The Reader was dreadful pap.
- Holocaust
- Wrongful Convicted
- Illiterate
- Forbidden Love
It reminds me of the movie Roger the Alien made on American Dad!
The Hurt Locker was easily the least entertaining and least interesting movie that has won a Best Picture award, at least in my eyes. It was so predictable, so cliché, and so insular; I didn’t feel like I gained any insight from this film at all. I understand that the soldiers don’t really ‘get’ the local population, but the film didn’t even really try to deal with their perceptions vs. the reality of the situation. The characters were generated from a Generic War Movie Character creator, and they had lame-ass story arcs. Worst of all, this movie was boring. I did not think a movie about a bomb defusal squad in Iraq could ever qualify, but by God, did they pull it off.
**Titanic **was at least ridiculously over the top and had nice set-pieces and an entertaining depiction of the sinking ship.
Crash was beyond stupid, but when you stopped taking it seriously, it became entertainingly stupid.
The Hurt Locker was just unredeemably dreadful.
Of the above, No Country for Old Men is the only one I would have voted for in its year. In every other case I would have preferred another choice, with exclusionary exceptions for The Hurt Locker and Chicago, which I’ve never seen.
I picked Gladiator at a coin flip, primarily because I found it to be aggressively stupid. But I can make a good case for at least a couple of others and might change my mind a minute from now.
Cha-ching.
I picked Crash, but Million Dollar Baby is a close second. I hate both of those movies so much.
Actually, though, few if any of the movies in the poll are all that good.
I cannot rationalize Crash winning in a year with Van Helsing. The latter was an utter load of crap, but still far and away a better movie than Crash.
Oh I forgot about “No Country for Old Men” That movie was tied with “There Will be Blood” for that years most dreadfully boring movies ever*.
At least “Blood” was saved by the absolute crazy perfect acting job out of Daniel Day Lewis.
*Most boring movie ever…Lost in Translas…zzzzzzz
Apropos of nothing, here’s how I would rank the above titles, each title followed by how I’d rate it on a ten scale.
[ol]
[li]The Departed: (9)[/li][li]The Hurt Locker: (8)[/li][li]Slumdog Millionaire: (7)[/li][li]No Country for Old Men: (7)[/li][li]Lord of the Rings: Return of the King: (7)[/li][li]Million Dollar Baby: (5)[/li][li]Chicago: (5)[/li][li]Gladiator: (2)[/li][li]Crash: (0)[/li][li]A Beautiful Mind: (0)[/li][/ol]
Really? Huh. Granted I’m no filmologist, but I thought it was a subpar Scorsese. I liked The Departed, because even subpar Scorsese is better than most films. But it’s probably near the bottom of my list of his stuff.
I thought the Academy was more or less giving him a lifetime achievement award to atone for the numerous times he was robbed of his rightful victories. Granted it was up against a weak field that year and now that I think about it I can make an argument it was better than its competitors. But I don’t think it was a slam dunk.
It may be I’d vote against it only because I saw all five movies at once at one of those insane all day “screen-the-nominees-with-free-popcorn” theatre fests ( I will never, ever do that again ) and I recall being put off by what seemed like cliched Scorseseisms and some serious occasional scenery chewing. But I do believe it was the last of the five, so I may have not been giving it a fair shake by that point.