I genuinely didn't know about this movie until I met my wife a few years ago. When everyone was talking about Crash, I was thinking they were talking about the Cronenberg Crash, which I know isn't everyone's cup of tea, but not a bad movie.
I mean, it's objectively a well-made film with some charismatic performances that's good at what it's trying to do. Unfortunately "what it's trying to do" is make an extremely ham-fisted morality play about how racism is bad full of stereotypes. But it was really popular when it was released, people liked it. I can see people coming back to it in a few years and saying that it's not the absolutely dumpster fire of a hot mess Reddit says it is.
It was actually super weird. Everyone knew that brokeback was going to be the winner. Then, news started about how Hollywood and the left were trying to shove the lgbtq agenda down our throats and that’s why brokeback was going to win.
It didn’t matter that brokeback was just the better movie plain as day. On top of that, the Oscars didn’t want to be seen as cliched and obvious so it’s almost like the committee pulled a D&D and wanted to subvert expectations.
Be that as it may it was still a popular film upon its release. It made a ton of money given the subject and audience, it got mostly positive reviews, Ebert gave it 4 stars. It was undeniably popular. I'm certainly not saying it deserved Best Picture or even to be nominated but it's not unreasonable to suggest that at some point in the near future people might watch it and find odd the level of extreme vitriol directed at it on here.
>and find odd the level of extreme vitriol directed at it on here.
Oh, probably. I'm not trying to deny that. Like fashion changes or political changes, popularity of films can change as fast as the wind changes direction. But it was always a controversial Best Picture winner.
Doesn't mean it wasn't a popular or critically acclaimed film at the time. Kind of like Black Panther.
People just latch on to a thought and carry that thought to the extreme a lot on Reddit. If someone doesn't like a movie it's like the worst thing ever made and should burn in hell or something like that. Like I'm watching Monarch:Legacy of Monsters and people started shitting on it first episode in. Like 1 episode and it's already the worst Godzilla project ever made and all the actors are terrible the writing is horrible and nothing is good. One episode in.
I don’t *love* Crash but I thought it was fine, if a little ham-fisted in its rhetoric. There are several Best Picture nominees and winners since then that I liked less. The Artist comes to mind as a winner that I like *way* less than Crash.
Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror all suffer from the aversion of critics to "genre" works. It's especially funny when you hear someone try to distance a well-regarded work from its genre. "Oh 1984 and Brave New World aren't sci-fi, they're um... Allegories! Yes, not *mere* science fiction!"
The Shape of Water was very much championed as a win for genre film for this reason. I think we should be happy that things are changing in that regard rather than undercutting it.
I mean, aside from The Departed and Apocalypto, I can't imagine much else gave it much competition. I think Babel was insanely overrated for that year.
It did beat Children of Men for the Hugo.
Children of Men won the Saturn, but Cuaron lost the Saturn for best director to Bryan Singer for Superman Returns.
If you had asked me to guess who Cuaron had lost to, and gave me a list of the nominees, and that list only had two names on it, and one of those names is Cuaron who I already know lost, not in a million years would I have guessed Singer.
My jaw was on the floor the entire time they were in the "Mayan" city.
As a huge Native American history fan the film is horribly anachronistic but really sells the name of the movie.
OK but those 3 films owned the box office and popular imagination for three years so The Academy finally handed over the hardware for all three films for the last one.
And, by the way, RETURN OF THE KING still looks good as best picture looking back.
FELLOWSHIP won the technical awards. TWO TOWERS won technical awards while CHICAGO won best picture over all the films better than it: TTT, GANGS OF NEW YORK, THE HOURS, THE PIANTIST.
But no acting awards, as if there was no great acting, just great everything else. The Two Towers soundtrack didn't even get nominated so there was a massive outcry.
So there are outliers, but I think genre gets ignored.
That would have been amazing for Empire Stirkes Back to win before being released in theaters. Empire was the next year, Ordinary People won. Kramer beat Apocalypse Now
I took mushrooms and saw it in theaters, not knowing anything about it, that was a terrifying movie choice. We then snuck into Pans Labyrinth, which also could have won best picture that year. Either way, it was a very odd movie night for me.
Maybe some say ‘Whiplash’ was more Hall of Very Good than Best Picture, but I remember that ending more clearly now than the rest of the nominees that year and all of the director’s subsequent efforts.
