mcnabb

The only thing I hate is when the Academy gives a guy like Scorcese or Ron Howard a 'lifetime-like achievement award' for Best Picture because they didn't win with some of their classic films. I see Ron Howard with for A Beautiful Mind which was a good picture, but as much as I love Braveheart, I thought Apollo 13 was the best movie in 1995, and Ron Howard's best movie, IMO. Same goes for Scorcese as he loses for classics like Raging Bull and Goodfellas, but wins for a good movie like 'The Departed'.

Or if a person wins too much like Hanks, they won't give them an oscar later in their career. I always thought Hanks should have won Best Oscar for Cast Away, and would still argue that his Forrest Gump portrayal was overated. Or Russell Crowe wins for Gladiator, but doesn't win the next year for A Beautiful Mind, when clearly that was the better performance of the two, IMO.

superdeluxe

Its crazy. They award Crowe for Gladiator, because they felt he should have won for the Insider..they award Washington For Training Day, because they felt he should have won for the Hurricane.

Its just a crazy cycle.

Falc04

Yup, that was certainly the year I lost respect for the Acedemy voters. Haven't really care much about how they voted since.

bootsy

More so Malcolm X than Hurricane. He probably should have won for both but he most definitely should have won for Malcolm X which they gave to Pacino for Scent of Woman who should have won for The Godfather. It is a crazy messed up cycle.

Shazam

I too fucking love both those movies.

The only thing with TWBB is that I now HATE Paul Dano because his character was so despicable that I can't separate them.

Terrell

You guys are simply proving that opinions are like assholes. Everyone has one. You could argue this all day and not come to a consensus. That's why these awards shows are silly, because they are entirely subjective. It's virtually impossible to accurately choose what's the best film out of 10 very good to great films.

I agree with Joaquin Phoenix, George C. Scott, and Anthony Hopkins. The Oscars and other Hollywood award shows are nothing more than a self-congratulatory, aren't we all special meat parade.

They don't need the respect. These awards are practically bought and paid for, along with the politics that goes along with it.

sherm42

The best breakdown of everything wrong with Saving Private Ryan, as written by William Goldman:

http://achtenblog.blogspot.com/2007/...say.html?m=1#!

A great read in my opinion. Yours may differ.

Decker

I think SPR lost, not so much because of its flaws (of which, sure there were several -- I had a big problem with the present-day bookends which felt totally unnecessary), but rather because this was a pretty classic case of Harvey Weinstein campaigning his way to a Best Picture Oscar. You should win based on your film's merit, but Harvey found if you can glad-hand and advertise enough you could change the voters' minds. Spielberg's camp was totally caught off-guard by that win (as was his friend Harrison Ford who looked like a Fear Factor contestant in an eating competition while he read the winner at the Oscars). The real irony is that Spielberg's people tried some of that same heavy-handed campaigning this time around (most notably bringing out Bill Clinton to introduce Lincoln at the Golden Globes) and it came across as "desperate". He really must feel like he just can't win.

jfoobar

I cannot help but do a year-by-year response to a thread like this, even though few will bother to even read it.

I have seen the vast majority of the nominees and will restrict my choices only to those films that were nominated.

1993: Schindler's List won, and it is hard to argue against it too vociferously due to the fact that it was a very well-made film with few glaring flaws and the importance of its subject matter. However, I would have personally voted for The Remains of the Day if I had been given a vote. It really is a virtually perfect and beautiful film.

1994: Forrest Gump won. Uh, no, horrible choice. Among the nominees, I would have voted for Quiz Show, but it is overall a pretty weak selection of nominees.

1995: Braveheart won. Again, hard to argue against this one too much. I don't have a strong opinion to the contrary. As good as Sense and Sensibility was, it certainly had some flaws. I never saw Il Postino.

1996: The English Patient won. Sorry Fargo fanboys, the Academy got this one right. TEP is an amazing film. Fargo is quite good, but I would have put it third in this group.

1997: Titanic won. Again, I have a hard time mounting too strong of an argument with this group of nominees. Personally, I would have voted for Good Will Hunting.

1998: Shakespeare in Love won. I would have voted for Elizabeth, but I think it is safe to say that The Academy screwed the pooch by giving this one to SiL. For the record, I did not care for The Thin Red Line at all, but that had more to do with my not finding the style appealing than it being bad.

1999: American Beauty won. Not a horrible choice among the nominees, but I would have voted for The Insider.

2000: Gladiator won and it was another bad choice. Traffic really is the only very good/great film among the list of nominees.

2001: A Beautiful Mind won, and it was yet another bad choice. If the LotR series deserved to win a Best Picture, it was this year since FotR is easily the best of the series. However, In the Bedroom deserved to win from this list.

2002: Chicago won. Truthfully not a very strong list of nominees. I would have voted for The Pianist. I have not seen the Hours, however.

2003: The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King won, and this was clearly an award given to the series as a whole. RotK did not deserve this win and was, IMHO, the weakest of the five nominees. As to which one of the remaining four should have won, that is a pretty tough call. I probably would have probably flipped a coin between Mystic River and Lost in Translation.

2004: Million Dollar Baby won, but I think this was another iffy choice. MDB was wonderful in parts, but it lacked cohesion. I would have enthusiastically voted for the absolutely brilliant Sideways. However, I never saw Ray.

