The Motion Picture Academy virtually never awards Best Picture to a truly great fiilm.

True or false?

but other great films have gotten it, so half true.

And I wish I had never seen it.

Random, pointless violence. No plot and no point at all. Depressing as hell.

Not my idea of art.

It was cartoonish, not really my type of film - but, goddamn, Heath Ledger was fantastic.

Yeah, I said it. So there :P

Especially in (I think) 2001, 1997, and 1994. x(

Hell Madonna and Courtney Love both won Golden Globes but neither received Oscar nominations

From Oliver! to Kramer vs. Kramer to Ordinary People to Terms of Endearment to Rain Man to Driving Miss Daisy to Braveheart to Million Dollar Baby... There are a lot of ok movies in that lot, but by far most of the Best Pictures can be skipped, in my experience.

How many of the movies below are truly unmissable? A few decades shine, (the 70s stand out) but for the most part, those movies are not what I would call great movies. Especially in the last 30 years or so.

But I'm willing to listen to a counerargument.


Best Picture Winners: 2000 - 2008
2008 No Country for Old Men
2007 The Departed
2006 Crash
2005 Million Dollar Baby
2004 The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King
2003 Chicago
2002 A Beautiful Mind
2001 Gladiator
2000 American Beauty

Best Picture Winners: 1990 - 1999
1999 Shakespeare in Love
1998 Titanic
1997 The English Patient
1996 Braveheart
1995 Forrest Gump
1994 Schindler's List
1993 Unforgiven
1992 The Silence of the Lambs
1991 Dances With Wolves
1990 Driving Miss Daisy

Best Picture Winners: 1980 - 1989
1989 Rain Man
1988 The Last Emperor
1987 Platoon
1986 Out of Africa
1985 Amadeus
1984 Terms of Endearment
1983 Gandhi
1982 Chariots of Fire
1981 Ordinary People
1980 Kramer vs. Kramer

Best Picture Winners: 1970 - 1979
1979 The Deer Hunter
1978 Annie Hall
1977 Rocky
1976 One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
1975 The Godfather, Part II
1974 The Sting
1973 The Godfather
1972 The French Connection
1971 Patton
1970 Midnight Cowboy

Best Picture Winners: 1960 - 1969
1969 Oliver!
1968 In the Heat of the Night
1967 A Man for All Seasons
1966 The Sound of Music
1965 My Fair Lady
1964 Tom Jones
1963 Lawrence of Arabia
1962 West Side Story
1961 The Apartment
1960 Ben-Hur

Best Picture Winners: 1950 - 1959
1959 Gigi
1958 The Bridge on the River Kwai
1957 Around the World in 80 Days
1956 Marty
1955 On the Waterfront
1954 From Here to Eternity
1953 The Greatest Show on Earth
1952 An American in Paris
1951 All About Eve
1950 All the King's Men

Best Picture Winners: 1940 - 1949
1949 Hamlet
1948 Gentleman's Agreement
1947 The Best Years of Our Lives
1946 The Lost Weekend
1945 Going My Way
1944 Casablanca
1943 Mrs. Miniver
1942 How Green Was My Valley
1941 Rebecca
1940 Gone with the Wind

Best Picture Winners: 1929 - 1939
1939 You Can't Take It with You
1938 The Life of Emile Zola
1937 The Great Ziegfeld
1936 Mutiny on the Bounty
1935 It Happened One Night
1934 Cavalcade
1932 Grand Hotel
1931 Cimarron
1930 All Quiet on the Western Front
1930 The Broadway Melody
1929 Wings

:cry:

I didn't mean to make you cry.

:cry:

there are a lot of great pictures in that list.

Know what I mean? The really, really great ones are rare in that list, except for a few spots in the 1960s and 1970s.

idiot with no opinion of my own.
So when I see a film won best picture I accept it must be great because the people in Hollywood did.
:sarcasm:

D'oh! You were being sarcastic!

