Threedux: With hindsight, what movies should have been Best Picture nominees for 2002?

(There are at least a few of us dedicated movie fans enjoying these threads, I hope.)

The Academy doesn’t always nominate the actual best pictures in any given year. Sometimes, with hindsight, the classic movies of that year become more apparent. So let’s take a crack at 2002.

The actual nominees were:

Chicago <----- Winner
Gangs of New York
The Hours
The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers
The Pianist

Here are the wide-release films of 2002, and here are the limited-release films of 2002.

From those lists, my 5 nominees would be:

The Ring
28 Days Later
The Bourne Identity <------ Winner
Road to Perdition
Catch Me If You Can

Looking at that list, I realize there is not a lot of high-brow appeal, but I don’t really care. These are the movies which I think best accomplish what they set out to do, and which I think have left a lasting imprint. And I gave the Best Picture nod to The Bourne Identity, because hey, sometimes an action movie really is the best picture. (I welcome criticism/discussion on these topics.) Also, looking at that list, kudos to Tom Hanks for showing up twice.

Your 5 picks?

Not the strongest year, that’s for certain. I’d go with:

28 Days Later
Adaptation <----- Winner
About Schmidt
Catch Me If You Can
Gangs of New York

Best Foreign Language Film:Cidade de Deus

  • 28 Days later (best zombie movie I’ve seen. And I’ve seen a lot of zombie movies).

  • Adaptation

  • Solaris (not many slow, thoughtful Sci-fi movies out there)

  • Jackass (Probably helped that I was a teenager, but I laughed harder at this movie then any other comedy I can remember watching in a theater. So if we’re going to give points for accomplishing what it set out to do… Plus points for originality, other then the other Jackass movies, I don’t think anyone else has made a wide-release film based on the “idiots flim themselves doing stupid stunts” premise.)

-City of God <---- Winner (good thing Human Action reminded me this came out in 2002, or I would’ve given the award to Jackass).

Honourable Mention: Hero, Spiderman, The Ring.

Limiting to Oscar-nominated films I saw that year, my 5 nominees for Best Picture would have been:

The Pianist
LOTR: The Two Towers
Adaptation
Far from Heaven <— winner
About Schmidt