I have officially entered clueless old man territory, because until this thread I had never heard of of Spotlight.
Correct.
It’s weird because many of the movies on the list I liked a lot but wouldn’t consider them “important works” or anything. For example, I loved Gladiator, but come on, really? Other movies I consider very good or great but maybe not super entertaining, like watching them is supposed to enrich you rather than entertain you. Those are the ones I generally think of as award-worthy, but are rarely (if ever) favorite movies.
Appreciated
12 Years a Slave
Dances With Wolves
No Country for Old Men
Favorites
Platoon
The Silence of the Lambs
Braveheart
American Beauty
Gladiator
Liked
Rain Man
Forrest Gump
Million Dollar Baby
The Departed
Slumdog Millionaire
Meh
The Last Emperor
Driving Miss Daisy
Shakespeare in Love
A Beautiful Mind
The Lord of The Rings: The Return of The King
The Hurt Locker
Argo
Birdman
The Shape of Water
Didn’t See
Kramer vs. Kramer
Ordinary People
Chariots of Fire
Gandhi
Terms of Endearment
Amadeus
Out of Africa
Unforgiven
Schindler’s List
The English Patient
Titanic
Chicago
Crash
The King’s Speech
The Artist
Spotlight
Moonlight
I guess I have to pick from the Meh group, and if I’m going by my criteria of what award-worthy means to me, Return of the King is the clear answer. So I’ll go with that.
Note: I’m pretty sure or positive I saw Kramer vs. Kramer, Ordinary People, Chariots of Fire, Gandhi, Amadeus, and Unforgiven, but I don’t remember them enough to have an opinion because it was 30 years ago, once, for 20 minutes.
Out of the movies I have seen, this is the only one that I fell asleep during and never bothered to go back and watch what I missed.
“As far back as I can remember, I always wanted to be a gangster.”
It’s only like the third or fourth best of Scorsese movies and yet it is still head and shoulders above anything even first tier directors will ever produce in their careers.
Stranger
Went with* Gladiator*. Just an ordinary Sword and Sandals film, but lessee (consults Wikipedia), after Russell Crowe wins against a legendary, undefeated gladiator, the emperor of Rome decides it would be a great idea to personally fight Russell in the arena. Now thatis storytelling at its finest.
Hated Crash, but ehh, apparently its storyline, driven by shallow concepts, rather than characters, gosh-wowed a significant percentage of people. It was worthless to me, though.
Has to be Shakespeare in Love.
I had to sit through that whole thing on an Saturday afternoon, in the theater, just to get laid later. That was better than the movie, but I still left before the sun went down.
Gwyneth Paltrow. Need I say more?
I picked The English Patient. Long, boring so so full of itself. It could have made its point in a quarter of the time. Its stupid, stupid point that everybody saw coming a mile away. I’ve seen 24 of these movies and the only ones that have more votes than The English Patient are ones I haven’t seen.
Good to see I’m not the only vote for Braveheart.
Of the 20 films I’ve seen from that list, Dances with Wolves appealed to me least.
I thought Crash wins this every time.
I understand it perfectly. And without all the cursing and racial epithets it’s an after school special on why you shouldn’t be mean to brown people.
I’ve seen exactly 14 (well, 14.1 since I once watched the first ten minutes of Dances With Wolves before turning it off), so I didn’t vote. But of the ones I’ve seen, Braveheart was the worst.
Only two on the list are downright bad (The English Patient and Out of Africa). TEP is the worst of them. Several others aren’t very good, and certainly not deserving of the award, but not exactly bad either (Chariots, Crash, etc.)
From before the cutoff, there are another 8 or 10 winners that are truly bad.
No, they dislike it because the characters are terrible people.
I didn’t see “American Beauty” until a few years after the fact, and when I did, I personally liked it but understood why so many other people didn’t; it was because they were LIVING it.
I have seen them all. After a moment’s thought I went with American Beauty.
mmm
It is a pretty dumb movie.
I’ll add yet another I have realized I did not like. Moonlight. I honestly found the opening segment where the main character was a kid to be interesting. The rest…pretty bad.
I picked Forrest Gump. It’s not the worst movie on the list, but it was the worst choice because there were such better choices that year.
Remember:
“Gandhi” beat “E.T.” only because E.T. was slated for best movie of the '80s.
Should I vote for the worst, or the one I hated the most? Not necessarily the same thing.