My Own Private Oscars: Best Picture

Showing posts with label Best Picture. Show all posts

Best Picture, 2012

Awards presented February 24, 2013

The nominees were ...

Amour
Argo
Beasts of the Southern Wild
Django Unchained
Les Misérables
Life of Pi
Lincoln
Silver Linings Playbook
Zero Dark Thirty

And the Oscar went to ...
Argo.

But it's much too soon to have any kind of hindsight on films released and awards presented so recently. I'll update this entry when I feel that enough time has passed. There are many things to be dealt with: the snub to Ben Affleck in the directing category, the surprising re-emergence of the Spielberg Curse, and the omission from the nominees of such potential contenders as Brave, Cloud Atlas, The Dark Knight Rises, The Master, Moonrise Kingdom, and The Sessions.

Best Picture, 2011

Awards presented February 26, 2012

The nominees were ...

... when they should have been ...

And the Oscar went to ...
The Artist. It's a perfectly lovely movie, with a dazzling performance by Jean Dujardin and equally dazzling direction from Michel Hazanavicius, who also wrote the screenplay. They also took home Oscars in their respective categories. The only thing that keeps me from agreeing with the Academy is that I think the movie is too clever by half. Singin' in the Rain did the whole silents-to-sound thing sixty years earlier and remains fresh. (The conclusion of The Artist, the dance number by Dujardin and Bérénice Bejo, seems almost an acknowledgement of this movie's debt.)

... when it should have gone to ...

The Descendants

George Clooney grows as an actor every year, and The Descendants finds him at the peak of his art. It may be because the screenplay by Alexander Payne, Nat Faxon, and Jim Rash, which deservedly won the Oscar, gives him so much to do -- comedy and pathos. Payne was also nominated as director, as was film editor Kevin Tent. If Jean Dujardin hadn't been such a powerhouse of charm, Clooney would probably have won. Everything about The Descendants rings true: It jerks tears at the right places, but doesn't leave me feeling sodden and manipulated the way a film like Terms of Endearment, for example, does.

Best Picture, 2010

Awards presented February 27, 2011

The nominees were ...

... when they should have been ...

And the Oscar went to ...

The King's Speech. Lovely acting from Colin Firth (who won the Oscar) and from the supporting player nominees Helena Bonham Carter and Geoffrey Rush. But Tom Hooper, who won as best director, cut his teeth on TV costume dramas like "John Adams," "Elizabeth I," and "Daniel Deronda," and it shows: The movie has a small-screen feel to it. At 74, David Seidler became the oldest winner for screenplay in Oscar history, though his record was broken the following year when Woody Allen won for Midnight in Paris.

... when it should have gone to ...

The Social Network

A small miracle: a movie about business that isn't boring, and a movie about computer geeks that isn't cluttered with stereotypes. How the producers, Scott Rudin et al., brought it off is by hiring a top-notch writer, Aaron Sorkin (who is at his best when he isn't writing about politicians) and a terrific young cast: starting with Jesse Eisenberg as Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, and continuing with Rooney Mara, Andrew Garfield, Rashida Jones, Justin Timberlake, and as both Winkelvii, Armie Hammer ("I'm 6'5", 220, and there's two of me"). And then get David Fincher to direct it. The Academy seemed to prefer 20th century British history to contemporary American history, and showered its awards on The King's Speech. The Social Network won for score (Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross), film editing, and Sorkin's screenplay, and nominees included Eisenberg, Fincher, Jeff Cronenweth for cinematography, and the sound mixers.

Best Picture, 2009

Awards presented March 7, 2010

The nominees were ...

Avatar
The Blind Side
District 9
An Education
The Hurt Locker
Inglourious Basterds
Precious, Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire
A Serious Man
Up
Up in the Air

... when they should have been ...

And the Oscar went to ...