2005: Crash won. Dear God, no. Any of the remaining four would have been a much better choice but a tough call. I probably would have voted for Munich.

2006: The Departed won. Given the list of nominees, this was probably the correct call. Babel should have been amazing and absolutely wasn't.

2007: No Country for Old Men won in a very strong list of nominees. However, I would have voted for Michael Clayton

2008: Slumdog Millionaire won and I still have not managed to sit down and watch it. So I guess I am completely disqualified from this year. However, of the remaining four I would have voted for Milk.

2009: The Hurt Locker won. Despite the ten nominees, this really isn't that strong of a list (although I never saw Precious), with at least three that have no business even getting nominated. I found THL to be somewhat overrated. I would have voted for An Education, Up or Up in the Air.

2010: The King's Speech won and was a good movie, but it was also completely overrated Oscar-bait. A much stronger list than 2009. I would have voted for The Social Network.

2011: The Artist won and I have not seen it and a couple of others. I can say that despite my general Alexander Payne worship, I don't think that The Descendants deserved it. Gun to my head, I guess I would have picked Moneyball, but I don't think it really deserved it either.

2012: Argo won. I still have not seen four of these nine, including Django. My strong Oscar night conviction was that neither Lincoln nor Silver Linings Playbook deserved to win. Argo was quite good, as was Zero Dark Thirty, but I need to see the rest.

OK, so there went twenty minutes of my life I'll never get back.

Decker

Dude, three of the AFI 100 (10th Anniversary) films are nominees in 1994. I won't argue that Gump was the wrong choice, but it was anything but a weak year.

superdeluxe

Pulp fiction, shawshank

Hokeyboy

Quiz Show, Shawshank, Pulp Fiction ... all of them infinitely superior to Gump. But never discount manipulative feelgood Baby Boomer tripe.

inri222

Here is Johnathan Rosenbaum's take :

http://www.jonathanrosenbaum.com/?p=12466

inri222

1993: In the Name of the Father
1994: Pulp Fiction
1995: Braveheart
1996: Secrets & Lies
1997: L.A. Confidential
1998: The Thin Red Line
1999: The Insider
2000: Traffic
2001: In the Bedroom
2002: The Pianist
2003: Lost in Translation
2004: Sideways
2005: Good Night, and Good Luck
2006: Babel
2007: No Country for Old Men
2008: ANYTHING BUT SLUMDOG
2009: The Hurt Locker
2010: Winter's Bone
2011: Have only seen 2 of the nominees
2012: Have only seen 2 of the nominees

johnnysd

When I was in college I bet a guy $500 that Paul Newman would win best actor months before The Color of Money was ever released. It was easy money, it was so obvious that they would give him a lifetime Oscar regardless of the performance. It was a strong performance though as well in the end.

Calculon

Wow... didn't realize Children of Men wasn't even nominated in 2006.

inri222

Not surprising. The masterpiece Mulholland Dr. was only nominated for best director.

jfoobar

Dude, one of those three movies on the AFI 100 is Gump. That alone calls the list's validity as some sort of quality benchmark into serious question.

Quiz Show was very good, but not really "Best Picture" quality.

Four Weddings and a Funeral should not have even been nominated.

Pulp Fiction is a very entertaining film and a very important film, due to its originality and its influence on subsequent films. It is spectacularly brilliant in places. However, it also suffers from several glaring flaws and an overall cohesion problem. It just didn't deserve "Best Picture".

That leaves The Shawshank Redemption. Perhaps I can no longer honestly appraise this film's quality and impact after almost 20 years of seeing it played on TV 400 times a week, but I sort of consider it a high-quality comfort film at this point. I guess, in retrospect, it might have been a more worthy choice for the award than Quiz Show among the nominees.

Looking through a list of the most critically-acclaimed films of 1994, I'm not even seeing any glaring omissions from the nominees list (although I have never seen the Three Colors trilogy). It just wasn't a very strong year overall.

Trevor

They always get it right. Just like any of us picking our best of the year. There never can or should be such a thing as a consensus "best" film.

CRM114

Having just watched Life is Beautiful the other night, Shakespeare in Love is the weakest movie of all five nominees in 1998.

RichC2

At least it got a proper nomination for Director, and was simply robbed of Actress, Editing, Soundtrack, Picture, and Screenplay.

CRM114

I miss David Lynch.

Mattflix

I've noticed that the Oscars tend to favor the more inspirational or positive movie over darker material. They'll pick something for their "the wonder of movies" montage each year, a movie that shows us supposedly the heights of what humanity is capable of, the power of the human spirit, etc. The "life is like a box of chocolates" line will appear year after year...

RichC2

I agree, this was especially true with the uplifting one-two punch of The Departed and No Country for Old Men

Mattflix

That's why I said they tend to do so. Look at this:

-Rocky beats Taxi Driver/Network/All the President's Men

-One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Next beat Barry Lyndon/Dog Day Afternoon/Nashville/Jaws

-Gump beats Pulp Fiction. Shawshank would've done the trick too.

-Chariots of Fire beats Raiders of the Lost Ark

-Titanic beat L.A. Confidential

-Something like Driving Miss Daisy gets Best Picture while Do The Right Thing is completely ignored. The feel-good everybody beats racism rule also applies to Crash.


I haven't yet seen Argo but it seems like a straight up movie without any pandering, so I'm excited to see that it won.