Seriously, I myself grew up believing that Oscars went to movies that had to be at least somewhat worthy. I scoffed at a lot of them, and got pissed a lot of years when my favorites didn't win. But it's only when I was thinking about them just recently that I realized, a lot of those movies aren't even worth seeing once.

The Maltese Falcon, Citizen Kane, It's A Wonderful Life, Miracle on 34th Street, A Streetcar Named Desire, To Kill A Mockingbird, Dr. Strangelove, Doctor Zhivago, Chinatown, Apocalypse Now: all losers.

The Sting,An American in Paris,All the King's Men,In the Heat of the Night, The Lord of the Rings (which was really for all 3 movies, you know),Casablanca. These are films I will watch again and again and some of them are in my all time favorite list.

Gone With the Wind to me is fantastic movie, esp when compared to everything that came before it.


Are there other, greater movies that didn't win? Of course. Where is 'African Queen' for example?

there are about three in each decade that I would consider great films. And some of those are a little iffy.

some years they are on point, while on others, neither god nor man can explain their thinking

Catherine Zeta-Jones pretty much had her Oscar bought for her by her husband, who spent like $1million pushing his wife to win the award for Best Supporting Actress for Chicago. She didn't win the Golden Globe (which is voted on by the Foreign Press) -that went to Meryl Streep who was absolutely amazing in the movie "Adaptation".

All you need is a decent role that could be up for nomination and the rest of it is a matter of spending the cash to get people to vote for you.

After a player retires, there's a seven year wait until they vote him into the HOF. They have this wait so that the last few years of a player's career don't influence the voting.

The best picture award should be for movies should be awarded five years after a movie is released. This wat, marketing campaigns cannot unduly influence the voting, and the full impact of a film can be measured over time.

Too often the choices are political, and have nothing to do with the lasting quality of the film.

Parenthetical comments my own.

1990s

* 1990 Dances with Wolves (pretentious crap)

o Awakenings - (better than Dances, but not by much)
o Ghost - (schmaltzy crap)
o The Godfather Part III - (lulz. Sympathy pick)
o Goodfellas - (probably the best of the nominees)

* 1991 The Silence of the Lambs (good pick)
o Beauty and the Beast (must have been before animated films got their own category)
o Bugsy - (crap)
o JFK - (crap)
o The Prince of Tides - (more schmaltzy crap)

* 1992 Unforgiven - (shite. Gee whiz, let's make a western movie that debunks western movie myths, so what if it's boring as hell.)
o The Crying Game - (meh)
o A Few Good Men - (let's hope this is close as Tom Cruise gets to the Oscars)
o Howards End - (seen it, can't remember it)
o Scent of a Woman - (best pick of the nominees, but surely there was something better)

* 1993 Schindler's List -(Only Spielberg could make a Holocaust movie with a happy ending. Overrated)
o The Fugitive - (boring action movie, with a stupid, overwrought ending. Made Tommy Lee Jones a household name, that's about it.)
o In the Name of the Father - (Best pick of the bunch)
o The Piano - (Zzzz)
o The Remains of the Day - (Zzzz *snort* zzzz)

* 1994 Forrest Gump - (I think we can all agree that in retrospect, this movie sucked)
o Four Weddings and a Funeral (Haven't seen it, I'm guessing it's tokenism for comedies)
o Pulp Fiction - (quite probably the most important film of the decade, easily the best)
o Quiz Show - (billed as "when America lost its innocence." Whole thing rendered silly by a quote from the movie itself "Cheating on a game show? That's like plagiarizing a comic strip!"
o The Shawshank Redemption - (I think we can all agree that in retrospect, this was far superior to Forrest Gump. It'll be a classic for many years, even if not as innovative as Pulp Fiction)

* 1995 Braveheart - (more crap. The Academy has a thing for worn out, second rate male stars who decide to direct. See Clint Eastwood)
o Apollo 13- (good film, better than the rest)
o Babe - (certainly the best children's movie of the year, not bad, I guess for a nomination at least)
o Il Postino (Haven't seen it)
o Sense and Sensibility - (Don't want to see it)