The Hurt Locker

All the chatter after Kathryn Bigelow's win as director and producer of The Hurt Locker was about how her film, which had the lowest box office grosses of any recent best picture winner, aced out the biggest film of the year, Avatar, which just happened to have been created by her ex-husband. Wags joked that Bigelow had sewed up the Academy's ex-wives vote. (James Cameron, of course, whom Titanic left with more money than God, cried all the way to the bank.) But this is an exceptional film and Bigelow is an exceptional director, particularly of action movies. The film also won for Mark Boal's screenplay, in both sound categories, and for film editing. Jeremy Renner was nominated and lost, but it's a tribute to his performance that he's the one in the movie we remember, even though his co-stars included Guy Pearce, Ralph Fiennes, and David Morse. The Hurt Locker is also testimony to the fact that the movies have been coming to terms with the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan much faster than they did to the war in Vietnam. On the other hand, the fact that Bigelow is the first woman, and still so far the only one, to win the best director Oscar doesn't speak particularly well about Hollywood.

Best Picture, 2008

Awards presented February 22, 2009

The nominees were ...

... when they should have been ...

And the Oscar went to ...
Slumdog Millionaire. Starting in August, it made the rounds of film festivals, had an Oscar-qualifying limited release in November, and then went into wide release in January, just as the voters were filling out their Oscar ballots. Did the producers play some tricks to get attention? If so, it worked. Despite no acting nominations, it racked up an impressive eight Oscars: picture, director (Danny Boyle), screenplay (Simon Beaufoy), cinematography (Anthony Dod Mantle), editing, sound mixing, score, and even best song ("Jai Ho"). But looked at today, it seems like just a well-made crowd-pleaser, more dependent on its come-from-behind winner story than on any enduring strengths. It's Rocky for quiz-show geeks.

... when it should have gone to ...

In Bruges

No, I'm serious. Why can't the best picture Oscar go to a small, serio-comic movie that's beautifully cast (Colin Farrell, Brendan Gleeson and Ralph Fiennes all deserved nominations), and doesn't overreach, the way so many Oscar winners do? I thought of giving my nod to Milk, which is a very good movie, but which depends so heavily on Sean Penn's mimicry of Harvey Milk and on its earnestness in delivering a message. Or The Dark Knight, which transcended the superhero movie with its mythic overtones and Heath Ledger's terrific performance. WALL-E is brilliant, but only in its first half, and Frost/Nixon again depends on actors turning into mimics. So when it comes right down to it, I'd rather watch In Bruges unravel in its own quirky way again. It got only one Oscar nomination, for writer-director Martin McDonagh's screenplay. It deserved much more.

Best Picture, 2007

Awards presented February 24, 2008

The nominees were ...

... when they should have been ...

And the Oscar went to ...

No Country for Old Men

Once again the Coen brothers demonstrate their exceptional sense of place, using the bleak landscape of south Texas the way they did the bleak landscape of Minnesota and North Dakota in Fargo, as a stage for human drama. Which means that mixed in with the serious stuff there's a good deal of black humor, too. It deservedly won the best picture Oscar, as well as the directing and writing awards for the brothers, and the supporting actor Oscar for Javier Bardem's Anton Chigurh, a villain as implacable as the Terminator, but with a worse haircut.

Best Picture, 2006

Awards presented February 25, 2007

The nominees were...

... when they should have been ...

And the Oscar went to ...
The Departed. Martin Scorsese finally got his directing Oscar for this film -- how many years too late? It's a solid, gritty cops-and-mobsters movie, but it seems overloaded with actors: Jack Nicholson (pulling out all the stops), Leonardo DiCaprio, Matt Damon, Mark Wahlberg, Martin Sheen, Vera Farmiga, Alec Baldwin, and so on.They're all good, but I feel like I've seen the movie before. I keep getting it mixed up with Mystic River (a better movie with a similar setting).

... when it should have gone to ...

The Lives of Others

A terrifically involving, chilling story about East German surveillance of its citizenry, which won the foreign language film Oscar. It was writer-director Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck's first feature, and should have earned him nominations in those two categories. Ulrich Mühe's portrayal of the Stasi snoop who begins to develop a capacity for empathy also deserved a nomination. If anything, the film has only grown more disturbing as revelations about contemporary American electronic surveillance appear.

Best Picture, 2005

Awards presented March 5, 2006

The nominees were ...

... when they should have been ...

And the Oscar went to ...
Crash. Perhaps the most vilified Oscar winner of recent years, though it's really not so bad a film as all that. Paul Haggis's Oscar-winning screenplay deftly handles interrelated stories all centering on race relations in Los Angeles, and Haggis the director manipulates a large ensemble cast that includes Sandra Bullock, Don Cheadle, Matt Dillon, Terrance Howard, Thandie Newton, and others. (Only Dillon received an acting nomination.) But its win came as a surprise because there had been a clear front-runner.