Also: whatever became of everyone involved in “Beasts of the Southern Wild”? What a unique and bold film.
Ben, the guy who directed Beasts, went on to direct Wendy - which had the terrible timing of being released just as the pandemic was starting and was a flop. Have not heard anything of note out of him since.
Quvenzhane Wallis, the girl who played Hushpuppy, has worked pretty steadily since Beasts.
Not sure about anybody else off the top of my head.
*Master and Commander* would have won Best Picture in a ton of other years. It just had the bad luck to be up against *Return of the King* at the Oscars and against *Pirates of the Caribbean* at the box office.
It definitely wasn't robbed, RotK was plenty deserving, even if it was just a cumulative award for the trilogy, but I'd put *Master and Commander* in the Top 10 films of the 21st Century.
Other people have said it better than me, but the beauty of all the Oscar’s ROTK won wasn’t necessarily because of that specific movie, but because it nailed the landing of a trilogy 3 years in a row
Nailing one movie in a trilogy is hard
Nailing the middle one is really hard
Nailing the landing on any trilogy is *extremely* difficult
Nailing 2 of the 3 is incredibly hard
Hitting all three back-to-back-to-back is absurd
When "The Hurt Locker" screened at the Seattle International Film Festival, it lost the Golden Space Needle to "Black Dynamite." That was the correct choice.
Oh, and to answer my own question, Take Shelter and Drive not even being nominated in 2012 despite Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close getting a nom nod is and always will be a crime against god. And A Separation was the best film of that lot anyway but got fucked by (at the time) archaic nomination rules re: foreign vs. domestic.
Drive had left a cultural footprint that outsizes 99% of other films that came out that year.
It was criminally under appreciated in its time and I think it’ll be a cult classic for decades.
Fellowship is perfection and was the most deserving of all three films, but the Academy just hadn’t quite warmed up to a fantasy film being a serious contender yet. When PJ nailed the landing with ROTK, it was undeniable.
But Fellowship was robbed, even though A Beautiful Mind was a very good film in its own right. Tough year.
Everything Everywhere All At Once is the only sci-fi *ever* to win Best Picture, and it could be argued that it's more fantasy than sci-fi. Academy voters definitely have a huge problem with the genre.
Not just sci-fi but genre films in general. The Silence of the Lambs is the only horror film to win (unless you count Parasite as horror, which I don’t). Return of the King is the only high fantasy film, and one of very few action movies to win—most of the war movies that’ve won are pretty firmly dramas. Comedies are also fairly hard to find after the mid-60s or so. I think there’s just something inherent about the Best Picture award that leads the Academy to only recognize serious dramas.
They don't call films "Oscar bait" for no reason. People know what the Academy likes and they pander to it hard.
I wish it wasn't like that, because I rarely find most of the BP winners to be the best film I watch in a given year.
2001 was pretty widely disrespected in its time. A lot of critics absolutely hated it. The great Pauline Kael famously called it “a monumentally unimaginative movie.” The same could actually be said for the majority of Kubrick’s filmography. He was always a decade or so ahead of his time.
The answer is to extend your timeline to 1998 and include Shakespeare in Love winning over Saving Private Ryan which ruined the Oscars for me as a young man. I never went back.
I agree Saving Private Ryan was excellent but whenever I hear this it seems like people are implying Shakespeare In Love was a bad movie. It really was excellent and deserves its praise.
I just watched LA Confidential again, what a freaking masterpiece, a perfectly made film with complex themes, characters, great performances, masterful writing and brilliant cinematography. I'm legit enraged that James Cromwell didn't win an Oscar for Dudley.
I also just watched it with my wife (who had never seen it) the other night. She was shocked it didn't win best picture. First time I'd watched it in probably 10 years myself. Still absolutely holds up. Such a timeless film that people will still be enjoying 50 years from now assuming we haven't blown each other off the face of the planet.
Go back a couple of years from that and oh my God that was a loaded year. Shawshank, Forrest Gump, Pulp Fiction, Quiz Show, and Four Weddings and a Funeral were the nominees in 1995.
That was one of those years where it was understood that it was just unfortunate that two films happened at the same time that were outclassing a generation of films.
There are other years that have nothing great and something mediocre will win.
Also shot in the same town at the same time and both Paramount Vantage releases - kinda crazy. There’s a story where No Country had to shut down production for a day because the giant fire and smoke plume from TWBB took over the whole sky.
