” More gravely, it has only received a single nomination, for costume design, from the seven guilds or professional societies that have announced their nominees.