... when it should have gone to ...

Brokeback Mountain

When on Oscar night Ang Lee received the directing Oscar and Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana were honored for their screenplay, it seemed like a sure thing that Brokeback Mountain would take the best picture Oscar. It had been critically praised: The Rotten Tomatoes Web site, which tallies critical response to movies, records an 87 percent favorable rating, to Crash's 75 percent. But when the unexpected happened, Oscar pundits immediately went to work: The Academy members, they surmised, were squeamish about Brokeback's treatment of a gay relationship, and choosing between socio-politically controversial films, decided it would be safer to honor one about race over one about homosexuality. I'm not convinced that it's true. And even though I'm picking it as my should-have-won, I'm conflicted. This blog is about hindsight, and I think it's entirely possible that Brokeback Mountain will look as dated in the future as, say, Gentleman's Agreement, with its finicky handling of anti-Semitism, does today. Much of the fuss about this movie centers on the spectacle of two hot young actors, Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal, in passionate liplock. But we didn't really need this movie to tell us, as Willie Nelson puts it, that cowboys are frequently, secretly fond of each other. Just look at this picture, for example, or the scene in Red River in which Montgomery Clift and John Ireland compare ~~dicks~~ guns. What Brokeback Mountain really has going for it is the terrific performances of Ledger, Gyllenhaal, and Michelle Williams, who were all nominated, as well as Anne Hathaway, who wasn't but should have been.

Best Picture, 2004

Awards presented February 27, 2005

The nominees were ...

... when they should have been ...

And the Oscar went to ...

Million Dollar Baby

Clint Eastwood's emergence as a major auteur in late mid-life is one of the great unforeseens of movie history, once as unlikely as if, say, Taylor Lautner were to turn out years from now to be an Oscar-winning director. Million Dollar Baby is, to my mind, his best film, with stunning performances by not only the Oscar winners Hilary Swank and Morgan Freeman, but also Eastwood himself, who received an acting nomination in addition to his producing and directing wins. The movie stands out from the year's other nominees for the simplicity and integrity of its storytelling -- the screenplay, by Paul Haggis, was nominated but lost to Alexander Payne and Jim Taylor's over-quirky Sideways.

Best Picture, 2003

Awards presented February 29, 2004

The nominees were ...

... when they should have been ...

And the Oscar went to ...

The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King

Call me a geek, call me a fanboy, whatever, but I still rank this trilogy as one of the great moviegoing experiences of my life, and the third film as the capstone -- in fact, it was one of the last movies that impelled me to go to the theater instead of patiently waiting out the video release. I even love all eight or ten of the movie's endings. It got all the Oscars it deserved, eleven of them, tying Ben-Hur and Titanic for the record, but setting a record of its own by winning in every category for which it was nominated. (And by actually being a good movie.) I would have preferred a few more nominations, supporting actors for Sean Astin as Sam and John Noble as the craven Denethor, and some kind of special nod for Andy Serkis's motion-capture and voice-over work as Gollum. But let's not get greedy.

Best Picture, 2002

Awards presented March 23, 2003

The nominees were ...

... when they should have been ...

And the Oscar went to ...
Chicago. Who would have thought we'd ever see a good movie musical again? Unfortunately, Chicago didn't initiate a new golden age for them -- director Rob Marshall came seriously a-cropper with his next attempt, Nine. (He's now working on another, Stephen Sondheim's Into the Woods, with Anna Kendrick, Johnny Depp, Chris Pine, and Meryl Streep. We shall see.)

... when it should have gone to ...

Spirited Away

The sublimity of Hayao Miyazaki's unleashed imagination takes my breath away. It hardly matters that I can't really tell you what his film is about, or even describe what happens in it without getting hopelessly confused. It just seems to me that this is what movies, especially animated ones, were created for: to take you somewhere you've never been and could never get to on your own. Spirited Away did win the best animated feature Oscar, but there's no reason why it shouldn't have taken best picture anyway.

Best Picture, 2001

Awards presented March 24, 2002

The nominees were ...