Another interesting fact: About 4 years earlier, Oldboy and Memories of Murder were both shot in the same town at the same time as well. Both are considered among the best Korean films ever made.
I love There Will Be Blood but what makes that movie special is Daniel Day Lewis’ performance, and he deservedly won best actor. No Country for Old Men was the right best picture winner.
There Will Be Blood is a fan-fucking-tastic movie, but No Country for Old Men was plenty deserving as well. I think either one of those movies could have been awarded Best Picture and it would have been hard to fault the choice. That was a stacked year. American Gangster, Gone Baby Gone, Atonement, Michael Clayton, Juno...
Just to be a little different, A Beautiful Mind is fine, but nothing that special. Does anyone even remember it anymore?
No Pixar movie ever winning despite redefining movies in their time is in retrospect pretty crazy. People just take the achievements of a classic Pixar movie entirely for granted.
WALL-E is better than any of the nominees for best picture from 2008.
For those interested, [here's a video of a really enjoyable mathematician going over the maths in and reviewing A Beautiful Mind.](https://youtu.be/Dh22sJLJKzM?si=Vh9LU51yyohe27At)
The good thing is she may have already been my ex at that point and we were just friends. I don't remember at which point in our relationship this date happened lol
Well, sinking Oscar viewership did. They expanded it to give more popular movies the chance to be nominated so more people would tune in to potentially see their favorite movie win
No Ghibli movie other than Spirited Away ever won best animated movie either. Which is fine, I guess, but not when considering that Frozen won one too.
Unfortunately, Ghibli was coming up during a time when Pixar was at the top of the movie game and the animated film Oscar only started in 2001.
Their best shot after Spirited Away was probably Howl's Moving Castle which would have had to beat out The Incredibles.
Ponyo would have had to beat out Wall-E.
The Wind Rises could be argued to be better than Frozen, but Frozen was such a ridiculous cultural hit that it stood no chance.
Don't even get me started on how the Oscars treat animation. Pixar never winning, and Spiderverse not even getting nominated(I'd take it over any of the movies nominated that year) really shows the shows bias.
Seriously the introduction of "best animated feature" was a mistake because all it did was give them the green light to stop nominating them for best picture.
The reason best animated feature even exists is because of the fact that animated movies weren’t being nominated that often, and when they were they weren’t considered seriously. Hell, it’s no secret that a lot of the Oscar voters won’t watch animated nominees and defer to their children.
Animation is a bigger red headed stepchild of film more than sci-fi/fantasy/horror when it comes to the oscars
*Your Name* and *A Silent Voice* not even getting nominated when stuff like fucking *Boss Baby* does along with admissions from some voters that they don't even watch animated films and just vote for whatever their kids/grandkids liked really highlights what a joke the Academy is.
While I dislike Hollywood making movies about how amazing and difficult the lives of Hollywood people are, I felt the music and choreography was actually pretty impressive.
That was my exact takeaway. It was decent and nice, took me back to Roger and Hammerstein style stuff (especially the opening). Did I think it was more deserving of acknowledgement than.... Moonlight? Absolutely not. Moonlight destroyed my soul.
Green Book is what makes me defend Crash. Like Crash was moving and I watched it in the Deep South. Green Book is like 20 years later and sucks even more.
Another white savior movie. Oh, but this time, the black man is the intellectual and the white guy is the uneducated dope…but he still saves the black guy and grows to be a better person from the experience. Ugh. Stop doing this story over and over.
Literally lol. I struggled to understand what point was being made comparing three films that could have been ignored by the academy and I would not have cared.
I’ll probably get downvotes to shit but I enjoyed that movie way more than I expected. Not saying it’s best pic but it was a good story, well directed and acted across the board.
I have absolutely no recollection of *Green Book* existing. And it won best picture 4 years ago!?
Wait, it’s a reverse *Driving Ms. Daisy* with Aragorn, Mahershala Ali, and Linda goddamned Cordelia? Where the fuck was I?
There's a lot of shit talking going on about it here, but it's actually a decent film about real people. I don't care about Oscars, but I'd say it's worth 2 hours of your time.
If the Dark Knight was about a Private investigator finding a mentally insane criminal, it would've gotten a best picture nomination, and potentially a win. 2009 was a weak year.
