1971
A Clockwork Orange Rewatching it for the first time since college, I have to admit I like it far more than I remembered and it fares best yet of the Kubricks I've been revisiting/seeing for the first time lately. The greatest strengths here are in Kubrick's famous distancing techniques being perfectly matched to the tone of this weird behavior study and Malcolm McDowell's iconic performance. I rarely see McDowell singled out when people praise the film but he makes potentially unsayable lines from Burgess' novel sparkle and work and his physicality portrays the right amount of sexual threat and charm. This is an unusual pic to make the cut, but the Oscars were feeling the heat from not nominating
2001 a few years earlier so it's another politically savvy move-- not bad for a fairly explicit, unsympathetic film like this!
Fiddler on the Roof Overlong, unimaginatively staged big screen musical that succeeds for two reasons: several iconic songs (though I was surprised at how bland all the songs that aren't part of the collective unconscious were) and Topol's wonderfully engaging central performance. The film's popularity at the time makes perfect sense, as the whole thing is a clever stand-in for the gulf felt between parents and their increasingly free children in this era. Of course, so was this year's
Taking Off and I'd have much rather seen that one make it here than Jewison's picture, but this was a pleasant enough way to pass the time.
the French Connection If
Airport last year proved one of the most influential films of the 70s for big budget Hollywood cinema, this proved the most influential for smaller productions. Indeed, like
Pulp Fiction two decades later, one has to resist the urge to grade it on a sliding scale downwards due to all the pisspoor imitators it inspired in the wake of its success. I've never cared for the film but hadn't seen it in a while so I did revisit it for the purpose of this exercise and found myself a
little more sympathetic to its alleged charms. Gene Hackman is, as ever, charming even in a less-than-charming role, and his dogged detective is fun to watch as he swings his cock around various NYC locales. But the film's anti-climactic
Z-esque "what's the point" finale still feels lacking, and outside of the justly famous chase sequence there are few memorable moments amongst the investigatory morass.
Out of perversity and dedication, I also sought out the John Frankenheimer-directed sequel,
the French Connection II, and lord, if anything made the original shine more brightly seeing it back to back with this swill did the trick! Dear God in Heaven, what did we do to deserve this film that takes the most interesting aspect of the first pic-- that Hackman's Popeye Doyle is so much a part and product of NYC that he knows every orifice and functions like a white blood cell sent out into the bloodstream to attack any and all infections-- and plucks him down into fish out of water nonsense. There is a looooong stretch in the middle of this film (I won't spoil it but anyone who's seen it knows exactly what I'm talking about) where no response can register other than slack-jawed awe at the wrong-headedness of every single aspect of what is happening on screen. I understand this film has its share of defenders here, too. What else is new?
the Last Picture Show Never forget that there was once a time when Bogdanovich was loved by everyone and hailed as the next Orson Welles on the strength of this film. Everyone was right, even if they all quickly changed their mind by the time
Daisy Miller rolled around three years later.
Nicholas and Alexandra Only one thought got me through this long and dull film: the glorious realization that since Oscars rarely reward these kind of bland, overlong historical epics anymore, the odds of me having to sit through a film like this again by choice are slim. I don't even know what to say about this one other than thanking God it's over.
My Vote the Last Picture Show
1972
Cabaret Ugly musical riff on
the Damned where the Nazi level rises with the curtain and ends in the reliable "Oh here we go" mode. I've now seen every Bob Fosse-directed film and only enjoy his first,
Sweet Charity (guess he hadn't figured out how to to ruin it yet), but clearly the Academy disagreed-- how did this ever win for Best Director over
the Godfather? For that matter, I don't get Liza Minnelli's win either but I find her charmless in general, and Joel Grey's Best Supporting statue for just doing actual cabaret for the whole film is one of the more bizarre wins in this category as well (but at least he's good at it). From the award tally this one did rack up, it's scary to think how close the Oscars came to not giving the top prize to one of the greatest films of all time-- though perhaps it's more surprising still that they did make the right call!
