Forest Gump beats out Pulp Fiction. Another case of Hollywood loving dreckish, manipulative feel-good movies over one-of-a-kind script and superb acting.
Tom Hanks was brilliant in Philadelphia, but in FG he made me want to pull my fingernails out. I realize I am in the minority here, but as they say, YMMV.
[rant]
Oh, please. Care to give any explanation as to how a movie that (a) was raved about by critics upon its initial release, (b) was either nominated for, or won, more academy awards than any other in history (I forget which precisely) and © made way way way more money than any other movie ever, is “MST3K bad”?
Or do you just like bashing Leo and feeling snootily superior to the unwashed masses?
[/rant]
You’re not the only one. I thought the movie was just dumb.
I, however, am the only person who noticed that by the end of the movie, every single person that Forrest ever cared about – except his son – has died! Who can call that uplifting?!
The Longest Day is still the greatest war movie ever made.
Saving Private Ryan had a stock, cliched plot with two-dimensional, stock, cliched characters. The beginning was violent and gory, although I grant that it was very effectively so. If the rest of the movie had lived up to the promise of the first 30 minutes, it could have been a great movie. But instead it devolved quickly into cliche and predicability. Of course the German they let go would show up at the end to kill one of them. Of course everyone but the title character will die. Of course they’ll all be heroic in the end. Duh.
And I am still, apparently, the only person on Earth who believes that the last 30 minutes of that movie were by far more violent than the first 30 minutes. In the last part, the movie-makers seemed to have positive joy in showing blood and guts and gore and people dying and suffering. The violence and gore in the first part were integral to the story; the violence and gore at the end were purely gratuitous.
Shakespeare in Love was a well-acted, wonderfully written movie. When it ended, we all walked out of the theater saying what a good movie it was.
When we saw Saving Private Ryan, no one stood up when the movie ended. And when the audience finally walked out, not one person in the crowd said a single word.
Which was the better movie?
Well, critics are all idiots; little teenage girls with extra money to spend are idiots; guys who take their chick to that flick, pretend to cry, then get some, are geniuses; the acadamy is full of idiots; people with a herd mentality are idiots; Leo is an idiot; and Cameron needs to get back to directing Time traveling robots and Aliens.
Crow: I want to hurt this movie, but i can never hurt it the way it’s hurt me…
But Tars, your heart will go on!
it went on the floor, as it rejected life…
The Academy occasionally takes it upon itself to masturbate furiously over a movie that doesn’t deserve it - that’s what this thread is about. Titanic got Best Picture over not one but two vastly superior movies - Good Will Hunting and LA Confidential - and also most assuredly cost either Boogie Nights or Mrs Brown a nomination to boot. To answer your question…
Pointe the Firste: Titanic manages to cram forty minutes worth of plot into a three hour movie. I heard of people an hour and a half in yelling “Sink the fucking ship already!” This is why Titanic became one of only three Best Pictures not even to be nominated for a writing Oscar - and the other two were a musical (The Sound of Music) and a direct performance of a Shakespearean play (Hamlet). Musicals having minimal script should not be nominated regardless of merit, and original plays are ineligible for either writing category. This makes Titanic officially the worst written film ever to win Best Picture.
Pointe the Seconde: Stick DiCaprio in a GoNY, a Basketball Diaries or even a Quick and the Dead and he will shine; he’s not a bad actor by any means. He just is not romantic lead material. As for the rest of the cast, it must be noted that Titanic is one of the few best Pictures not to win a single major award for acting in any ceremony. Thus, it is also officially the case that Titanic is the worst-acted best Picture ever.
Pointe the Thirde: Flashy effects doth not a great movie make. Cameron researched it incredibly well, and more power to him for doing so, but by that token Fellowship of the Ring deserved as many Oscars.
Slight amendment there: “since 1933”. Though I don’t count the early Oscar ceremonies, as they had very few categories - they didn’t even have Supporting Role awards.
Please. The acting was, at very best, workmanlike. The characters were largely indistinguishable. The cinematography was very good, but the direction was incredibly ham-handed. The plot was incredibly dumb. Not only do I not believe the US Army would sacrifice one of its best squads to rescue one soldier out of pure sentimentality, I don’t think they should make that decision. What about the moms of all the soldiers died saving Ryan’s ass? Morally and ethically, it was a bad, bad decision.
I’ve had more moving experiences sitting on the john.
Where did I say anything bad about Leonardo DeCaprio? I generally enjoy his movie, although Titanic was a low point in his career as an actor, if not in his career as a sex symbol to fourteen year old girls. Remember, when you “assume” you make an “ass” out of “u” and… Well, pretty much just you.
A) Critics are human, and can be wrong. They lauded Titanic because it was a spectacle, not because it was good filmmaking. I suspect many of them ended up regreting their accolades.
