Re: The Academy Awards Best Picture Checklist & Discussion Thread
 

I really need to sit down and watch Barry Lyndon. I have never seen it.

Re: The Academy Awards Best Picture Checklist & Discussion Thread
 

^If you find Act I to be a bit slow, Act II will bail you out BIG TIME.

Re: The Academy Awards Best Picture Checklist & Discussion Thread
 

The car chase sequence with Barry hanging out of the helicopter is pretty badass!

Re: The Academy Awards Best Picture Checklist & Discussion Thread
 

Well, that tracks since I learned recently from an important public figure that the Continental Army took over the airports during the Revolutionary War.

Re: The Academy Awards Best Picture Checklist & Discussion Thread
 

Lame.

Hey, Academy!

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Re: The Academy Awards Best Picture Checklist & Discussion Thread
 

The only BP winners from the last 20 years I revisit are Oppenheimer and Spotlight.

Re: The Academy Awards Best Picture Checklist & Discussion Thread
 

I decided to see all the ones I'd missed a few years ago, I was only missing 10 or so anyway.

Of those, I remember hating Going My Way. Most of the others I hadn't seen were just ok. Most recent one I hadn't seen was Green Book which I think was the most recent winner then, it wasn't great but it wasn't Driving Miss Daisy levels of bad at least.

I've kept up since. I usually see most of the nominees, but a lot of times there is 1 or 2 I just have 0 interest in (like Emilia Perez last year), or it's not available when I want to see it (I'm Still Here last year, that one I still plan to watch sometime).

Re: The Academy Awards Best Picture Checklist & Discussion Thread
 

The only ones of the last 20 years I won't revisit, are CODA, Nomadland, The Shape of Water, The Artist and probably Slumdog Millionaire. All the other winners I liked to various degrees. Nomadland is the only one I consider a waste of my time. It had a great performance by Frances McDormand but as a movie it was not only the worst of the nominees, but just a terrible movie.

Re: The Academy Awards Best Picture Checklist & Discussion Thread
 

The only Best Picture winners I've seen more than once since 1980 are, in reverse chronological order, BRAVEHEART, UNFORGIVEN, THE LAST EMPEROR and PLATOON.

Re: The Academy Awards Best Picture Checklist & Discussion Thread
 

Furthermore if you don’t LOVE it the first time. Revisit it again within a year and that will probably change. If it doesn’t? Revisit it again. The more times I watch it, the better it gets.

Re: The Academy Awards Best Picture Checklist & Discussion Thread
 

Oddly enough, there's only one year I've seen all the BP nominees: 2015. It's even harder now, with the 8-10 noms, but that held true for even when it was limited to five. I usually see four out of the five, the one I miss is the "stuffy British film". That's an unfair statement, as I might actually like the films if I watched them, they just don't appeal to me on the surface. But it's all The English Queen's Speech Atonement to me.

I'm just gonna list the 21st century BP winners I haven't seen:

Oppenheimer
CODA
The King's Speech
Return of the King
A Beautiful Mind

Re: The Academy Awards Best Picture Checklist & Discussion Thread
 

Didn't care much for the winner but, after 1975, this was another satisfying year of nominated films (See post #14 on which one I have to rule out)

Re: The Academy Awards Best Picture Checklist & Discussion Thread
 

So ones that I haven't seen are:
You can see around 1990 I hit my "arthouse" movie phase and felt I needed to watch all Best Picture winners (if not all the nominees). Until Green Book :lol:. Now I think I'm over watching movies to "better myself". If it doesn't look like something I'll enjoy, I'll pass. Too many other things to watch. Around the World in Eighty Days and The Greatest Show on Earth do sound like things I'd enjoy though. Just never got around to it.

Re: The Academy Awards Best Picture Checklist & Discussion Thread
 

The only BP winners that I still watch are Casablanca, Gone With The Wind, Godfather and Godfather II, Silence Of The Lambs, Unforgiven. LOTR, Rocky and One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest.

Since Return Of The King won BP I have only seen 14 of the BP nominees and I only liked 5 of those.

Re: The Academy Awards Best Picture Checklist & Discussion Thread
 

I marked Parasite off my to-watch list today. I thought it was pretty good.

.

I’m about halfway through The Best Years of Our Lives. It’s a tad melodramatic but I’m enjoying it so far.

Re: The Academy Awards Best Picture Checklist & Discussion Thread
 

Now that October is over, I plan to start chipping away at this list marking first time watches or rewatching ones I do not remember very well to properly rate them.

Here is an awesome list of every Best Picture Nominee from 1929-2025 on Letterboxd, if you have it. It is a great way to mark off movies as you go and also see some cool stats. It appears the list maker updates it every year as well.

‎Oscars - Every Best Picture Nominees (1929-2025), a list of films by André Nogueira • Letterboxd

So last night I decided to tackle the much maligned Out Of Africa, the Best Picture winner of 1985. I thought I had seen it before, but I remembered nothing about it, so I marked it as a first-time watch. But this way I could get my John Barry fix as well as see some of the late, great Robert Redford.