Deliverance Weird choice by the Academy again-- Attempt to stay relevant? Popular favorite? Who knows! At least it's a good choice and this anti-male bonding pic gives some interesting commentary on the whole culture clash of hicks vs city slickers that spawned dozens of horror film imitators in its wake. I'm sure Ned Beatty thanks God he's had such a storied and varied career so that he's not remembered solely for his short end of the stick role here!
the Emigrants While watching this I gradually realized that for some reason my 8th grade history class had watched at least some of this, no doubt the shortened and dubbed VHS version. I'd always thought that film was about the pilgrims, but I'm guessing my coach/teacher (why was it always coaches who got stuck teaching history in middle and high school?) just needed a quick babysitter for a couple days. Nevertheless, seeing the full three-plus hour Swedish-language version let me appreciate the film on its own merits-- I thought it was a handsomely constructed and mostly engaging study in the process of Swedish emigrant arriving in the states and reminded me of Kazan's
America America in its focus on the process of arrival more than the American experience itself (though I understand this film's sequel does tackle that subject). That said, I'm not sure how well it benefited from such a lengthy running time and my overall impression of the film in whole didn't match up with the time invested.
the Godfather Well, it's
the Godfather.
Sounder While I don't think as highly of it as others here, I did enjoy this peek at a year or so in the life of a poor black sharecropper family. One of the things I appreciated about the film is how a basic plot description makes the picture sound far more melodramatic than it turns out to be, and Paul Winfield's loving father has several great moments of surprising warmth with his son, who is really the central focus here. I have no idea why the film (and the source novel) were named after the dog who is in the film for maybe three minutes, though?
My Vote the Godfather
2001
A Beautiful Mind Now this is what we talk about when we talk about worthless, instantly disposable Oscar bait. There's been worse winners in this category to be sure, but I don't know that there's been a less relevant Best Picture winner in this half of the List Project. Dumb hallucinations and treacly scenes of Russell Crowe writing math equations on windows and circling letters in magazine articles is now the level at which "feel-good" is pitched. I have no idea why Jennifer Connelly won an Oscar for playing such a one-dimensional fantasy that for the majority of the film I was waiting for the revelation that
she didn't exist.
Gosford Park It's a hilarious indictment against the Academy that Ron Howard won the Best Director because there was a feeling he was "owed" it, and yet Robert Altman was nominated for this, one of his best films and his last great film, and went away empty handed. Written by the eventual creator of
Downton Abbey, this is one of the best examinations of upstairs/downstairs class interactions I've ever seen. Filled with handfuls of talented performers doing their thing in tandem with each other, this is completely in Altman's wheelhouse and he runs with it.
In the Bedroom Tom Wilkenson and Sissy Spacek are two supremely talented actors (and how wonderful has Wilkenson's post-
Full Monty career resurgence been?) but this film is so laughably inert that it often feels like a parody of what people who don't watch indie films think independent cinema is: slow-moving, intentionally stilted character performances and a truncated narrative filled out with long spaces. I didn't hate this so much as I was completely bewildered at why anyone thought it was relaying insight or entertainment or anything else other than morbid curiousity.
the Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring What's left to say about these films except that they all run together, they're all okay, and I've already talked about them twice? Well, I remember someone brought me a light-up LOTR mug from Burger King (I think?) around the time of the release of this first film. Isn't that so very interesting!
Moulin Rouge! An obscenity against musicals, against cinema, and against the superior Best Picture nominee from 49 years earlier that will forever be besmirched by sharing a title (sans punctuation). Hyper garbage that assaults the viewer with its florid re-appropriations of modern pop standards in service of the empty pleasure of recognition and nothing more. This is soulless anti-art.
My Vote Gosford Park
2009
A Serious Man So the Academy increases their ballot loads to ten films, ostensibly to not repeat another embarrassment like 2008's nominations, and then things like this slip in instead of the blockbusters pundits had been anticipating. You do have to hand it to the Coens though: they make a movie everyone, even their detractors, loves, and then turn around and make
Burn After Reading and this, two of their worst, most Coen-y films ever.
An Education It's still ridiculous that Carey Mulligan didn't win for this star-making performance, though to be fair she hasn't really stretched her muscles since despite starring in several board-popular flicks in the interim. This too is widely believed to only be here thanks to the ten nominee ballots, but at least it merits a charity inclusion. Further discussion by me can be found in its dedicated thread.
