Picked up the pieces while watching every Best Picture winner in order. There were several films that pleasantly surprised me and other films that disappointed me. At the time I started this exercise, I hadn’t seen 42 of the 86 films that at that time had won Best Picture. Birdman won when I was roughly …
Category: Best Picture Blogs
Best Picture Winners from Worst to Best
94. Tom Jones – A bawdy and Avant-garde English comedy that was sloppily made and boring to watch. 93. The Broadway Melody – The first “talkie” to win. This film demonstrated why synced sound set movie-making back by a decade or more. 92. Around the World in 80 Days – A visual spectacle that is …
2014 Winner for Best Picture – Birdman: Or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)
Birdman: Or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) is thisclose to being a masterpiece. The bulk of the film is told in a way that is stylized, witty and thoughtful all at the same time. This is a very entertaining film that has a well-told story, characters that are engaging and deep and have relatable issues, …
2013 Winner for Best Picture – 12 Years a Slave
12 Years a Slave is the type of movie that makes you mad. Much like Platoon did nearly 30 years earlier, 12 Years a Slave forced us to confront one of the darkest periods of our history in a way that was uncomfortable, disturbing and sometimes difficult to watch. What makes it even more troubling …
2012 Winner for Best Picture – Argo
Argo is one of my favorite films of the decade. This is a balanced film that does everything that it needs to do. It’s a mature film that is serious and yet has just the right amount of wit and humor and sarcasm to make it entertaining without being overly heavy and too dark. Argo …
2011 Winner for Best Picture – The Artist
Eighty-three years after the very first Academy Awards ceremony in 1928 when Wings took home the Academy’s highest honor, another silent film won Best Picture. The Artist wasn’t actually silent, as it did have musical accompaniment and there were a couple of sequences with synchronized sound, but it was still a silent film for all …
2010 Winner for Best Picture – The King’s Speech
This is going to be a difficult one for me. I remember hearing all of the buzz surrounding The King’s Speech when it came out, and how wonderful a movie it was and how it was going to clean up come Oscar night. Then I saw it for myself, and while I did enjoy it, …
2009 Winner for Best Picture – The Hurt Locker
Ever since 1944 the Academy had been nominating five films per year for Best Picture or Best Motion Picture or Outstanding Motion Picture. From 1931/32-1943 the Academy was nominating between 8 and 10 pictures per year. They went back to that model in 2009, and we had a whopping 10 nominees for Best Picture, including …
2008 Winner for Best Picture – Slumdog Millionaire
Hollywood paid homage to Bollywood in 2008, and Slumdog Millionaire was rewarded with the Oscar. From a production standpoint, it’s amazing that this film was even made. Director Danny Boyle had to take guerilla film making to a whole new level as much of the filming they did in India was done without permits or …
2007 Winner for Best Picture – No Country for Old Men
By 2007 the Coen brothers, Ethan and Joel, had directed some of the most recognizable and enduring films of the previous two decades. Films like Raising Arizona, Miller’s Crossing, Barton Fink, Fargo, The Big Lebowski among others demonstrated a penchant for dark comedy, snappy and witty dialogue, sometimes graphic violence, and tension-filled storytelling. In No …