Could this movie even be made today? The animals would be CG. The backgrounds would be green screen. The music would not be thematic. There would be entire back stories on every major character. And so on.

This movie is majestic, romantic, dramatic, wonderfully acted and artfully made. I think you need to have a few years on you to fully appreciate this movie, as I would not have likely appreciated this as much in my teens or even 20s.

I have always loved the score because I am a massive John Barry fan, but the other parts of the picture are as well made as the music.

Disclaimer: I hate overlong movies.

I was never bored during this picture. I was captivated the entire time by either the story, the acting, the production design, the landscapes, the camera shots, the music or a mix of any at every moment.

Just a wonderful movie that I wish I had seen before now, but I am not sure I would have appreciated it as much.

Simply excellent.

Re: The Academy Awards Best Picture Checklist & Discussion Thread
 

Weren't a lot of the backgrounds green-screened already? I saw this a couple years ago, and was shocked by how obvious the new transfer made the green screen shots. Maybe it was just a few, but I recall this starting right at the beginning of the movie which took some of the air out of it's sense of wonder.

Re: The Academy Awards Best Picture Checklist & Discussion Thread
 

Didn't look like it to me. Only thing that looked bad was the projection when it showed the Redford and Streep in the plane.

Re: The Academy Awards Best Picture Checklist & Discussion Thread
 

It's remarkable how unremarkable that film is. Completely forgettable. Barely mentioned in Redford tribute articles. Faded from memory for the most part -- except for how Universal keeps re-releasing it.
Kind of a weird Oscar year. I loved Prizzi's Honor, but that is even more forgotten. Kiss of the Spider Woman is rarely seen or thought about.
The Color Purple is now pretty beloved, and like Kiss of the Spider Woman, has been made into a Broadway musical, and then filmed as a movie musical as well. At the time, it seemed like Spielberg's Oscar-ploy film. Now it's weird to see a film so much about the Black experience being made by a white man.

Witness wasn't a classic sort of BP contender, but it might be the most enduring of the nominees.

And while it wasn't on any BP radars, Back to the Future is now far more beloved and revered than any of those nominees.

Re: The Academy Awards Best Picture Checklist & Discussion Thread
 

Well, I think you could easily do that for basically every year the Academy Awards has been around.

I know people love to shit on Out Of Africa but I found it to be a gorgeous, romantic movie with great performances from the entire cast and with excellent score. Granted, I just watched it last night, so it is fresh in my mind. And I can totally see where it may not be everyone's cup of tea. Would it be my Best Picture winner from 1985? No. But I can at least understand why it won.

I haven't seen The Color Purple in forever, but I remember it being pretty good. Witness was pretty unremarkable other than having Harrison Ford not playing an action star. I know nothing of Kiss Of The Spider Woman or Prizzi's Honor but I plan to revisit all of these eventually to compare.

Out Of Africa felt pretty epic in scope. The 4K transfer on my 100" screen looked beautiful and I can see why many probably opted for it. It is currently streaming on Peacock in 4K by the way.

I personally would have nominated The Company Of Wolves, The Emerald Forest, The Return Of The Living Dead, Fright Night, Pale Rider, Real Genius, Silverado, Cocoon, To Live And Die In L.A., The Breakfast Club, Back To The Future, and Blood Simple (made in 84 but came out in 85). But in a perfect world, Just One Of The Guys would have won. People talk about that movie now more than Out Of Africa. :lol:

But if you are a hopeless romantic, Out Of Africa is not a bad way to spend an evening, in my humble opinion.

Brazil came out that year as well and some claim it is the best movie ever made.

Re: The Academy Awards Best Picture Checklist & Discussion Thread
 

Man that was a run of BP winners where every one "felt" like a Best Picture. Ordinary People, Terms of Endearment and Rain Man were at least smaller in scope, but the others like Gandhi, Amadeus, Out of Africa, Platoon, The Last Emperor (and then Dances With Wolves) all have a similar "THIS IS A BIG AND IMPORTANT FILM" vibes to them.

Re: The Academy Awards Best Picture Checklist & Discussion Thread
 

TAR [2022] - Well, if you can't say something nice, say nothing at all, isn't that what you are told?




The Sting [1973] - I am not typically a fan of stories where every moving part has to work perfectly and then... everything works out perfectly.

But this movie is fun enough with a great score, some good but hammy acting, and fairly paced, even at a little over 2 hours long. The sets are a little too obvious at times and those, along with the acting, makes you feel like you are watching a Broadway play more than a feature.

Newman is excellent as always. Redford and Newman don't spend too much time together, but when they do, they still have great chemistry. This is mainly Redford's picture and even though he does a fine job, I feel he is too old for the role he is playing.

Still a good movie despite its flaws.

The best scene is Newman's poker scene, in my opinion.

My checklist:

Re: The Academy Awards Best Picture Checklist & Discussion Thread
 

Just to be clear, you're suggesting that the name of this movie should in fact be "TARD"? As in "retard"? Do I have that right?

Re: The Academy Awards Best Picture Checklist & Discussion Thread
 

It was a joke. Jesus fucking Christ.

Re: The Academy Awards Best Picture Checklist & Discussion Thread
 

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