Avatar Reading back on my comments in the film's dedicated thread, it's comical how far from the mark my predictions were for this film's failure. Having actually seen the film now, though, I can't say I'd change my predictions one bit, even if they did prove wrong. How is this is the highest grossing film of all time? Are we all collectively that stupid / easily distracted that any loud, brightly-colored moving Lisa Frank Trapper Keeper is capable of vacuuming in any and all easily led viewers? This is without exaggeration one of the most excruciating film-watching experiences in recent memory, a joyless, witless, paint-by-numbers exploration of the most hamfisted cultural and ecological cliches possible. Moments like Giovanni Ribisi derisively laughing at a Lorax-like plea for the trees was only missing organ music and a train-track to complete the mustache-twirling heavy-handedness. This "movie" was the world's longest Windows 2000 screensaver, filled with ugly and predictable creatures operating within easily guessed and executed narrative lines. I hated this film and I pray to whatever God you offer that the forthcoming sequels do not get nominated for Best Picture so that I may be spared ever again entering into the thinly-sketched "world" of Pandora.
the Blind Side I was dreading this but I didn't have much cause for worry. Contrary to my worst fears, this is a film that mostly has its heart in the right place, and the picture's greatest strength is when it forgets Sandra Bullock's showboating and instead depicts how almost every action she takes in the film is to benefit the underprivileged black child her family adopts, not to benefit her growth as a nice white lady. Indeed, the film only devotes maybe five minutes total to the pushback she receives from her former friends and onlookers (and those scenes are as predictable as the sun rising) and the majority to her caring about a nice kid who, with the right environment and resources, is able to excel. None of this is a step above any made for TV movie, but it's still a better film than you might suspect.
District 9 Perfect example of a film I'd have never gone anywhere near without this project shoving my shoulder… not that I'm exactly cheering at the results, though. Even though I didn't get much out of the film, I applaud the Academy for actually taking advantage of the ten nominees to honor a film far outside of their comfort zone and doing so with a flick that reflects several popular trends in modern cinema (mockumentary, sci-fi, cat food eating, &c). The social commentary here, however, is so suffocating and obvious that it boggles the mind that many viewers insist it doesn't exist-- It reminds me of the time my screenwriting class in college had to watch
V for Vendetta (it was a random pick for a film then in theaters) and one of my super-conservative classmates could not believe there was any anti-Bush message to the film and was incredulous to the idea of it being present! The special effects here are nicely done and it looks more expensive than it actually was, even if that means the end result of all the light show antics is the same shoot 'em up finale we've seen in a thousand other pics. I thought the best thing here was the strong central performance by Sharlto Copley, and while I'm in no rush to see another Neill Blomkamp film, I'd definitely be interested in another Copley one.
the Hurt Locker One strong distinction between the Vietnam War and the Iraq War is that for whatever reason, audiences haven't been able to engage with films tackling the Iraq war on anything approaching the level they afforded to Vietnam decades earlier. I haven't seen a lot of other examples but if
the Hurt Locker is the best of the lot, I think the reason why's fairly obvious: there's little real
combat in the traditional war movie context we've been conditioned to expect, and while dismantling bombs and dodging firefights has its own function and value, it doesn't make for a particularly satisfying filmic experience. Jeremy Renner is quite good as the central figure and I give the film credit for bolstering his visibility, but the overall impact of the film doesn't carry it too far.
Inglourious Basterds I've already expounded on this one enough in its dedicated thread, but short version: good performances, occasionally clever script, questionable at-best morals.
Precious: Based on the Novel "Push" by Sapphire One has to question the need to devote so much energy to such a fervently squalid tale of downbeat unhappiness, but that the subject matter is ugly doesn't preclude the film from examining and depicting its material with due diligence. That said, this may be generally well-acted, but its the most over-directed of the films nominated this year, and Lee Daniels' insistence in getting in-between everything else happening in the film betrays a lack of confidence in the material (which is probably justified). Considering I taught kids much like those depicted in the film for several years, my favorite moments in the film were those depicting the alternative school's classroom interactions. One scene, where several of the students share their "fairy tales," is so dead-on in terms of how each girl approaches their assignment that I wanted to give whoever relayed that info to the filmmakers a gold star for actually getting a depiction of inner city schoolwork correct. Outside of the interplay between the troubled girls in this small class environment, though, I didn't walk away with much else to praise, though overall this like
the Blind Side was a lot better than I'd feared.
