The Great Gatsby

Director, Baz Luhrmann; cast, Leonardo DiCaprio, Carey Mulligan, Tobey Maguire.

Delayed from last year and, like all of Luhrmann’s high-style, high-wire movies, guaranteed to be divisive, “Gatsby” could well be this year’s “Les Miserables” (without the singing) — a lavish, emotionally over-the-top, sweeping spectacle that aims to hold a mirror to modern times. Its schedule bump might prompt some doubts, but “Titanic” moved back its release date too, and it made out OK.

Monuments Men

Director, George Clooney; cast, Daniel Craig, Clooney, Cate Blanchett.

It’s a WWII action-thriller about a special platoon charged with saving art from the Nazis. Tension + higher purpose + Clooney = best picture? That equation worked this year with “Argo,” didn’t it?

The Wolf of Wall Street

Director, Martin Scorsese; cast, Leonardo DiCaprio.

The fifth collaboration between Scorsese and DiCaprio has sex, drugs and securities fraud, not to mention mob elements, along with a script from Terence Winter, who, judging from his work on “The Sopranos” and “Boardwalk Empire,” knows his way around the subject at hand.

Nebraska

Director, Alexander Payne; cast, Bruce Dern, Will Forte.

Payne’s road trips (“About Schmidt,” “Sideways”) never disappoint. This one follows a son (Forte) reluctantly taking his irascible dad (Dern) from Billings, Montana, to Lincoln, Nebraska, to claim a magazine sweepstakes prize. Likely to be low-key, but that could work in its favour.

Captain Phillips

Director, Paul Greengrass; cast, Tom Hanks, Catherine Keener.

Hanks plays a cargo ship captain taken hostage by Somali pirates. Greengrass (“United 93,” “Bloody Sunday”) knows how to craft compelling cinema from true stories, and it’s about time the academy recognizes him for something. Hanks’ presence should help pave the way.

Foxcatcher

Director, Bennett Miller; cast, Steve Carell, Mark Ruffalo.

Bennett follows his Oscar-nominated “Moneyball” with an altogether different true story — the relationship between paranoid chemical fortune heir John du Pont and an Olympic gold medal wrestler who was his longtime friend. For Carell, in particular, this has the potential to be a career changer.

Labor Day

Director, Jason Reitman; cast, Kate Winslet, Josh Brolin.

While out shopping for back-to-school clothes, a mother and her 13-year-old son come across a bleeding man in need of help. They bring him home and … it gets complicated from there. Reitman adapted the story from Joyce Maynard’s poignant, coming-of-age novel.

August: Osage County

Director, John Wells; cast, Meryl Streep, Julia Roberts, Juliette Lewis.

The movie has the pedigree — Tracy Letts adapted his Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award-winning play about a dysfunctional family coming together after a crisis. And it’s being released by the Weinstein Co., so there’s that. But Wells is primarily a TV director and dramas centered on family conflict often turn into tonal train wrecks. An iffy proposition, but, with this year’s Oscar-winning producers Clooney and Grant Heslov on board, it’s one that cannot be discounted.

Gravity

Director, Alfonso Cuaron; cast, Clooney, Sandra Bullock.

Clooney (he’s everywhere!) and Bullock play astronauts dealing with a mission gone bad. Cuaron (“Children of Men”) is one of our most gifted directors and this will need critical raves to break through the academy’s tendency to short-sheet sci-fi.

Fruitvale

Director, Ryan Coogler; cast, Michael B. Jordan, Octavia Spencer.

Indie drama about the last day in the life of Oscar Grant, the 22-year-old Bay Area man shot dead by a transit officer. Like “Beasts of the Southern Wild” last year, “Fruitvale” took Sundance by storm, winning the Grand Jury Prize and the Audience Award. Weinstein Co. bought the devastating drama at the festival, and based on the buzz and reviews, it probably will become a fixture in the upcoming award season.