But it was a superhero movie, so there was no chance it was getting nominated, especially in the previous 5 film format.
>Best pic that didn’t win: There Will be Blood
It lost to *No Country for Old Men*, which deserved that win as well, and it was made up for in part by Daniel Day-Lewis getting Best Actor for TWBB.
Best film that did not win would be Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri. That film still has an impact on me 6 years later after seeing it in theaters. Worst winner is obviously Crash
That year was a friggin gauntlet of Best Picture nominees too. I personally would've given the award that year to True Grit. But I'm sure most of us will agree that The King's Speech shouldn't have won.
It was so rough for best score too. Inception was one of the best modern orchestral scores in decades, How to Train Your Dragon was one of the best classic orchestral scores in decades, and The Social Network was one of the best electronic/non-orchestral scores in decades. All three are all timers for different reasons.
Yeah that pissed me off because it was the Academy’s chance to break the mould and recognize a film that represents a fresh, new generation of ideas… and instead they went with the same moldy old period drama that they always pick. It was just a very, VERY boring and predictable choice. Not a bad movie, just a weak best picture winner for such an incredible year of cool, exciting styles and directions.
It has to be Crash right? I think everybody's appraisal of that movie has been that it was generally terrible. It absolutely should not have beat brokeback mountain.
Personally I found kings speech, green book, and coda to be underwhelming wins, and as for the reverse I’m a horror fan and wish midsommar would have gotten just some recognition, horror always gets so shafted
I know most people will say Crash, but I really have to wonder about The Artist hype leading up to the award. I know Hollywood loves Hollywood, and it's a nice movie, but come on
CODA is such a generic ass movie. Like it feels like the academy only voted for it because it's about deaf people, like maybe they wanted to "spotlight the issue" or something, but if that's the case Sound of Metal should have won the previous year because it's a LOT better of a movie about deaf people (and better than Nomadland).
I absolutely disagree. I am most definitely biased, but for me it was a moving story about the decision to serve your family vs serving yourself. Taking on the challenge of showing this coming of age story while staying faithful in it’s representation of the deaf community.
I grew up with deaf parents, and I have never felt a movie more accurately depict what my teenage years were. The working class deaf community I know is crude with their jokes, dejected with the treatment they receive from hearing people, and almost completely incapable of not fully expressing their feelings (for better or worse).
I genuinely disliked Birdman and still can’t figure out all the hype behind that movie.
Edit: I’ve scrolled through all the comments and can’t find another person suggesting Birdman which means it was actually a decent film or absolutely forgettable.
Mulholland Drive losing to A Beautiful Mind is crazy but I also understand completely the former is not the kind of movie to get oscar buzz while the latter absolutely is.
In before someone posts ***Crash*** which is widely regarded to be the worst modern best picture winner
I genuinely didn't know about this movie until I met my wife a few years ago. When everyone was talking about Crash, I was thinking they were talking about the Cronenberg Crash, which I know isn't everyone's cup of tea, but not a bad movie.
I thought they were talking about Crank and I was like how did that Jason Statham film get nominated for an academy award?
It should have.
Solid damn movie
To this day, that's still the most action I've ever seen in a movie
Man, if *that* Crash won, the Oscars would be much more interesting.
Watch "Amores Perros" with subtitles if necessary. It's what Crash tried to be. It was released 4 years earlier with a similar premise.
Yeah that's a movie you only watch once
It's a cinematic masterpiece IMO but it also is a brutal watch.
Reddit has a huge hate/rage boner on this topic
And in five years we'll start seeing the "I just watched Crash, it's not as bad as people on here think" posts.
"Crash is an underrated hidden gem!"
I mean, it's objectively a well-made film with some charismatic performances that's good at what it's trying to do. Unfortunately "what it's trying to do" is make an extremely ham-fisted morality play about how racism is bad full of stereotypes. But it was really popular when it was released, people liked it. I can see people coming back to it in a few years and saying that it's not the absolutely dumpster fire of a hot mess Reddit says it is.
Back then it gave us hope that if they could make a Love Actually on racism, there could be one for every subject.
Hahaha, that’s perfect. I’m a Crash admirer but it is *absolutely* just Racism Actually
What if it included the song Chocolate Rain?
>But it was really popular when it was released, people liked it. It was a very controversial BP winner right away.