Up A bittersweet first ten minutes and a subsequent cute twenty minutes gave a lot of false promise to this story that takes all of the possibility its premise promises and then… turns into a tedious South American "adventure" with talking dogs and a goofy bird and a villainous blimp pilot and so on until I was counting down the clock. I don't understand who thought it'd be funnier/more interesting to take the characters out of their flying house, but c'mon. Obviously this isn't going to be the Pixar film that finally converts me to their alleged genius, but at least the first act is enjoyable. In fact, stop it thirty minutes in and it's an all right short.
Up in the Air Easily the best of the lot and, thanks to a mini-scandal about screen-credits that everyone has already forgotten, it went away empty handed (incredibly it lost its sure-thing charity win in Adapted Screenplay to
Precious-- Never 4Get that they showed the scene with Precious stealing a bucket of chicken when it won, too!). It's a shame though, as this is a mature look at professionalism versus intimacy, codes of conduct, and ultimately loneliness. I think often of poor George Clooney's character, living out of a suitcase, every time I meet some young
Frances Ha-ready hipster who proudly proclaims how little he owns.
My Vote Up in the Air
2012
Amour I'm hardly a Haneke acolyte but I could appreciate what he does here, even if the end result didn't seem particularly exceptional. The film does the small incremental moments of a loved one creeping towards death well and the central performances are strong. The falsely objective camera is suspect, as per usual with Haneke, and sometimes the attention to detail borders on exploitative, but overall I enjoyed this, if that's the right word for it.
Argo Inside baseball wins for the second year in a row. Further proof that the Academy loves a narrative external to the nominated film itself, this effective and entertaining political thriller only won thanks to Affleck's unceremonious snub in the Best Director category, but even considering the machinations that led to its win, it's hard to feel much resentment at the film. Nothing here's revolutionary, pun definitely intended, but I enjoyed the film's obvious audience-pleasing aspects and the stress of the "serious" story contrasted with John Goodman and Alan Arkin's amusingly over-the-top sitcom lines made the whole endeavor breeze by like nothing.
Beasts of the Southern Wild The sin isn't that the Academy thought this was a better film than
Moonrise Kingdom, it's that they thought it was a better film than any other movie that didn't make it into this category. Already trashed and burned in its own dedicated thread.
Django Unchained I don't think I'm going to do write-ups like this ever again for the years moving forward, as I will no doubt have already offered my thoughts on all nominated films in their respective threads. I'll still weigh in on which film gets my vote, but future years will see the same issue I have now: I've already talked about this one in its respective thread and not enough time has passed in the interim for me to contribute anything new here.
Les Miserables Oh man, I had a peak at the dedicated thread and saw my initial hopes for this after hearing a lot of misleading info about its merits and, well, were we ever so young? This thing is a disaster, one of the worst-directed musicals I've ever seen-- even the much-lauded one-take of Anne Hathaway's big number is unimaginatively staged so that she's in close-up in one side of the screen and the rest is darkness. Note to makers of film musicals, one of the most alive and vivid expressions of art available: do not film a musical like you are making screencaps for our forum's avatars. Hathaway's the best thing here and she's gone soon. The sets looks expensive but who can be sure since we don't really see much of anything except shot-reverse shots of whoever is singing at the moment. And what we can see is absolute squalor and ugliness-- why even bother to make a musical if it's going to look and feel like actual shit?