... when they should have been ...

And the Oscar went to ...
A Beautiful Mind. It's cleverly constructed by screenwriter Akiva Goldsman, who won the Oscar. Moreover, Russell Crowe's genuine acting here overshadows the work he did the previous year that won him an Oscar. But there's too much gloss on this biopic of John Nash, the mathematician whose schizophrenia undermined his achievements. It's reminiscent of those Warner Bros. biopics of the '30s that starred Paul Muni and reduced the complex lives of men like Emile Zola and Louis Pasteur to melodrama.

... when it should have gone to ...

The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring

I think the Academy knew that there were two more movies coming in the trilogy and figured, Why not just wait and dump all the Oscars on the third film? Which it did, of course. So it handed out awards for Andrew Lesnie's cinematography, Howard Shore's score, and for makeup and special effects. But let's face it: The Fellowship of the Ring was an eye-opener for those who thought J.R.R. Tolkien's saga unfilmable, or anyway doubted that it could be brought to the screen as excitingly as Peter Jackson did. I think it deserved best picture just for that surprise alone.

Best Picture, 2000

Awards presented March 25, 2001

The nominees were ...

... when they should have been ...

And the Oscar went to ...
Gladiator. A throwback to the sin, sex, swords, and sandals epics of Cecil B. DeMille, and to such '50s blockbusters as Quo Vadis and Ben-Hur, but without their overlay of Christian piety. Gladiator, like the TV series it inspired, "Rome" and "Spartacus: Blood and Sand" (and its three sequels), tries to replace religiosity with humanistic values like brotherhood and liberty. But we really came for the sin, sex, and swords (some of us perhaps for the sandals) and the over-the-top violence. It won Russell Crowe the Oscar he deserved for better movies, and also received awards for sound, costumes, and special effects.

... when it should have gone to ...

Wonder Boys

It netted only one Oscar, for Bob Dylan's song, "Things Have Changed," and only two nominations, for Dede Allen's editing and for Steve Kloves's screenplay, adapted from the Michael Chabon novel. Many thought Michael Douglas would be nominated for best actor, as he should have been. While they were at it, they might have given acting nominations to Robert Downey Jr. and Frances McDormand, too. Worst of all, director Curtis Hanson was overlooked after keeping on track this terrifically off-beat comic look at academia, a subject too easy for satire.

Best Picture, 1999

Awards presented March 26, 2000

The nominees were ...

... when they should have been ...

And the Oscar went to ...
American Beauty. It's not surprising that, confronted with the vivid and provocative work of such writer and director newcomers as Spike Jonze, Charlie Kaufman, Alexander Payne, Paul Thomas Anderson, and David O. Russell, the Academy should have wound up nominating such more-or-less conventional films as The Cider House Rules, The Green Mile, and The Insider, and the crowd-pleasing shocker The Sixth Sense, but that it should give the Oscar to perhaps the most unconventional of the nominees, American Beauty, was a hopeful sign. (One not fulfilled by the Academy's choices in years to come, however.) We can only speculate what Louis B. Mayer or Darryl F. Zanuck would have made of a film that spends a long time watching a plastic bag swirl in the breeze. The film also took awards for Kevin Spacey as best actor, Sam Mendes's debut as a film director, Alan Ball's screenplay, and Conrad L. Hall's cinematography. Even at the time, however, some critics found the film's tone a bit too acrid, and its treatment of women grating, an opinion that has become more widespread as time passes.

... when it should have gone to ...

Magnolia

An extraordinary tapestry of interconnecting stories, Magnolia teased and baffled some audiences, especially when frogs rained from the sky at the end of the film. But it gave a brilliant ensemble of actors some juicy roles to play, including Tom Cruise in what may be his best performance: as a narcissistic men's self-help guru. It earned Cruise a nomination, but really, the entire cast is working at peak form, including Julianne Moore, William H. Macy, John C. Reilly, Philip Baker Hall, Philip Seymour Hoffman, and, in his last screen apperances, Jason Robards. Oscar nominations also went to Aimee Mann for her song, "Save Me," and to Paul Thomas Anderson for his screenplay. Anderson deserved one for directing, too.

Best Picture, 1998

Awards presented March 21, 1999

The nominees were ...