B) I believe it tied with The Sound of Music for most nominations. Which just goes to prove my point, the Academy would know a good movie if you wrapped the film around their necks and choked them to death with it.
C) Since when did “made a lot of money” equate with “was of high quality”?
Shakespeare in Love. I thought I’d made that clear.
Anyway, I don’t know what your anecdote is supposed to prove. I saw Shanghai Knights the other night, and the audience had more or less the same reaction. Everybody walked out of the theater without discussing the movie much. That’s 'cause the movie didn’t present them with anything worth discussing.
Did I miss anyone?
Sorry, but your opinions seem highly dubious to me. I saw the movie several times in the theater due to several different friends that wanted to see it. All of the friends with whom I saw it were moved and thought it was an excellent film. My father is a WW2 vet and he told me that several of his friends who are also vets were very moved by the film. It received very good reviews from the critics, did very well in the theatres and was hailed by veterans as incredibly realistic. I had no trouble, personally, telling the characters apart, and found them very believable.
You didn’t like it…no one can argue you SHOULD like it. But the fact you didn’t like it doesn’t make it a bad film. It was an excellent film, whether you personally enjoyed it or not.
Chicago,
Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
If you are saying that a script adapted from a play is ineligible to be nominated for an Academy Award for writing, that is wrong. In fact, Kenneth Branagh’s screenplay of the complete, unabridged Hamlet (1996) was nominated in the category “Best Writing, Screenplay Based on Material from Another Medium”.
Some other Oscar-nominated screenplays adapted from stage plays: The Crucible (1996), The Madness of King George, Driving Miss Daisy, Dangerous Liaisons, Children of a Lesser God, Crimes of the Heart, Amadeus, A Soldier’s Story, The Dresser, Educating Rita, On Golden Pond, ‘Breaker’ Morant, La cage aux folles, Heaven Can Wait (1978), Equus, The Sunshine Boys, Lenny, I Never Sang for My Father, Lovers and Other Strangers, Anne of the Thousand Days, The Lion in Winter, The Odd Couple, Alfie, A Man for All Seasons, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf.
Titanic. Yes, the special effects were very good. Yes, the sound was good. But best picture? The script was mediocre and predictable, the acting was flat – it just wasn’t a very good film. There was nothing to fill out the visuals.
Shakespeare in Love. A passable film, but nothing Oscar-worthy, in my opinion. It was really just another sappy Romeo and Juliet knockoff with gratuitous nudity.
[and regarding the spr debate – the film was very well-made and provided a fairly accurate portrayal of the horrors of war, but the first and last five minutes were too much for me. too sappy, too predictable. ugh.]
Last year, A Beautiful Mind was pretty good, but as far as the quality of a movie, I think Gosford Park deserved the award. It was really more meticulously put together. How many other films can introduce that many characters and still allow the audience to maintain clear knowledge of who’s who and what’s going on? The script, the directing, everything about GP was far better.
I just wish Chinatown had been released in any year other than 1974. 
And I still think Titanic deserved its Oscar despite how suck ass some of y’all might find it. 
Oh, it was totally worth it just to see the utter look of SHOCK on Spielburg’s face when Shakespeare in Love was announced as the winner. Finally put him in his place as an ordinary man, not some invisible super-director who is unbeatable. Oh yeah, Shakespeare in Love was a better movie too.
Well, most of my friends thought it was overwrought and underwritten. This proves nothing, except that people tend to make friends with people who have similar tastes.
No offence to your dad, but being a combat veteran doesn’t make him a better judge of film quality than anyone else.
Critics can be wrong. Boxoffice is not a good indicator of quality. And I agree it was realistic, but realism is not a particularly important part of movie making. Given the choice, I’d take interesting characters over realism any day of the week.
Well, good for you. I didn’t find them unbelievable so much as interchangable. Aside from their function in the squad, most of them had no character. Tom Hanks’ character was good, the translator had some personality, but the rest of 'em… Stock characters who failed to elicit in me either sympathy or interest.
Quality is entirely subjective. Absent an observer, there is no such thing as quality. If I don’t like a film, it is a bad film to me. You thought it was excellent, so it was excellent to you. I accept that I have the minority opinion on this, at least for the moment. I think that, twenty years hence, Private Ryan will be largely forgotten, whereas Shakespeare in Love will be remembered as a classic.
Giselle: There is no such thing as gratuitous nudity. 
That is like saying The Simpsons is about a naughty boy who uses crude expressions and sets a bad example for our youth.
Perhaps the Academy rules on the subject had changed? Because I don’t see how that qualifies as an adaptation in any way. Regardless, if anyone present is about to say that Titanic has a better story than Hamlet, they know where to go.