Well, which of the following nominees would you have picked? (not that I’ve even seen the first 2. I’m just curious because I thought it was brilliantly done).
Gosford Park (2001)
In the Bedroom (2001)
Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, The (2001)
Moulin Rouge! (2001)
And on the subject of A beautiful Mind, I have to wonder what Denzel did with Training Day (which i also haven’t seen) to steal the best actor award because I truly found Crowe’s performance to be one of the most masterfully executed performances I’ve ever seen in any movie by anyone, and for such an incredibly complex role as well.
Well, the worst “best picture” in my experience was The English Patient.
The worst injustices in the recent past that come to mind:
Shakespeare in Love winning over the far superior Saving Private Ryan
A Beautiful Mind winning over Lord of the Rings.
You know that “somebody’s law” that says all internet discussions will eventually wind up with somebody being called a Nazi?
There should be a corollary: any mention of undeserving Academy Award winners will, within 30 posts, devolve into a rant about Forrest Gump and Braveheart. Posters with longer memories will bring up How Green Was My Valley/Citizen Kane.
Oh my goodness, someone else who didn’t like Forrest Gump! I was beginning to think that I was the only one who thought the movie … it got really repetitive after a while.
I also agree with the sentiment that even though they may not be the best picture, very few BPs are BAD films. Boring, maybe, but not bad.
Does boring necessarily mean bad?
English Patient made me want to rip my eyes out and shove them up my ear canals: but it sure was a pretty film. The acting was very good, but the story was just boring.
I don’t fault the actors in A Beautiful Mind, especially the leads who did great characterizations in a bad movie. I blame the director and screenwriter.
They never sold me on the point that John Nash was doing anything other than scribbling on chalkboards and windows. Then someone would walk up and see what he was doing and be amazed by his brillance. The way mathematics and science were treated in the film, he might as well have been a visual artist who created beautiful, but quite meanless, artworks using only mathematic symbols. Yes, there was some throwaway dialog about uses for his work, but nothing really that explained how what he was writing related to what he was recognized for.
Telegraphing that the roommate, the government agent played by Ed Harris, and the covert codebreaking he was working on only existed in his head robbed all of these elements of any dramatic or emotional intensity. It was so obvious that all of these things were not real, except to him, that big dramatic moment when the audience is supposed to find this out is flat and quite pointless. The movie had to play catch-up with the viewer.
I’ll overlook the factual inaccuracies of the film because I expect a certain degree of that for the sake of the narrative in an film biography. But when the moment comes where Nash realizes that all he has to is ignore his mental creations and they will go away, with very little emphasis placed on medication, the film takes on a “Little Engine That Could” bearing. Ugh. The movie implied, IIRC, that over time they went away. Nash has said that he still hears voices to this day (he said he never saw people), but with medication and effort he is able to tune them out, but they do not go away.
As to which film should have won, I don’t know, I just know which film shouldn’t have won.
Quite possibly the only time in its history the Academy got it right. Shakespeare in Love was original, interesting, and well-acted. Everything the bloated, sentimental Private Ryan was not. Spielberg blew his load in the first twenty minutes. After they get off the beach, it’s a third rate war picture with good production values.
Of course, SiL didn’t win because it was the better movie, it won because Harvey Weinstein is better at politicking than Steven Spielburg. Even when the Academy gets it right, they do it for the wrong reasons.
And I’ll go out on a limb here to highlight Titanic as a genuinely bad movie that won an Oscar. MST3K bad.
I totally agree with this. At the time, everyone was saying Saving Private Ryan should win, but their arguments centered around the idea that we should honor our war veterans. But that’s not what the Academy Awards are about–they’re about the “best” pictures and performances of the year. If you analyze the movies AS MOVIES and not according to their historical significance, it’s no contest.
Ultimately, SPR is just another war movie–it really had very little plot. We’re fighting here, now we’re walking, now we’re fighting in this village, now walking, fighting on this hill, walking, fighting the final battle in a bombed-out city.
Shakespeare in Love was one of the most clever and fun movies I’ve seen in years. I was glad that it won.
Exactly! I remember discussing this with a friend who said Ryan should have won because it was more “important.” Important? Whose life did that movie save? What corrupt regimes did it topple? It was about an important event, but the movie itself did not liberate Europe. By this logic, Pearl Harbor is a more important movie than The Godfather.
Sorry, I’ve had that reply sitting in the back of my head ever since I had that discussion and couldn’t think of a good comeback. Had to use it somewhere before it caused an anyeurism or something.
One of the first things I did with Netflix was rent all the BP Winners that were then available on DVD. I can now support the statement above that while the BP winner may not have been the best movie, none of them are bad movies.
Except for one.
Except for the one that took me four separate sittings to get through.
No, it was instead one of the more egregious examples of the Academy getting it wrong. The sappy, light-headed SIL was nowhere near the movie SPR was. You’re totally wrong about SPR, of course…it was the greatest war movie ever made and the definitive WWII movie. The acting was incredible, the cinematography was unbelievable and the picture was simply incredibly moving.
I suspect that means you’ve never seen “Hello Dolly” (Best Pic
nominee in 1969), “Doctor Doolittle” (BP nominee in 1967 [or
maybe it was 1968]) or “Cleopatra” (BP nominee in 1962).
Okay, you got me on “Cleopatra.” I would argue the other two are decent movies.
As to Saving Private Ryan vs. Shakespeare in Love, I’d have to argue SPR is getting a bum rap here. It was a terrific movie, not just “another war movie.” “Windtalkers” was just another war movie. “U-571” was just another war movie. “Saving Private Ryan” was way above that level. It was technically magnificent, well-acted, well-directed, and the movie was emotionally and thematically very effective.
Who is Jessica Simpson? Any relation to OJ? Anyway, be sarcastic all you want, it doesn’t change my opinion nor the opinions of the others who disagree with you.
