Winner: 1968 Oliver! - no
o Funny Girl - yes
o The Lion in Winter - yes. Wonderful actors, fantastic dialogue. Too stagy to take best picture, perhaps? It was adapted from a play and doesn’t really exploit the medium of film to its fullest.
o Rachel, Rachel - no, title doesn’t even ring a bell
o Romeo and Juliet - yes. Thought it was good when I saw it, but I have a sneaking suspension Shakespeare may deserve most of the credit.
Winner: 1969 Midnight Cowboy - a remarkable (platonic?) love story with the most unromantic partners. Although the X rating seems like a joke now, it’s still a provocative film. It’s peculiar to me that some people enjoy period films but find that “contemporary” films date badly. To me they’re the most interesting kind of period films, because they say something about how people really thought and felt in the period, rather than projecting contemporary attitudes backward.
o Anne of the Thousand Days - no
o Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid - yes; best outlaw buddy picture ever; definitely a worthy nominee
o Hello, Dolly! - no
o Z - no
Winner: 1970 Patton - yes; great performance by George C. Scott, but not sure what else the Academy saw in it
o Airport - no, but isn’t this film now considered a joke? Or is it just the sequels?
o Five Easy Pieces - no
o Love Story - yes; and this film has become a joke. Love does NOT mean never having to say you’re sorry.
o MASH - yes; Sutherland and Gould have great chemistry, Altman pulls off the overlapping dialog to good effect, but the misogyny is disconcerting and it all seems kind of pointless.
Winner: 1971 The French Connection - no
o A Clockwork Orange - yes; unforgettable images and a fantastic lead performance
o Fiddler on the Roof - yes; was this really an improvement on the stage show?
o The Last Picture Show - no
o Nicholas and Alexandra - no
Winner: 1972 The Godfather -
o Cabaret - no
o Deliverance - yes; very good film. Boorman was on top of his game here. Too bad it’s now known chiefly as the “squeal like a pig” movie.
o Sounder - no
o The Emigrants - no; this is another one that doesn’t even ring a bell.
Winner: 1973 The Sting - yes; Redford and Newman show that the first time wasn’t a fluke. Very clever writing, and nice use of ragtime, even if the period is wrong.
o American Graffiti - no
o The Exorcist - yes; very well-made horror movie. Unfortunately I saw this many years after its initial release, some of the special effects were pretty creak, the child-turned-monster thing had been done to death, and it was hard to see how it was once “the scariest movie ever.”
o A Touch of Class - no
o Cries and Whispers - no; another one I would swear I’d never heard of if I didn’t know it was an Oscar nominee.
Winner: 1974 The Godfather Part II - yes; well-made film but I don’t regard it as highly as the original; I may be in the minority on that, but it seems to be trying too hard to be a masterpiece.
o Chinatown - yes
o The Conversation - no
o Lenny - no
o The Towering Inferno - what is this doing here? Not only has this movie dated badly, I remember it being a joke the year it came out.
Winner: 1975 (48th) One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest - I think this marks the point where Jack Nicholson’s persona gets to big for the movies he’s in, but no one else seems to mind. Worth seeing just to spot the supporting actors you know from other things.
o Barry Lyndon - no
o Dog Day Afternoon - no
o Jaws - yes; in retrospect, maybe this should have won. Scheider, Shaw, and Dreyfuss are great; Spielberg does a great job of building suspense; movies set on or in water are notoriously difficult to make; and it had a huge effect on the way films are made and marketed. But I don’t think the Academy was ready to give its highest honor to a movie about a fish that eats people.
o Nashville - no
Winner: 1976 (49th) Rocky - no
o All the President’s Men - yes; vastly overrated
o Bound for Glory - another one that doesn’t ring a bell
o Network - great satirical look at TV news and entertainment that still has a lot to say.
o Taxi Driver - yes; one of De Niro’s great performances
Winner: 1977 (50th) Annie Hall - yes; probably had a lot more to say in 1977; interesting now mostly as a period piece.
o The Goodbye Girl - yes; I will never understand the love for this one. It is a trifle.
o Julia - yes; was terribly bored by it, but was probably too young to be seeing it.
o Star Wars - this would not have been a bad choice; yeah, the dialog leaves a bit to be desired and some of the acting is wooden, but Harrison Ford became a star based on this film, and rightly so. Visually, it forever changed our expectations of the space-battle subgenre of science fiction.