... when they should have been ...

And the Oscar went to ...
Shakespeare in Love. I love this movie. And ordinarily I would second the Academy's endorsement of a charming romance, with a lovely script (Marc Norman and Tom Stoppard, who won) and fine performances (Joseph Fiennes, who should have been nominated, Gwyneth Paltrow and Judi Dench, who were and won). But it has developed a reputation as one of the Academy's least-deserving winners because there was a clear favorite among moviegoers.

... when it should have gone to ...

Saving Private Ryan

Was Steven Spielberg shafted again? He did win his second best-director Oscar, and there's no doubt in my mind that he deserved it. I'd go so far as to say that there should have been riots if he had been denied it. But this extraordinary movie, which gave one a visceral sense of what it was like to go into combat, should have been named best picture. It also won for Janusz Kaminski's cinematography and for Michael Kahn's editing, as well as for sound and sound effects editing. Robert Rodat's screenplay lost (to Shakespeare in Love), perhaps because of the artificiality of its frame story, in which the elderly Ryan returns to the cemetery in Normandy, an over-sentimental and rather preachy section, in glaring contrast to shattering reality of the wartime scenes. But the rest of Saving Private Ryan does so many things so memorably that it's easy to forgive its lapses.

Best Picture, 1997

Awards presented March 23, 1998

The nominees were ...

... when they should have been ...

And the Oscar went to ...
Titanic. If you ask them, lots of people today will deny that they ever liked James Cameron's blockbuster. Which makes you wonder how it managed to become the first movie to gross a billion dollars, to set a record of fifteen consecutive weeks as the No. 1 film on the box-office charts, and to tie Ben-Hur's record of eleven Oscars. The truth is, it was a must-see spectacle with special effects never witnessed before. The other truth is: The Academy follows the money, unless it is given strong reason not to. In this case, there was no strong reason -- like an equally compelling film with a comparable box-office but a more intelligently written screenplay than Cameron's (which didn't merit a nomination) -- not to give the store away to Titanic. But this is a blog about hindsight, and hindsight has not been kind to the movie.

... when it should have gone to ...

L.A. Confidential

Which did have an intelligently written screenplay, by Brian Helgeland and the film's director, Curtis Hanson, and it won the Oscar. It also had a pretty terrific cast, including Russell Crowe, Guy Pearce, Kevin Spacey, and James Cromwell, as well as Kim Basinger, who won the supporting actress Oscar that many expected to go to Titanic's Gloria Stuart. But L.A. Confidential is just a sharp-edged movie about cops and corruption in the 1950s, with no romantic self-sacrifice, and nobody left the theater raving about its special effects -- if it had any.

Best Picture, 1996

Awards presented March 24, 1997

The nominees were ...

... when they should have been ...

And the Oscar went to ...
The English Patient. I'm torn. I think this is a magnificent picture, with exceptional performances beautifully directed by Anthony Minghella, who won, and was nominated for his screenplay. Juliette Binoche was a surprise winner for supporting actress (the smart money had been on a sentimental win for Lauren Bacall in The Mirror Has Two Faces), and Oscars went to the movie's art direction, John Seale's cinematography, Ann Roth's costumes, Walter Murch's editing (he also shared in the Oscar for sound), and Gabriel Yared's score. And I won't argue with any of those wins. But there was another picture that year which I love more.

... when it should have gone to ...

Fargo

Has there ever been a film more skilled at mythologizing an unexplored corner of America than Fargo? The Coen brothers, Joel and Ethan, manage to take an ice-bound scrap of Minnesota and populate it with characters both loopy and credible, from the plucky Marge Gunderson (Frances McDormand) to the weaselly Jerry Lundegard (William H. Macy) to the murderous odd couple of killers played by Steve Buscemi and Pete Stormare. Plus an array of locals with strange accents and attitudes. Oscars went to McDormand as actress and to the Coens for their screenplay, with nominations to Macy, Roger Deakins for cinematography, Joel for directing, Ethan for producing, and "Roderick Jaynes" (the Coens' pseudonym) for editing. It was the brothers' first big Oscar success, and remains perhaps their most completely wonderful movie.

Best Picture, 1995

Awards presented March 25, 1996

The nominees were ...

... when they should have been ...