Life of Pi Though I enjoyed the book, I wasn't particularly looking forward to this adaptation, but it didn't take long for me to completely buy into what Ang Lee's done here, which is take a seemingly unfilmable novel and not only deliver a great film but produce a final product that improves on the source material. Lee absolutely deserved the Best Director Oscar for his achievement here, which finally marries CGI with a sense of wonder. This is simply put the best use of CGI I've ever seen, and it is employed in the very fashion I keep bitching about: he uses it to create things that could never be and does so in way that retains some level of plausibility and imagination. Irrfan Khan, so brilliant in the third season of
In Treatment (I had no idea he was so young, which makes his performance in the show even more impressive), provides the perfect level of distance and inflect needed to sustain the outlandish story via his droll narration, and due respect to the young man playing the physical embodiment of Pi for most of the film, Khan's who I walk away remembering.
Lincoln There's a good ninety minute movie in here about the actual battle in the House of Representatives to pass the 13th Amendment, but Steven Spielberg fills it on all sides with personal details of Lincoln's home strife, family matters, and all other matter of ephemera that countless other films have broached. Why not focus solely on the most fascinating aspect here? Clearly the film is getting its modern parallel digs in, and why not? I was enjoying its central passages so much that I was disheartened when the film kept running after the bill's passage and I realized the film was going to end in the assassination. I mean, why? Why not end it fifteen minutes earlier? Who cares about that in relation to what we've seen in this film? Because Daniel Day Lewis' Lincoln is so good that we have to do the high school play version of an adult film just to lend additional gravitas in a move that only signals the audience isn't respected enough to be engages solely in the House battle? Although, DDL
is good (unrecognizable, honestly), as are the rest of the cast of scoundrels making up the politicians. I particularly enjoyed David Strathairn, who is given the film's best moment in response to being subjected to another of Lincoln's endless spew of aphorisms. Ultimately though this is just another historical docudrama, like countless others from cinema past, doomed to be shown in classrooms and aired on basic cable every couple of months, but essentially irrelevant in the long run.
Silver Linings Playbook Another film I've already discussed ad nauseum in its dedicated thread. Cliff Notes: Cute romance, good performances, charmingly old-fashioned for all its swears.
Zero Dark Thirty Like
the Hurt Locker, everyone else seems to have gotten way more than a shrug out of this, but that's strictly where it falls for me. Jessica Chestain is good if unremarkable in the central performance, and the climactic real-time raid was oversold to levels it couldn't possibly deliver so I'm not surprised I was disappointed, but disappointed all the same.
My Vote Life of Pi
Guess my gambit of only watching Best Picture nominees for the last month finally paid off because I'm finished-- and boy does it feel nice to be out of movie jail! Out of 506 nominees, one is lost and one only available via UCLA, so that leaves 504 nominees now seen by me. How neat to actually finish one of these projects. I'll continue to weigh in here when others attempt to follow suit and I'll also make sure to contribute thoughts on subsequent years' nominees and winners for as long as I post here (now that I've done it I'll have to keep up with it for the rest of my natural life-- it's kinda like the ending of
A Handful of Dust). But otherwise, so long suckas!
Housekeeping for the second part of the project:
Top 5 Best Best Picture Winners
the Godfather (1972)
Chicago (2002)
the Artist (2011)
the Deer Hunter (1978)
No Country For Old Men (2007)
Top 5 Worst Best Picture Winners
Crash (2005)
Out of Africa (1985)
Rain Man (1988)
Slumdog Millionaire (2008)
the English Patient (1996)
Highest-ranking Year 1976 (4.6) (Highest overall score from any year from either side of the divide. "Fun" "fact": Only three out of 85 years ended up with an average rating of 4 or higher: 1976, 1994, and 2007)
Lowest-ranking Year 1977 (1.8) (Tied with 1958 for lowest overall score from both sides of the divide)
Top 10 Best Best Picture Nominees
the Last Picture Show (1971)
All the President's Men (1976)
Broadcast News (1987)
Apocalypse Now (1979)
Nashville (1975)
Michael Clayton (2007)
JFK (1991)
American Graffiti (1973)
Traffic (2000)
Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)
Top 10 Worst Best Picture Nominees
the Hours (2002)
Avatar (2009)
Beasts of the Southern Wild (2012)
Scent of a Woman (1992)
Julia (1977)
Ray (2004)
the Turning Point (1977)
Tootsie (1982)
127 Hours (2010)
Hello, Dolly! (1969)