* 1996- The English Patient - (Absolute, horrible, pretentious shit)
o Fargo - (best film of the year)
o Jerry Maguire - (More Tom Cruise? God. At least it's Cuba Gooding Jr.'s best film. Best film? Fuck that noise.)
o Secrets & Lies - (huh?)
o Shine - (interesting personality, overrated film)

* 1997 Titanic - (Actually, despite all the jokes, it was technically a pretty good film, certainly not the best, nomination at most)
o As Good as It Gets - (forgettable)
o The Full Monty - (mostly forgettable)
o Good Will Hunting - (Meh. It had it's moments. Not many)
o L.A. Confidential - (Best film of the year.)

* 1998 Shakespeare in Love - (A surprisingly good film, possibly the best of this list, but there must have been better in 1998)
o Saving Private Ryan - (more Spielberg sympathy support. One good action scene. I've played video games with more narrative than this)
o Life Is Beautiful (crap)
o Elizabeth - (crap)
o The Thin Red Line - (I appreciate Mallick, but wasn't big fan of the film)

* 1999 American Beauty - (tough year, a number of good films that deserved the Oscar, no strong opinions)
o The Cider House Rules -
o The Green Mile -
o The Insider -
o The Sixth Sense - (saw it coming)


* 2000 Gladiator - (horrible, horrible film)
o Chocolat - (seen it, can't remember it)
o Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (Maybe the best of the bunch. Certainly changed a lot of views on Kung Fu films, having watched it recently, it wasn't as good as I remembered)
o Erin Brockovich - (crap)
o Traffic - (mediocre)

* 2001 A Beautiful Mind - (crap)
o Gosford Park - (crap)
o In the Bedroom - (crap)
o The Lord of the Rings: (best of the trilogy, a pretty well done film itself, better than the other nominees)
o Moulin Rouge! - (crap)

* 2002 Chicago - (missed it)
o Gangs of New York - (God, this was bad. I can't believe he always wanted to film the book, then turned it into this)
o The Hours - (Zzzz)
o The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers - (Big disappointment)
o The Pianist - (crap)

* 2003 The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (Good film, not the best given the competition)
o Lost in Translation (Great film)
o Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World -(surprisingling great film)
o Mystic River (overrated)

* 2004 Million Dollar Baby - (More Eastwood crap)
o The Aviator - (forgettable)
o Finding Neverland - (Haven't seen it all the way through, seemed good though)
o Ray - Universal - (very, very good, would not have been displeased to see it win)
o Sideways - (personal favorite of these five)

* 2005 Crash - (Holy shit, I cannot believe how collossally bad this shit was)
o Brokeback Mountain - (alright. Just slightly on the overrated side, given the outrage that it wasn't picked)
o Capote - (despite causing my ears to bleed, a solid movie, not the best)
o Good Night, and Good Luck - (I didn't understand most of this movie. I think that was sort of the point. Feh.)
o Munich - (Hustle and Flow was better than this film)

* 2006 The Departed -(Shit. More sympathy)
o Babel - (crap)
o Letters from Iwo Jima (crap)
o Little Miss Sunshine - (good movie. Best picture? Hardly)
o The Queen - Miramax - Andy Harries, Christine Langan, Tracey Seaward

* 2007 No Country for Old Men - (good, but overrated. Second best of the year)
o Atonement - (huh?)
o Juno - (kinda cute. Not that funny. Hardly best pic)
o Michael Clayton - (haven't seen it yet)
o There Will Be Blood - (Easily best picture of the year, arguably the last ten)

:P

I'm with you on some of your other choices and disagree on others.

What twerks me most about the Oscars is when they give an Oscar to an older performer/director/whatever who they think is about to die...but, who actually had kind of a mediocre performance in the selected piece...but...we've been ignoring their previous work for 50 years!!!

Hey!!!! It's their turn!

meh Just give them a lifetime achievement award and cut the crap....K?

I just can't...ah forget it.

forget it.