And the Oscar went to ...

Braveheart. Before Mel Gibson fouled his own nest, he had real potential as a filmmaker. Certainly the Academy thought so, giving him Oscars for producing and directing this film. It has a good deal of the enjoyable cockiness he brought to his performances, but also the homophobia and cruelty that would surface in his later years. It will be a long time before anyone can view it again without thinking of the mess he made of his career.

... when it should have gone to ...

Toy Story

Why was Babe given a best picture nomination and Toy Story wasn't? Some think it may be because the Academy's largest bloc of members is the actors' branch, and Babe actually employed live actors whereas those in Toy Story are only voice-overs. This first major Pixar hit, with its realistic computer-generated images, looked like a step in making flesh-and-blood actors obsolete. Perhaps in response, recognizing that, given the skill displayed by the Pixar animators, computer animation was only going to get better and more popular, the Academy in 2001 created a separate competitive award for best animated feature. But what really distinguished Toy Story was the deep insight of its story into childhood, and the skill of its "only voice-over" actors: Tom Hanks, Tim Allen, and others. The film wound up with a special award for John Lasseter, but its only nomination was for the seven writers, including Lasseter and Joss Whedon, who collaborated on its screenplay.

Best Picture, 1994

Awards presented March 27, 1995

The nominees were ...

... when they should have been ...

And the Oscar went to ...

Forrest Gump. One of the criteria I use for this blog is, if someone were to ask me to go see a certain movie right this minute, whether I would say, "Sure!" or "No, I don't think so." Films that get the first response generally wind up in my "should have been" nominees list, if there's room. Those that get the second response ... well, get the shaft. So, while I admit that I kind of enjoyed seeing Forrest Gump the first time around, admiring Tom Hanks's skill at creating a character and the movie's technical wizardry, I don't think I could ever sit through it again.

... when it should have gone to ...

Pulp Fiction

Of course, there are people who feel about Pulp Fiction the way I feel about Forrest Gump. When Quentin Tarantino's audacious, bloody, hilarious reworking of film noir material won the top prize at Cannes, there were boos mixed with the cheers. And I suspect it was just too out-of-the-mainstream for the Academy, though they had to give it the one Oscar it won: for Tarantino's screenplay. It's often said that Tarantino is too much in love with movies, though that's a criticism that applies to almost all of our major filmmakers today -- certainly to Martin Scorsese and Steven Spielberg, and maybe to the Coen brothers, Paul Thomas Anderson, and others as well. But Tarantino, whether he knows it or not, has a strong kinship to literature as well, particularly to Dickens. His quirky characters and narrative surprises are certainly Dickensian, if one remembers the Dickens who was fascinated with the criminal underworld of his day, and whose moments of horror often spill over into grotesque comedy.

Best Picture, 1993

Awards presented March 21, 1994

The nominees were ...

... when they should have been ...

And the Oscar went to ...

Schindler's List

Steven Spielberg had (and after last year's near blackout for his Lincoln at the awards still seems to have) a curiously troubled relationship with the Academy. No filmmaker of the latter half of the 20th century had a surer command of the medium of motion pictures than Spielberg, and yet he was continually passed over for Academy Awards. E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial was one of the most popular and successful movies of all time, and yet he lost the directing and best picture Oscars to Richard Attenborough and the now little-honored Gandhi. Jaws was a major hit, and helped redefine popular movie entertainment, yet Spielberg was passed over for a directing nomination. The Color Purple received eleven nominations, but none for Spielberg as director, and then proceeded to lose in every category, setting a record for losses tied only by The Turning Point. And so on. But Schindler's List is a film of astonishing power that despite scenes of harrowing brutality doesn't leave its audience brutalized. It had a virtual lock on the best picture and director Oscars, and for once Spielberg was not disappointed. There are those that think it is marred by a few missteps: The decision to allow a little girl's red coat to appear in color amid the otherwise black-and-white filming of the destruction of the Krakow ghetto ruins the powerful documentary effect of the staging for some, and the ending seems to some needlessly didactic to the point of sentimentality. There are hard-liners who believe any depiction of the Holocaust in a popular medium like the movies to be inadequate to the point of vulgarity. But of all of Spielberg's films, it still seems like the one most likely to endure as a cinema classic.