I’m glad to see someone else support Shakespeare in Love. I simply can’t fathom the dislike for it, unless it’s rooted in the Affleck/Paltrow casting (Affleck, I’ll admit was miscast, but I liked Paltrow). Wonderful movie, IMO, and one of the very few I’ve pegged as an Oscar Best Picture winner immediately upon seeing it in the theater.
As for my three worst choices:
American Beauty. I actually hated this movie. Boring, pretentious tripe. None of the other choices were all that great, either, so I suppose I’d have chosen The Sixth Sense as the lesser of the remaining evils.
Rain Man. I did not care for this movie at all (though I don’t hate it). Tom Cruise’s performance grates on me and I wasn’t all that impressed by Hoffman, either. Mississippi Burning was a far better film.
Forrest Gump. Not a bad movie, but I would’ve gone with Pulp Fiction, personally.
My (dis)honorable mention goes to No Country For Old Men. I liked it okay, but thought Michael Clayton was more deserving that year.
Count me as another who thought that Shakespeare In Love was a worthy winner. Saving Private Ryan was a good movie, but I dislike the tendency to give the award to the noble epic (see Gandhi, The Last Emperor, Braveheart, etc.). I appreciate that they rewarded the romantic comedy.
If I need to add two others, they would be Crash and Dances With Wolves. Both fine enough movies, but not deserving the award against their competition.
It’s like it tries to be complex, but fails because it’s the least subtle movie ever. It’s idea of well-rounded characters is to have *every *character show *exactly *two sides.
I get the impression that one’s opinion of the movie is highly dependent on how familiar one is with Shakespeare’s plays. It’s a good movie pretty much regardless, but for people like myself who just know High School Shakespeare, that’s pretty much all it is. So for me, Saving Private Ryan was a much better choice.
I agree with Dewey Finn, however, that the Academy should show more appreciation for lighter fare. Comedic acting, in particular, is criminally underrated; *everyone *says that comedy is harder to do than drama, which seems to be borne out by all the comedians who can successfully cross over to being serious actors, and all the serious dramatists who can’t do comedy well.
2)* Braveheart* - Apollo 13 was better, Toy Story was much more creative and influential. Dead Man Walking wasn’t even nominated??
Crash - Brokeback was better
Dances with Wolves - Not terrible, just that Goodfellas is a all-timer.
Gladiator - OK, but didn’t seem like an Oscar winner. Kind of a “Well, someone’s got to win this year” award.
Special Mention - Forrest Gump - A popular pastime to rip on this one. A better movie than it gets credit for, it’s just that *Shawshank *and Pulp Fiction were better. And Hoop Dreams was better than all 3 (Man what a year for movies).
For way too many of years under discussion I’ve seen NONE of the nominated movies, so my domain is somewhat restricted here. Nevertheless, I’ll go ahead and say with a fair amount of certainty that my answer would be the same anyway that 1994 was the biggest travesty. I liked The Shawshank Redemption and Pulp Fiction way, way better than Forrest Gump. In the end I supposed I’d go with Pulp Fiction over Shawshank, but I actually didn’t particularly enjoy Forrest Gump.
The next year (1995) saw me similarly disappointed. I have to admit though that I have not ever seen Braveheart, so I can’t say for sure it was “undeserving”, but I was pretty blown away by Toy Story, Se7en and Apollo 13, while Braveheart seems to have gotten the nod primarily due to its being “epic”.
In 1998 I felt like it was the opposite reaction: while I definitely enjoyed Shakespeare in Love, it’s not even close in the lasting emotional impact it made on me compared to Saving Private Ryan.
I must disagree about The English Patient! When I saw it I was deeply moved. I don’t know if it’d stand a re-viewing, but I did not see the ending coming…
And the list for 2001 nominations in the OP:
Didn’t include what I felt was one of the best pictures of the year, and one of my all time favorites: Moulin Rouge!. I know this is a “love it or hate it” movie, but it WAS nominated in 2001, and I would easily pick it over Fellowship or Gosford Park. (I did very much like A Beautiful Mind though, and will not contest its winning over Moulin Rouge!)
American Beauty
Why so few nominations for American Beauty? 122 minutes of stupid and obvious cliches. Oh, the homophobic marine guy is gay himself. Wow. Annoying teenagers who think they’re the shit because they like to look at plastic bags, and obviously the director does too. Give it 10 more years, and I’m sure this cliche-fest terrible movie will be on more of these lists.
Crash
This:
Forrest Gump
An irrelevant semi-comedy that beat Shawshank Redemption AND Pulp fiction. There is a goddamn content chart with the boxes. What are you, stupid?
Honorable Mention: 1991 - This was a horrible year, as films from both Oliver Stone and Jonathon Demme were nominated. Someone please make these guys go away, and take back the BP Oscars they both have.
IMHO, “Return of the King” is EASILY the worst movie of modern times to win Best Picture. I really enjoyed the first two and thought “The Fellowship of the Ring” in particular was a genuinely wonderful, great movie. The third installment was just a muddled, badly paced dungheap. I’ll be the only person to pick it I bet, 'cause people love the sword and sorcery and hobbits and Tolkein, but really, if you take that movie by itself it’s just an awful film. It looked like it had been edited by someone trying to make a deadline more than a movie. After that I just picked two bloated, epic movies that didn’t really have very good stories; you could replace them with “Out of Africa” and “Dances with Wolves” and I’d have few complaints.
I’ll pipe up and say I do not agree, and have never agreed, with the hatred for “Forrest Gump.” It was a magnificent movie in every respect. It’s a shame that it and Pulp Fiction were nominated in the same year because both movies are better than at least half the movies to win Best Picture in the last 25 years.
Saving Private Ryan should have won in 1998, Brokeback Mountain in '05, and Little Miss Sunshine in '06. I like Gladiator, but Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon should have won that year.