The Real Best Pictures

The Oscars (or “Oscar” as the Academy obnoxiously insists on calling it this year) are this Sunday and “The King’s Speech” is essentially a lock to take home Best Picture over the superior “The Social Network.”* In honor of the Academy once again failing to correctly pick the best movie of the year let’s take a look back over who won the top award in film the last ten years, & who should have won.

*Nearly every critics’ award for Best Picture has gone to “Network,” which once again brings us to the insanity of awards in the entertainment industry. In sports the players and coaches do not decide who wins awards at the end of the season, rather sports writers decide the winners. This makes sense seeing as sports writers are paid to cover the entire sport, while players & coaches are merely concerned with their own teams. Yet in the movie, music, & television industries it is those within the industries, & not the critics whose job it is to judge what is produced, who decide the awards. Hence instead of having awards decided by an educated, relatively unbiased group of individuals we’re left with awards being handed out by an uneducated, petulant group of people with definitive favorites. Why? Because celebrities love nothing more than patting themselves on the back.

2000

Winner: Gladiator-Ridley Scott’s “historical” epic about a Roman general who becomes a gladiator & must fight his way to revenge against the Emperor who murdered his family & mentor.

Actual Best: Almost Famous, Cameron Crowe’s masterpiece is the semi-autobiographical tale of a teenage journalist covering the fictitious band Stillwater for “Rolling Stone.” Crowe’s screenplay belongs in the pantheon of all-time greats & he manages to get career best performances from lead Patrick Fugit as well as Billy Cudrup (“Without Limits”), Kate Hudson (a dozen terrible romantic comedies), & Jason Lee (“My Name is Earl”). While Academy Award winners France McDormand (“Fargo”) & Philip Seymour Hoffman (“Capote”) provide two of my favorite supporting performances in film history (in addition Anna Paquin, Zooey Deschanel, Jimmy Fallon, Rainn Wilson, Jay Baruchel, & Nick Swardson also have minor roles or cameos). While the movie failed to receive proper recognition from the Academy (not even receiving a Best Picture nomination), notable movie critic Roger Ebert called it the best film of the year & ESPN columnist Bill Simmons declared it the best film of the decade. This is not to say “Gladiator” is not an extraordinary film. Indeed it ranks in my all-time top 5 with its nearly unmatched fight scenes & fantastic performances by Crowe, Joaquin Phoenix (“Signs”), Connie Nielson, & personal favorite Djimon Hounsou (“Blood Diamond”). “Traffic,” Steven Soderbergh’s examination of the drug war, is also a fantastic movie, but “Almost Famous” is a “golden god” of a movie.

2001

Winner: A Beautiful Mind-Ron Howard’s biopic of Nobel Prize winning genius John Nash starring Russell Crowe.

Actual Best: The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring the first of Peter Jackson’s trilogy remains my favorite as it is more character driven & less dependent on massive battle scenes as the latter two (though for my money the battle within the Mines of Moria is on par with any in the trilogy). Ian McKellan (“X-Men”) & Viggo Mortensen (“A History of Violence”) are the highlights of the film with their superb supporting turns as Gandalf the Grey and Aragorn. While the friendship between Sam & Frodo provides the films heart, & comes off as far less homosexual than in the proceeding films. While Crowe’s performance in “Mind” is top notch the rest of the film fails to ever exceed very good & I would argue that, along with “LOTR,” “Shrek” was also a superior film.

2002

Winner: Chicago-the first musical to win Best Picture since “Oliver!” in 1969, “Chicago” starred Renee Zellweger (“Jerry Maguire”) & Catherine Zeta-Jones (“The Mask of Zoro”) as a couple of murderers battling for fame in 1920s Chicago & Richard Gere (“pretty Woman”) as their lawyer.

Actual Best: I don’t know. I’ve never seen “Chicago” or its chief competitor, the Roman Polanski directed “The Pianist”, a biographical film about Władysław Szpilmana, Jewish-Polish musician, played by Adrien Brody (”King Kong”), living through World War II. Without having seen either I cannot say whether they exceed “Lord of the Rings: the Two Towers”.

2003:

Winner: Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King-the conclusion of Peter Jackson’s adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien’s masterpiece with Frodo & Sam trekking through Mordor, seeking to destroy the One Ring in the fires of Mount Doom, while the remaining members of the Fellowship attempt to defend Gondor from Sauran’s forces (Without any context this all sounds rather ridiculous doesn’t it?).

Actual Best: City of God a Brazilian crime drama depicting the rise of organized crime in Rio de Janeiro narrowly edges out “Return of the King.” While I love the “LOTR” trilogy I found the last entry to be the weakest as the Frodo/Sam/Gollum storyline became tired (as it did in the book as well) & The Army of the Dead comes off as nothing more than a giant deus ex machina.* Now I’m not as big a fan of “City of God” as some are but, I’ll take its gritty, inventive storyline over the final chapter of “LOTR” grand saga.

*For anyone who doesn’t know what that is a dues ex machina is a plot devise where a seemingly unsolvable problem is resolved in a sudden, contrived, manner using a new character, ability, or object

2004

Winner: Million Dollar Baby-Clint Eastwood’s tale of a grizzled boxing trainer & the underdog female boxer, played by Hilary Swank (“The Reaping”), he trains & comes to love as a daughter.

