You cherry-picked four years in a ten-year spread, and even then you didn’t really make a case.
These are not “twenty great classics”.
mmm
Agreed, but shooting in all natural light weirdly does seem to fool the eye into believing they’re seeing real actors and bear attacks.
WTF? If it wins the Oscar it was nominated for will you finally believe some do consider it in the same class?
You’re also straying from your ostensible point, the Coens clearly study and love their old-timey movies, but Fargo was 1996.
Moonlight was an ok film. It won because it was a film that touched current social issues. Like earlier films. It was almost an apology for Brokeback Mountain losing.
Same reason The Hurt Locker won. And Argo.
I found Moonlight deeply moving and a wonderful movie, worth winning on its own merits.
Just saw The Post. An important movie on many levels, well written, and superbly executed. I adored Get Out, but this was superior.
I don’t think the purpose of the Oscars ever was to pin an award on the year’s best movie. It was supposed to be a 4-hour commercial for the idea of Hollywood, in which the industry parades it’s best-looking stars across the stage and assures folks that they’re making pretty good choices about what movies to see. Hence Best Picture used to go to whatever movie straddled quality filmmaking and box office success: Titanic (1997), Gladiator (2000), Chicago (2002). No one would honestly argue that these are the best movies made in their years, but they might have been the best successful movies in those years.
In the past few years, somehow they’ve stopped caring about the successful part. Maybe Moonlight is a great movie. I wouldn’t know. I haven’t see it. I haven’t seen any winner since Million Dollar Baby in 2004. But I’m not alone. Moonlight made only $27 million at the U.S. box office and did even worse in other countries. Almost certainly the worst performance by a Best Picture winner ever, once inflation is accounted for. Spotlight also did unimpressively at the box office. So did Birdman. And The Artist.
“Best Picture” is really just the “Best Producer” award with a more socially acceptable label slapped on it.
I think The Hurt Locker was the lowest grossing Best Picture winner, beating Moonlight.
And one of the biggest head-scratchers of them all IMHO, considering how badly it represented reality. I hypothesize that the Academy wanted to tip their collective hat to recent wars, but this wasn’t the film they were looking for.
“Moonlight” was a masterpiece, one of the best movies I have ever seen. It was better than at least two thirds of all the movies ever to win Best Picture in the history of the award. In my opinion is it very safety the best movie of this decade so far.
They will be using “Moonlight” in film schools to show how to make movies for the next century.
Moonlighting wasn’t my favorite movie last year, but I’ll readily admit is was probably the best. I enjoyed La La Land and Hidden Figures more, but I think Moonlighting was a more impressive achievement.
I still have some BP nominees to see for this year, but so far Get Out is probably my favorite, with Ladybird a close second. I was less wowed by Dunkirk or The Post, probably because I had high expectations going into both of them.
I also found Baby Driver super enjoyable, but it would be a stretch to put it up for an award in any of the major categories.
I’ve seen none of the nominated pictures, and after watching the trailers I became thoroughly absorbed in all the stories. They are so very different and yet each offers some je ne sais quoi that (at least from this surface perusal) makes each compelling —
and at least potentially Oscar-worthy.
Also, I adored Moonlight.
Same here. Though Manchester By the Sea was better than both, IMO.
I didn’t know they rebooted “Moonlighting” as a movie! I love Bruce Willis.
There will always be a Best Picture Oscar - and, barring a rare tie, one Best Picture per year - because people want it that way.
The Emmys tried something strange in 1965 or so, where, instead of requiring one winner, it was possible for multiple shows or actors to win if enough voters thought they deserved it. Too many people responded, “Yes, but who won?” that they got rid of it in most categories the following year.
It is of course inevitably true that some years have stronger fields than others. If you want to believe 1994 had several movies better than anything in 1987, fair enough.
But I really can’t see the OP’s argument that movies are worse than they used to be. I honestly don’t understand that at all. There are all kinds of terrific movies these days. In 2016 in addition to “Moonlight,” there were “Hell or High Water,” “Arrival,” “La La Land,” “Rogue One,” “Moana,” “Hidden Figures,” “The Edge of Seventeen,” “The Nice Guys,” “Deadpool,” “Manchester By The Sea,” and a dozen more I’m forgetting. Then in 2017, they rolled out “Get Out,” “Lady Bird,” “The Big Sick,” “Mudbound,” “War for the Planet of the Apes,” “Baby Driver,” “Wonder,” “Dunkirk,” and more. Want fun for your kids? Go see “Jumanji,” it was terrific. Sci fi? See “Blade Runner 2049.” Wanna see Hugh Jackman kill folks? “Logan.” There’s always a good movie coming out.
The fact that the Best Picture nominees are sometimes a bit obscure is simply reflective of the fact that the Oscar voters are spending more time thinking about who they nominate.
Looking at movies through historical glasses and comparing to current movies is tough. However this is were I have to spout my opinion that there should be an academy award for best movie; but the nominations all have to be exactly X number of years old. i.e. in 2018 Oscars we’d vote on movies that up for their Oscars in 2008. If you limited to 2008’s candidates you’d have: Michael Clayton, No Country for Old Men, Atonement, Juno, and There Will Be Blood. Personally I think There Will Be Blood and Michael Clayton stand the test of time a lot better than No Country for Old Men. and wtf is Juno doing there? :).
The fact that Three Billboards’ dialog is nowhere near the same high class as Fargo’s will not be changed by an Oscar.
And (double ) 1996 was 21 years ago! Time is flashing by fast for me, but even I knew that a “2017 anymore” need not encompass dates in the 20th century!
I just finished Get Out. Not too bad (though I’m not a horror fan) but wasn’t there a better way to end it than a bunch of random violence? (“Get 'em, Grandpa!”)
And, perhaps since Catherine Keener played in both movies, The Interpreter (2005) popped into my mind. Excellent movie, no? And far better than any of the three 2017 nominees I’ve seen so far, yet it didn’t get a single nomination.
TL;DR: OP was right! 
I don’t even have to argue that. I just need you to admit that some people think that it is. Your claim: “Does anyone claim Three Billboards is in the same class?”
My claim. “Yes, several.”
So even if Fargo is your last worthy Best Picture, then you have to defend all the duds up to 1996. The kids in the smarter forums probably have a fancy schmancy name for the type of argument you’re trying to build here. You’ll say movies were only good back in the day, but successively claim the Coens, Jarmusch, Iñárritu, Lynch, Soderbergh, Van Sant, Tarantino, both Andersons, Jonze, Haneke, Linklater, Weir, Lanthimos, and somehow I’ll end up having to defend Gerwig, Franco and Villeneuve as luminaries.
“Fargo” didn’t win Best Picture.
If one agrees Fargo was a better movie than Three Billboards Outside Ebbings, Missouri, well, so what? This movie’s better than that one. “12 Years A Slave” (2014) was a better movie than “Ordinary People” (1980). What does that prove?
The comments here, while ostensibly about movies, remind me of general “I long for the much Whiter, straighter times of the 1950s (or insert whatever era)” from there are no good films post Jim Crow era to the comments that a movie with a black (and queer) cast can’t possibly be worthy of awards, even if the commenter hasn’t seen it, etc.