One of the biggest surprises in Oscar history occurred the night of March 21, 1999 when Shakespeare in Love beat out the heavily favored Saving Private Ryan to win Best Picture. It was an interesting year in that two Elizabethan films (Shakespeare in Love and Elizabeth, both incidentally starring both Geoffrey Rush and Joseph Fiennes) …
Category: Best Picture Blogs
1997 Winner for Best Picture – Titanic
One of the true juggernauts in cinema history closed the deal by being named the year’s best picture after it had already been crowned the all-time box office champion. In late 1997 and early 1998, Titanic became a cultural phenomenon, the likes of which had rarely been seen. Not only did the movie make more …
1996 Winner for Best Picture – The English Patient
I hadn’t seen The English Patient since it came out in 1996, but I do remember feeling underwhelmed by it at the time, with the exception that Ralph Fiennes gave an exceptional performance as Count Laszlo de Almasy, the film’s main character and protagonist. Almasy was a brooding, seemingly unhappy man in his youth and …
1995 Winner for Best Picture – Braveheart
Braveheart is a film that I love and it truly is a film that has something for everyone. Yes, it is a violent film with some pretty graphic battle scenes, so on its surface this looks like nothing more than an action/adventure movie. However at its core it’s essentially a love story and it shows …
1994 Winner for Best Picture – Forrest Gump
Forrest Gump became a cultural phenomenon of the mid-1990’s. There are so many catch phrase lines like, “Momma always said life is like a box of chocolates; you never know what you’re gonna get”, and “Stupid is as stupid does”, among many others. Tom Hanks, coming off a Best Actor win from the previous year’s …
1993 Winner for Best Picture – Schindler’s List
Wow…. Just Wow. That’s the first impression that I got from Schindler’s List. I saw Schindler’s List in the theater when it first came out, and I remember being so emotionally browbeaten that I never had the desire to put myself through that again. Even then, I recognized that it was not only a great …
1992 Winner for Best Picture – Unforgiven
For the first time since Cimarron in 1930/31, a Western would claim the Academy’s highest honor. Certainly, Dances With Wolves could be considered a Western, but I look at that film more as an historical drama/action film. Unforgiven, 1992’s Best Picture winner is a full on, no-holds-bard, full-fledged Western movie that starred and was directed …
1991 Winner for Best Picture – The Silence of the Lambs
I’m going to start out by saying that, in a vacuum, I don’t feel strongly about The Silence of the Lambs one way or the other. It’s not a bad film, but neither is it a great one. I liked it, but I did not love it. I thought Jody Foster was great, and I …
1990 Winner for Best Picture – Dances With Wolves
Dances with Wolves was the movie event of 1990. I remember when it came out and it was the movie that everyone was talking about. Personally, I remember seeing it the year it came out and being underwhelmed. Perhaps it was because I had heard too much hype over it. Perhaps it was because I …
1989 Winner for Best Picture – Driving Miss Daisy
The 1980’s went out with a whimper as far as the Academy was concerned when they bestowed their highest honor on Driving Miss Daisy. Not unlike earlier winners from the decade like Ordinary People and Terms of Endearment, Driving Miss Daisy is a nice film with a lot of emotion but very little actual drama. …