Actual Best: Million Dollar Baby. Kudos to the Academy for finally awarding the correct movie! Eastwood seemingly does no wrong as both director & as one of the leads. & unlike some of his more recent films (I’m looking at you “Gran Torino”) he even does a fantastic job with his musical choices. Paul Greengrass’ script is strong & only enhanced by the delivery of Eastwood, Swank, & Morgan Freeman. While some dislike the film because it is either too depressing (it can be difficult to watch toward the end) or because they see it as endorsing euthanasia (these people are really missing the point of the film), I think it’s the greatest boxing film in history. Of course it’s not really about boxing, but most great sports movies aren’t truly about sports at all.

2005

Winner: Crash-Paul Haggis’ film about a number of interconnected stories revolving around racial & social tensions.

Actual Best: Not sure. Conventional wisdom is “Brokeback Mountain” got robbed; I’ve yet to see it, or fellow nominee “Good Night, and Good Luck.” Some would argue “A History of Violence,” a movie that felt incomplete to me & not worthy of all of its acclaim. As for “Crash” itself I was originally a huge fan, however over the years its faults, primarily its utter lack of subtlety, have become more apparent to me. I still find it to be a powerful movie, but not quite a great one. Ultimately, having not seen the aforementioned movie, I would pick Steven Spielberg’s “Munich,” about the Israeli government’s secret retaliation attacks in response to the massacre of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics by Palestinian terrorists. The film focuses primarily on one squad of Mossad assassins & their lead agent, Eric Bana (“Troy”) giving a strong lead performance. Some have criticized the film for either failing to make any statement on the Israel/Palestine conflict or equating counter-terrorism to terrorism, however I feel it makes the true, & often ignored, point that violence begets violence & that killing others can torment a man’s soul. It belongs up there with Spielberg’s best.

2006

Winner: The Departed-the Boston crime drama that finally landed Martin Scorsese his overdo Oscar.

Actual Best: The Departed. Sanity strikes again! The violent, profanity laced film is classic Scorsese & among his best. Every major character is well acted, but it is DiCaprio (giving his best performance to date) who elevates the film to greatness with his complicated portrayal of an undercover cop. It doesn’t hurt that it has one of the most shocking endings in recent film history. “The Departed” won in a strong year for motion pictures beating out the likes of the outstanding family dramedy “Little Miss Sunshine,” Clint Eastwood’s excellent World War II film “Letter from Iwo Jima,” & the powerful post-apocalyptic drama “Children of Men.”

2007

Winner: No Country for Old Men-the Coen brothers’ crime drama that plays like a modern day Western.

Actual Best: No Country for Old Men. Two in a row! “No Country” would be great alone based on the excellent cinematography, the direction by the Coens, & the performances by Josh Brolin (“Grindhouse”), Tommy Lee Jones (“The Fugitive”), & Javier Bardem (Bardem’s Anton Chigurh is one of the all-time great movie villains). However it is the Coen brothers’ script, based on the Cormac McCarthy novel of the same name, that truly makes the movie-the dialogue in this movie is the best I’ve ever heard. All that makes up for a less than climactic ending, though on repeat viewing I find the ending works much better than I originally thought. The movie treats its characters as real people in a real world & thus the end need not be wrapped up perfectly.

2008

Winner: Slumdog Millionaire-Danny Boyle’s fairytale of a young man who grows up in the slums of Mumbai & ends up on the Indian version of “Who Wants to be a Millionaire?” in order to be reunited with his lost love.

Actual Best: The Dark Knight. Much like 1994 when “Forrest Gump” defeated ”The Shawshank Redemption” there wasn’t really a wrong choice here. “Slumdog” is an incredible movie & Danny Boyle’s masterpiece, but I have to give the slight edge to Christopher Nolan’s “Dark Knight.” Nearly every minute of the film is driven with tense excitement, the musical score is emphatic, & every performance is spot on most noticeably Heath Ledger’s as he recreated the Joker into a more violent & unstable character than ever before.

2009

Winner: The Hurt Locker-Kathryn Bigelow’s Iraq War drama following a three-man United States Army Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) team through their tour of duty.

Actual Best: Up. That’s right, I’m going with an animated movie (granted it is the greatest animated movie ever). Pete Docter & John Peterson’s screenplay is extraordinary & there may not be a better five-minutes in film history than the sequence showing Carl and Ellie’s life together in which not a word is spoken. The emotional power in those few minutes, thanks in large part to Michael Giacchino's score, is remarkable & drives the rest of the movie forward. It doesn’t hurt that the rest of the movie is filled with imagination, humor, & even a few breathtaking action sequences. & that final shot of Carl & Ellie’s house sitting on the cliffs overlooking Paradise Falls is nothing short of perfect. As for “The Hurt Locker” it’s a very good movie, & Jeremy Renner (“The Town”) & Anthony Mackie (“Half Nelson”) are brilliant, but for a movie that attempts for realism there are too many scenes that ring false. There’s one thing we can be sure of though, unless you think storyline & acting are secondary to special affects, “Avatar” sure as hell didn’t deserve to win.

Final Tally

Correct Picks: 3 (Million Dollar Baby, The Departed, & No Country For Old Men)

Actual Bests that weren’t even nominated for Best Picture: 3 (Almost Famous, City of God, The Dark Knight)

Good job Academy.

Think the Academy got more/less right? Think I’m a wack-job who doesn’t know what he’s talking about? Or maybe you even agree with me. Either way your thoughts are welcomed below.