Of the eight movies nominated for Best Picture this year, I’ve seen exactly one (The Grand Budapest Hotel). That’s one more than I saw the previous year. In fact, I don’t think I’ve seen more than two Best Picture nominees in a single year, ever. Most years I see zero.
I’m not the stereotypical American rube who only enjoys movies with explosions and titties - I enjoy more challenging fare from time to time. But it seems, rightly or wrongly, that the vast majority of Academy Award-nominated films were made specifically to get an award.
Anyway, is my experience typical? Does the average moviegoing Doper make it a point to see awards-season movies?
I don’t know whether I am an average doper, but no, I don’t make a special effort. I watch the movies that appeal to me. Whether they win Awards or not doesn’t matter.
I find I rarely agree with the Academy, but that’s another question.
I have made an effort to see as many nominated films as possible (certainly the major categories, anyway) over, say, the past 20 years or so. Some years are better than others - for 2012 and 2013 I did extremely well, but last year was not so good.
Part of the issue is living in a smaller city in the Midwest. Boyhood, for example, stopped by here for about a week last fall, then disappeared. Birdman didn’t even open here until a week ago; Still Alice just now opened. Whiplash never appeared in my city at all, but was playing 25 miles away. Couple that with some family medical issues over the past two months, and I blame the studios for hosing me over this year.
Making this effort has given me the chance to see quite a few movies I probably wouldn’t have chosen on my own - The Last Emperor, for example (complete with intermission), or The Triplets of Belleville, or even The Imitation Game, which I likely would not have seen were it not multiply nominated. Just because my personal tastes may not align with the Academy, I appreciate the opportunity to see for myself why they might hold a film or a performance in such high esteem.
Kind of. I realized I could stream them on Amazon for less that the price of a movie ticket and watched Wolf of Wallstreet and American Hustle shortly after the Oscars. The rest are still in my Watchlist - I’m not much of a movie person. Still haven’t watched 12 Years a Slave.
After the Golden Globes this year I put a lot of the movies in my Watchlist. Probably all of this year’s Oscar Best Picture nominees made it. I did watch Grand Budapest Hotel without any prompting when it first came to streaming. Go me!
I’ve usually seen all the films to be nominated for Best Picture long before the nominations come out, so it’s less a mission and more an inevitability because of the number of films I typically see every year.
The only movie nominated for Best Picture in the last 20 years that I didn’t see in the theaters was The Blind Side (though I eventually caught it when it popped up on TV, out of curiosity).
I just took a look through all the nominated films and noticed that I’ve only seen Guardians of the Galaxy, Winter Soldier and X-Men, and two of those I waited for them to come out on DVD.
So, no, I don’t seem to make any effort to see them.
I try to watch most of the “important” nominated movies. I enjoy most of them. Usually skip war movies (private ryan, schindler list, amer sniper) this year I saw 6 of 8, only one I saw and didnt like was hawking movie. I like seeing good movies. I think that the big nominees are a great place to start finding good films.
Nope. Not in the least. I watch movies for entertainment, and personally, not a one of the nominated movies looked the least bit entertaining. To me. YMMV, and it obviously did for a majority of the movie-going public.
Last year I made it a point to see all nine nominated films and only liked half of them (I half liked American Hustle.) I’ll never bother doing that again, intentionally anyway.
Yes. Usually I have seen all or almost all before the nominations are even announced. This year I have seen all of them, and except for Grand Budapest Hotel, I enjoyed them all.
We usually see most of them. Not because they are nominated (usually) but because they are typically good films.
Seen them all this year except American Sniper (probably won’t ever see) and Selma (maybe when it comes on HBO).
Of the ones nominated that we did see, only Boyhood was on the “Well, we should probably see it anyway.” list. And Grand Budapest Hotel wins our award for Wish We Had That Time Back. Not even in the top 5 of Anderson’s work.
Similarly for previous years, especially with the expanded list.
I love movies, so I generally see most of the movies that get nominated. This year I’ve seen everything except Whiplash. I even saw the animated shorts at our local art house theater and loved them!
Whether it was pre or post Oscar, I’ve seen all but two of the Best Picture winners since 1978 (the year I turned 18).
Yes, I try to see the nominees in time (even years later), but don’t get bent out of shape if I miss them.
Oddly enough, the B. Picture nominees was expanded from 5 to (up to) 10 so that more popular movies can be nominated (this was a result of The Dark Knight not being nominated), but the opposite has occurred - since the expansion, fewer popular movies have been nominated and the winners have not been popular films at all. For example, from 1980 to 2006, the B. Picture winner was a top-10 grossing movie 14 of 26 years and a top-15 grossing film 21 of those 26 years… but since then, none of the winners have been a top-15 film, with three of those winners ranking 116, 71, and 65 in box office rankings for their respective years.
There are three kinds of movies. Ones I definitely want to see, ones I definitely do not want to see, and those where I have no opinion and might see if the opportunity came up.
Most of the award-bait kind of movies are usually “do not want to see” because they tend to be heavy on the emotional rollercoaster, and light on the fun. I don’t want to be deliberately emotionally manipulated, I want escapism.
Arguably all entertainment is emotionally manipulative, but there’s some where that’s secondary, and some where that’s primary. I prefer secondary. Promise me fun, then take me on an emotional journey. Don’t promise me an emotional journey, then depress me afterward.
I’m not sure if I’m explaining myself very well. All I know is, if I ever end up seeing a movie that I had previously marked as “do not want to see ever” I never change my mind, it remains a movie I wish I hadn’t seen and I regret having watched it.
I do, but not all of them. When the nominations are announced I go through the list and make a point to see any that interest me. This year I saw Gone Girl, Interstellar and American Sniper. I also could see Birdman, but haven’t gotten up the motivation to.