o The Turning Point - no
Winner: 1978 (51st) The Deer Hunter - no
o Coming Home - no
o Heaven Can Wait - no; another insignificant trifle of a movie.
o Midnight Express - yes, but I expect the version I saw was severely edited, because there didn’t seem to be much to it.
o An Unmarried Woman - no
Winner: 1979 (52nd) Kramer vs. Kramer - no
o Apocalypse Now - yes
o All That Jazz - yes
o Breaking Away - yes
o Norma Rae - no
Winner: 1980 Ordinary People - yes; good performances all-around. Made me think Mary Tyler Moore had a future as a serious actress. Oh, well.
o Coal Miner’s Daughter - no
o The Elephant Man - yes; If I ruled the Oscars, I would have picked this over O.P. At least as emotionally powerful and much more original in presentation.
o Raging Bull - yes; De Niro’s masterpiece, and incredible direction and cinematography. It’s rare for something to be so beautiful and so ugly at the same time.
o Tess - yes and no; saw it on TV and couldn’t make it through; I couldn’t connect with the main character at all.
Winner: 1981 (54th) Chariots of Fire - yes; what a snoozefest. And putting an electronic score to a period movie might have seemed like a good idea at the time, but it hasn’t held up.
o Atlantic City - yes, sort of; another one I tried to watch on TV and couldn’t get into at all.
o On Golden Pond - not a bad movie, but I think love for Henry Fonda and Katherine Hepburn got it more acclaim than it merited.
o Raiders of the Lost Ark - yes; even though it’s a popcorn flick, in retrospect this would have been a much better choice for the Oscar.
o Reds - no
Winner: 1982 (55th) Gandhi - no
o E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial - yes; it’s easy to be cynical about it, but it really was an excellent movie.
o Missing - no
o Tootsie - yes; Dustin Hoffman playing a notoriously difficult-to-work with actor would have been worth the price of admission, but the fact that his character’s drag alter-ego takes on a life of her own puts it over the top.
o The Verdict - no
Winner: 1983 (56th) Terms of Endearment - no
o The Big Chill - yes; I think this movie appealed to a very specific age group, and I’m not in it.
o The Dresser - no
o The Right Stuff - no
Winner: 1984 (57th) Amadeus - yes; beautiful to look at and listen to; two great performances; entertaining if historically inaccurate plot, so not a bad choice.
o The Killing Fields - no
o A Passage to India - no
o Places in the Heart - no
o A Soldier’s Story - yes; solid performances, important message, not much fun to watch.
Winner: 1985 Out of Africa - yes; I don’t CARE if you had a farm in Africa. STOP saying that! Perhaps the most boring winner on this list.
o The Color Purple - yes; great performances, a little sappy.
o Kiss of the Spider Woman - yes; interesting concept, but I think in the end the film is overwhelmed by it’s own cleverness.
o Prizzi’s Honor - no
o Witness - yes; my choice for the Oscar; probably Ford’s career best performance.
Winner: 1986 (59th) Platoon - yes; effective film, not a bad choice.
o Children of a Lesser God - yes; not understanding the love for this.
o Hannah and Her Sisters - yes; probably the best of Woody’s serious movies.
o The Mission - no.
o A Room with a View - yes; another boring, boring choice.
Winner: 1987 The Last Emperor - no.
o Broadcast News - yes, not a bad film, but the news has been satirized more effectively (see Network; heck, see the Mary Tyler Moore Show.)
o Fatal Attraction - no.
o Hope and Glory - yes; good, not great.
o Moonstruck - no
Winner: 1988 Rain Man - yes; vastly overrated, IMHO. Tom Cruise is Tom Cruise and Dustin Hoffman is a caricature.
o The Accidental Tourist - yes; not a bad film per se, but one of the year’s best? Must have been a weak year.
o Dangerous Liaisons - yes; would have been a better choice than Rain Man.
o Mississippi Burning - no.
o Working Girl - yes; see comment on Accidental Tourist.
Winner: 1989 Driving Miss Daisy - What’s not to love about Jessica Tandy and Morgan Freeman. I remember the fuss about the director not being nominated for this film, but really, it was Tandy and Freeman. Never understood the fuss about Dan Ackroyd, though.
o Born on the Fourth of July - no.
o Dead Poets’ Society - yes; I like Robin Williams. So sue me.
o Field of Dreams - yes; I like Kevin Costner, so sue me.
o My Left Foot - no.