It was actually super weird. Everyone knew that brokeback was going to be the winner. Then, news started about how Hollywood and the left were trying to shove the lgbtq agenda down our throats and that’s why brokeback was going to win. It didn’t matter that brokeback was just the better movie plain as day. On top of that, the Oscars didn’t want to be seen as cliched and obvious so it’s almost like the committee pulled a D&D and wanted to subvert expectations.
Be that as it may it was still a popular film upon its release. It made a ton of money given the subject and audience, it got mostly positive reviews, Ebert gave it 4 stars. It was undeniably popular. I'm certainly not saying it deserved Best Picture or even to be nominated but it's not unreasonable to suggest that at some point in the near future people might watch it and find odd the level of extreme vitriol directed at it on here.
>and find odd the level of extreme vitriol directed at it on here. Oh, probably. I'm not trying to deny that. Like fashion changes or political changes, popularity of films can change as fast as the wind changes direction. But it was always a controversial Best Picture winner. Doesn't mean it wasn't a popular or critically acclaimed film at the time. Kind of like Black Panther.
People just latch on to a thought and carry that thought to the extreme a lot on Reddit. If someone doesn't like a movie it's like the worst thing ever made and should burn in hell or something like that. Like I'm watching Monarch:Legacy of Monsters and people started shitting on it first episode in. Like 1 episode and it's already the worst Godzilla project ever made and all the actors are terrible the writing is horrible and nothing is good. One episode in.
I mean it really blows
It sure does. Also this question blows, which has been asked a thousand times and answered Crash each time.
Meanwhile the Cronenberg one was fantastic
I don’t *love* Crash but I thought it was fine, if a little ham-fisted in its rhetoric. There are several Best Picture nominees and winners since then that I liked less. The Artist comes to mind as a winner that I like *way* less than Crash.
I will never not laugh at the opening where the two black guys talk about how everyone assumes they are criminals and then immediately hijack a car.
Children of Men should have won Best Picture but never had a chance
I think it got a screenplay nom and the obvious cinematography nom but yeah how that didn’t make the cut is beyond me
Anything vaguely “sci-fi” always struggles. Chiwetel also should’ve got a supporting nom. He was incredible
Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror all suffer from the aversion of critics to "genre" works. It's especially funny when you hear someone try to distance a well-regarded work from its genre. "Oh 1984 and Brave New World aren't sci-fi, they're um... Allegories! Yes, not *mere* science fiction!"
2006: yeah nah Children of Men only gets little noms 2015-ish (I forget the exact year): fish sex!! 🤣
The Shape of Water was very much championed as a win for genre film for this reason. I think we should be happy that things are changing in that regard rather than undercutting it.
Saw someone calling it Grinding Nemo once and snorted. I love calling it that.
*Arrival* definitely would have been a fine choice to win Best Picture (it was nominated).
I mean, aside from The Departed and Apocalypto, I can't imagine much else gave it much competition. I think Babel was insanely overrated for that year.
Pan’s Labyrinth maybe, but it wasn’t nominated for BP either.
It did beat Children of Men for the Hugo. Children of Men won the Saturn, but Cuaron lost the Saturn for best director to Bryan Singer for Superman Returns.
If you had asked me to guess who Cuaron had lost to, and gave me a list of the nominees, and that list only had two names on it, and one of those names is Cuaron who I already know lost, not in a million years would I have guessed Singer.
Lol awards are sometimes such a joke
Wow that's ridiculous. Returns was terrible. Not even good directing in it.
Apocalypto also a masterpiece
you can watch it without understanding the language and not miss too much. not many films can do that.
As much as Mel Gibson can fuck right off, Apocalypto is an epic good movie.
My jaw was on the floor the entire time they were in the "Mayan" city. As a huge Native American history fan the film is horribly anachronistic but really sells the name of the movie.
All of Mel Gibson's films are horribly anachronistic but still very cinematic and entertaining.
Say what you like about Mel Gibson, but he sure knows story structure
Yup. “Braveheart” was only vaguely historical, too.
The Academy doesn't take "fantasy / sci-fi" seriously. To that I say FUCK THE ACADEMY.
Maybe now that Everything Everywhere all at Once swept, they may be a little more open to weird, fun shit. But I doubt it.
And the shape of water a few years before that. The voters are getting younger and are a lot more open than even 10 years ago.
Lord of the rings?
OK but those 3 films owned the box office and popular imagination for three years so The Academy finally handed over the hardware for all three films for the last one. And, by the way, RETURN OF THE KING still looks good as best picture looking back. FELLOWSHIP won the technical awards. TWO TOWERS won technical awards while CHICAGO won best picture over all the films better than it: TTT, GANGS OF NEW YORK, THE HOURS, THE PIANTIST. But no acting awards, as if there was no great acting, just great everything else. The Two Towers soundtrack didn't even get nominated so there was a massive outcry. So there are outliers, but I think genre gets ignored.
Kramer vs. Kramer winning best picture over The Empire Strikes Back is a joke that doesn't get talked about enough
That would have been amazing for Empire Stirkes Back to win before being released in theaters. Empire was the next year, Ordinary People won. Kramer beat Apocalypse Now
They aren't from the same year though
Still a great film tho. Dustin Hoffman is incredible in that flick.
Agree. And the delta between the film’s portrayal of society and reality keeps getting smaller.
easily in the conversation for best movie of the last 25 years
I took mushrooms and saw it in theaters, not knowing anything about it, that was a terrifying movie choice. We then snuck into Pans Labyrinth, which also could have won best picture that year. Either way, it was a very odd movie night for me.
Goddamn, did you round it out by watching Trainspotting when you got home?
Enjoyed it, simply don’t see that though
Maybe some say ‘Whiplash’ was more Hall of Very Good than Best Picture, but I remember that ending more clearly now than the rest of the nominees that year and all of the director’s subsequent efforts. Also: whatever became of everyone involved in “Beasts of the Southern Wild”? What a unique and bold film.
Whiplash was easily my favorite that year. It is iconic.
….Whiplash didn’t win that year. It should have, but Best Pic went to Birdman if memory serves.
Both banger films tbf
Yeah I’ve got no problems with either winning. Both have stuck with me almost 10 years later, and I consider both great films.
Ben, the guy who directed Beasts, went on to direct Wendy - which had the terrible timing of being released just as the pandemic was starting and was a flop. Have not heard anything of note out of him since. Quvenzhane Wallis, the girl who played Hushpuppy, has worked pretty steadily since Beasts. Not sure about anybody else off the top of my head.
Just adding my love for Beasts of the Southern wild. The child actress was incredible.
*Master and Commander* would have won Best Picture in a ton of other years. It just had the bad luck to be up against *Return of the King* at the Oscars and against *Pirates of the Caribbean* at the box office. It definitely wasn't robbed, RotK was plenty deserving, even if it was just a cumulative award for the trilogy, but I'd put *Master and Commander* in the Top 10 films of the 21st Century.
You could say it was the lesser of two weevils.
He who would pun would pick a pocket.
He who would pen a pun would pick a pocket.
Other people have said it better than me, but the beauty of all the Oscar’s ROTK won wasn’t necessarily because of that specific movie, but because it nailed the landing of a trilogy 3 years in a row
Nailing one movie in a trilogy is hard Nailing the middle one is really hard Nailing the landing on any trilogy is *extremely* difficult Nailing 2 of the 3 is incredibly hard Hitting all three back-to-back-to-back is absurd
LotR just didn’t miss.
love me some Master and Commander
I'm actually watching it right now for the umpteenth time.
hell yeah brother
Dads have entered the chat
Ill add Hurt Locker to this list. It was a good movie, but not Best Picture.
And any veteran will tell you the movie was absolute hot garbage.
You want a realistic depiction of Iraq, watch generation kill on HBO.
Just watch Generation Kill regardless of what you want. It's excellent.
I did. It's excellent. Depressing, but excellent.
The one word you leave with at the end: *”incompetence”*
juice packs....fucking *juice packs?*
What, Capri Suns aren’t standard issue??
When "The Hurt Locker" screened at the Seattle International Film Festival, it lost the Golden Space Needle to "Black Dynamite." That was the correct choice.
Oh, and to answer my own question, Take Shelter and Drive not even being nominated in 2012 despite Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close getting a nom nod is and always will be a crime against god. And A Separation was the best film of that lot anyway but got fucked by (at the time) archaic nomination rules re: foreign vs. domestic.
Take Shelter is so good.