Winner: 1990 Dances with Wolves - OK, this is where I stop liking Kevin Costner. I think giving this movie the Oscar was supposed to make up for stealing the Indians’ land, or something. The whole white-man-as-Indian thing was done better in Little Big Man, and without turning the white guy into a Messiah.
o Awakenings - yes; I still like Robin Williams. And De Niro.
o Ghost - yes; I’m not above sappy romance, but this one was pretty darn sappy. Nice use of Whoopi Golberg and Unchained Melody.
o The Godfather, Part III - yes; not as bad as some would have it; although thrusting Sofia Coppola into a role she was so ill-suited for might constitute a form of child abuse. Of course it suffers by comparison to its predecessors.
o Goodfellas
Winner: 1991 The Silence of the Lambs - exceptionally well-made horror-suspense film. Hopkins is only on screen for 17 minutes, yet dominates the picture. So much so that people tend to overlook a great performance by Jodie Foster.
o Beauty and the Beast - no
o Bugsy - yes; not much to this film outside of Beatty’s charisma.
o JFK - no
o The Prince of Tides - no
Winner: 1992 Unforgiven - no
o The Crying Game - yes; I think this is a very touching, at times charming film. Much is made of the “shocking twist” that probably everybody knows by now, but I think the film works even if you know it’s coming. (And it really should have been obvious to anyone paying attention.)
o A Few Good Men - no
o Howards End - I don’t know; these films kind of blur together for me.
o Scent of a Woman - yes; not a bad film, but looking back it’s hard to see what the fuss was about.
Winner: 1993 (66th) Schindler’s List - yes; I think people got the idea if they didn’t like this film it meant they liked Hitler. It was full of heavy-handed symbolism, flat and underdeveloped characters, and had nothing to say about anything that wasn’t obvious and hadn’t been said a million times before. And I don’t like Hitler.
o The Fugitive - yes;great fun; memorable performance by Tommy Lee Jones.
o In the Name of the Father - yes; I found this deeply moving and expected Daniel Day-Lewis to take home the gold.
o The Piano - yes; nearly unwatchable. I hated the main character, pitied her daughter and felt nothing for anyone else. Anna Paquin was the saving grace.
o The Remains of the Day - no
Winner: 1994 Forrest Gump - yes; way overrated and way overhated. Tom Hanks turned in a fine performance and the film had plenty of entertaining moments, but it was wayed down by too many improbable occurrences and an overdose of syrup.
o Four Weddings and a Funeral - no
o Pulp Fiction - yes; solid performances and a great screenplay. The intertwined, disjointed timeline is not just a gimmick in this film.
o Quiz Show - no
o The Shawshank Redemption - yes; not feeling the love that the rest of the world seems to.
Winner: 1995 Braveheart - yes; hugely overrated vanity project
o Apollo 13 - yes; not too impressed.
o Babe - yes; didn’t want to see it, didn’t want to like it, ended up loving it. There’s just enough medicine in it to make the sugar go down.
o Il Postino (The Postman) - yes; very touching at the time I saw it; I’ll be darned if I can remember what it was about now. I think there was a postman in it.
o Sense and Sensibility - no
Winner: 1996 The English Patient - yes; hated it.
o Fargo - yes; I loved this movie for it’s unusual setting, highly original protagonist, and Steve Buscemi.
o Jerry Maguire - yes; incredibly shallow movie about a guy who starts off incredibly shallow and learns… well, I’m not sure what.
o Secrets & Lies - no; another one that doesn’t ring a bell.
o Shine - yes; great performance by Geoffrey Rush; Lynn Redgrave was good too.
Winner: 1997 Titanic - yes; there were literally a thousand stories on that ship that would have been more interesting than the insipid, cliched romance between wet Jack and bitchy Rose. Seems like a horrible choice until you consider the competion. And the sinking of the ship was spectacular.
o As Good as It Gets - yes; never understood what all the fuss was about, but then again I’ve never worshipped at the Nicholson shrine.
o The Full Monty - yes; cute bit of fluff.
o Good Will Hunting - yes; blech.
o L.A. Confidential - yes; just see Chinatown instead.