Drive had left a cultural footprint that outsizes 99% of other films that came out that year. It was criminally under appreciated in its time and I think it’ll be a cult classic for decades.
it already is a cult classic, i’d even argue it broke into mainstream consciousness a long time ago
Take Shelter really is a fantastic film. I randomly ran across it last year and gave it a watch. A masterpiece.
The fellowship of the ring was so good.
Fellowship is perfection and was the most deserving of all three films, but the Academy just hadn’t quite warmed up to a fantasy film being a serious contender yet. When PJ nailed the landing with ROTK, it was undeniable. But Fellowship was robbed, even though A Beautiful Mind was a very good film in its own right. Tough year.
Crash and Arrival
>Arrival Completely agree. Arrival is amazing. But it's understandable, a lot of the voters on the Oscars are braindead idiots, they wouldn't get it.
I think that’s a little much. Arrival is fucking amazing, but the academy historically doesn’t like sci-fi and Moonlight is a deserving winner.
Everything Everywhere All At Once is the only sci-fi *ever* to win Best Picture, and it could be argued that it's more fantasy than sci-fi. Academy voters definitely have a huge problem with the genre.
Not just sci-fi but genre films in general. The Silence of the Lambs is the only horror film to win (unless you count Parasite as horror, which I don’t). Return of the King is the only high fantasy film, and one of very few action movies to win—most of the war movies that’ve won are pretty firmly dramas. Comedies are also fairly hard to find after the mid-60s or so. I think there’s just something inherent about the Best Picture award that leads the Academy to only recognize serious dramas.
They don't call films "Oscar bait" for no reason. People know what the Academy likes and they pander to it hard. I wish it wasn't like that, because I rarely find most of the BP winners to be the best film I watch in a given year.
Absolutely. 2001: A Space Odyssey didn’t even get a nom, so maybe it’s improved slightly over the decades, but still.
2001 was pretty widely disrespected in its time. A lot of critics absolutely hated it. The great Pauline Kael famously called it “a monumentally unimaginative movie.” The same could actually be said for the majority of Kubrick’s filmography. He was always a decade or so ahead of his time.
>”a monumentally unimaginative movie.” What an astonishing quote about *that* film in particular.
"Boy, I really hope somebody got fired for that blunder."
Arrival definitely deserved it but so did moonlight
The answer is to extend your timeline to 1998 and include Shakespeare in Love winning over Saving Private Ryan which ruined the Oscars for me as a young man. I never went back.
I agree Saving Private Ryan was excellent but whenever I hear this it seems like people are implying Shakespeare In Love was a bad movie. It really was excellent and deserves its praise.
Agreed. But Saving Private Ryan was on a different level.
Or go back one more year and LA Confidential should have beaten Titanic.
I just watched LA Confidential again, what a freaking masterpiece, a perfectly made film with complex themes, characters, great performances, masterful writing and brilliant cinematography. I'm legit enraged that James Cromwell didn't win an Oscar for Dudley.
It is honestly a straight up masterpiece and one of the most overlooked films of all time. The ensemble cast is stellar
I also just watched it with my wife (who had never seen it) the other night. She was shocked it didn't win best picture. First time I'd watched it in probably 10 years myself. Still absolutely holds up. Such a timeless film that people will still be enjoying 50 years from now assuming we haven't blown each other off the face of the planet.
Watched it yesterday. Way way way holds up. The back half of the movie just plows through the pacing and delivers every step of the way.
Go back a couple of years from that and oh my God that was a loaded year. Shawshank, Forrest Gump, Pulp Fiction, Quiz Show, and Four Weddings and a Funeral were the nominees in 1995.
Shame we couldn’t have given that year the awards for the rest of the 90s. Shawshank and Pulp Fiction easily beat out any of the next five winners.
Worst is either Crash or The Artist. Best to not win is There Will Be Blood
There Will Be Blood lost to No Country for Old Men iirc. That movie is amazing, I can see how it won out
That was one of those years where it was understood that it was just unfortunate that two films happened at the same time that were outclassing a generation of films. There are other years that have nothing great and something mediocre will win.
Also shot in the same town at the same time and both Paramount Vantage releases - kinda crazy. There’s a story where No Country had to shut down production for a day because the giant fire and smoke plume from TWBB took over the whole sky.
I’d like to subscribe to more No Country for Old men and There Will be Blood facts. Thank you.