Winner: 1998 Shakespeare in Love - yes; I wish people would just shut up about this. It was a brilliant movie. Strong performances, witty dialog, and an ingenious deconstruction/reconstruction of Shakespeare’s life and works. Even if you don’t think it was the best film of the year (and I do), the Academy certainly could and has done worse.
o Elizabeth - yes; nice to look at and Blanchett was superb, but not much else to it.
o Life Is Beautiful - no
o Saving Private Ryan - yes; vastly overrated, but disliking this movie means you hate America and World War II vets, I suppose. Once the stunning Normandy sequence is over, it’s a purely ordinary movie, and the framing device is just horrible (see also Titanic).
o The Thin Red Line - no, but I kind of feel bad for the year’s other war movie.
Winner: 1999 American Beauty - beautiful to look at, nice job by Kevin Spacey and some of the supporting cast. Puzzled by the “life is beautiful” ending. Was it meant to be purely ironic, or am I supposed to ignore the fact that two kids are about to go to prison for a long time for a crime they didn’t commit?
o The Cider House Rules - yes; blech.
o The Green Mile - no
o The Insider - no
o The Sixth Sense - yes; another one of those movies that’s supposedly all about the twist, but I like it just fine even knowing what’s coming. Bruce Willis really is a good actor as long as someone can wipe the smirk off his face, and the kid was phenomenal (although given his subsequent career, the credit may be due to the director).
Winner: 2000 Gladiator - OK, it’s a rip-off of Spartacus and/or some other sword and sandals movie I can’t think of the title of right now, but damned if I didn’t enjoy Crowe’s and Phoenix’s performances. And again, it was great to look at.
o Chocolat
o Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
o Erin Brockovich
o Traffic - brilliant film; engaging and easy to follow despite its complex structure; great performance by del Toro.
Winner: 2001 A Beautiful Mind - another excellent performance by Crowe, and a touching storyline. I’m OK with the biographical liberties.
o Gosford Park - yes, hated it. Drama? Comedy? Mystery? Whichever it was supposed to be, it failed.
o In the Bedroom - yes, OK little family drama, awfully bleak, not understanding the fuss.
o The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring - My choice for the statuette. As a stand-alone film I think this was the best of the trilogy, but I guess the academy wanted to see how the whole thing turned out.
o Moulin Rouge! - yes; I know this one inspires a lot of hate, but it would have been my choice simply for the visual ingenuity and the overall bravado. And the leads were fantastic.
Winner: 2002 Chicago - yes; gag. Renee Zellweger was terribly miscast. The fact that she declined to perform the nominated song at the ceremony says a lot. The whole business of the song-and-dance number taking place in people’s heads annoyed me. Moulin Rouge! proved you don’t need to apologize for being a musical.
o Gangs of New York - yes; I was kind of sad it wasn’t a better movie. Obviously a lot of care and hard work went into it.
o The Hours - no
o The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers - yes; my least favorite of the trilogy because of some nonsensical plot complications and missed opportunities.
o The Pianist - yes; a fine film. Brody deserved the acclaim that he got.
Winner: 2003 (76th) The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King - I think we all know this award was for the trilogy as a whole, so in that sense it’s well-deserved.
o Lost in Translation -
o Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World - yes; a very well-made but ultimately rather pointless exercise. What exactly was accomplished and what growth took place? I must have missed it.
o Mystic River - yes; God, I hated this movie. Horribly contrived story in which not one character seems to behave in a rational or believable manner.
o Seabiscuit - yes; a classic underdog story; good performances and lots of period charm
Winner: 2004 Million Dollar Baby - no
o The Aviator - no
o Finding Neverland - no
o Ray - no
o Sideways - no; not a good year for me and movies.
Winner: 2005 Crash - no
o Brokeback Mountain - no
o Capote - no
o Good Night, and Good Luck. -no
o Munich - no; another year where I needed to get out more.
Winner: 2006 The Departed - no
o Babel - no
o Letters from Iwo Jima - no
o Little Miss Sunshine - yes! Wonderfully quirky family comedy. Nice to see that even the feel-good ending was disturbingly different.
o The Queen - no
Winner: 2007 (80th) No Country for Old Men - no
o Atonement - no
o Juno - no
o Michael Clayton - no
o There Will Be Blood - no; I’ve got some serious renting to do.
Wow, I spent a LOT more time on that than I should have. Thanks a lot, ShibOleth!
Edited to “thank” the correct person.