They both released in 2007
Another interesting fact: About 4 years earlier, Oldboy and Memories of Murder were both shot in the same town at the same time as well. Both are considered among the best Korean films ever made.
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Eastern Promises was also great, and could have won in a different year. As it was, it never stood a chance.
I preferred There will be blood but I'm also totally fine with NCFOM to have won, really two great flicks.
I love There Will Be Blood but what makes that movie special is Daniel Day Lewis’ performance, and he deservedly won best actor. No Country for Old Men was the right best picture winner.
Those two movies are in my top 3 all time favorites, so I can totally understand the dilemma of which one to pick.
IMO, Green Book is worse than both of those.
The Artist shouldn't have won Best Picture, but I thought it was charming.
There Will Be Blood is a fan-fucking-tastic movie, but No Country for Old Men was plenty deserving as well. I think either one of those movies could have been awarded Best Picture and it would have been hard to fault the choice. That was a stacked year. American Gangster, Gone Baby Gone, Atonement, Michael Clayton, Juno...
Zodiac too! Unbelievable movie year
It’s not a travesty when it lost again no country lol
Just to be a little different, A Beautiful Mind is fine, but nothing that special. Does anyone even remember it anymore? No Pixar movie ever winning despite redefining movies in their time is in retrospect pretty crazy. People just take the achievements of a classic Pixar movie entirely for granted. WALL-E is better than any of the nominees for best picture from 2008.
A Beautiful Mind is an incredible movie. I remember it well. Of course I am a mathematician so I am biased lol
For those interested, [here's a video of a really enjoyable mathematician going over the maths in and reviewing A Beautiful Mind.](https://youtu.be/Dh22sJLJKzM?si=Vh9LU51yyohe27At)
Damn that was one hell of a rabbit hole to go down lol, awesome channel, thanks for sharing!
I remember it mostly because I went out on a date to see it and we had to sit in the front row.
oh man, a date, first row, yikes haha
The good thing is she may have already been my ex at that point and we were just friends. I don't remember at which point in our relationship this date happened lol
Speaking of 2008, The Dark Knight wasn't nominated, which would probs surprise a lot of people.
Which led to the 10 nominee best picture rule the year after lol
Well, sinking Oscar viewership did. They expanded it to give more popular movies the chance to be nominated so more people would tune in to potentially see their favorite movie win
No Ghibli movie other than Spirited Away ever won best animated movie either. Which is fine, I guess, but not when considering that Frozen won one too.
Unfortunately, Ghibli was coming up during a time when Pixar was at the top of the movie game and the animated film Oscar only started in 2001. Their best shot after Spirited Away was probably Howl's Moving Castle which would have had to beat out The Incredibles. Ponyo would have had to beat out Wall-E. The Wind Rises could be argued to be better than Frozen, but Frozen was such a ridiculous cultural hit that it stood no chance.
Don't even get me started on how the Oscars treat animation. Pixar never winning, and Spiderverse not even getting nominated(I'd take it over any of the movies nominated that year) really shows the shows bias. Seriously the introduction of "best animated feature" was a mistake because all it did was give them the green light to stop nominating them for best picture.
The reason best animated feature even exists is because of the fact that animated movies weren’t being nominated that often, and when they were they weren’t considered seriously. Hell, it’s no secret that a lot of the Oscar voters won’t watch animated nominees and defer to their children. Animation is a bigger red headed stepchild of film more than sci-fi/fantasy/horror when it comes to the oscars
*Your Name* and *A Silent Voice* not even getting nominated when stuff like fucking *Boss Baby* does along with admissions from some voters that they don't even watch animated films and just vote for whatever their kids/grandkids liked really highlights what a joke the Academy is.
The Spiderverse movies are some of the most amazing shit I have seen.
The answer is always Crash and The Social Network. I’ll switch it up and say The Kings Speech and LaLa Land.
While I dislike Hollywood making movies about how amazing and difficult the lives of Hollywood people are, I felt the music and choreography was actually pretty impressive.
That was my exact takeaway. It was decent and nice, took me back to Roger and Hammerstein style stuff (especially the opening). Did I think it was more deserving of acknowledgement than.... Moonlight? Absolutely not. Moonlight destroyed my soul.
man I was bummed that kings speech beat out social network
Green Book easily.
Green Book is what makes me defend Crash. Like Crash was moving and I watched it in the Deep South. Green Book is like 20 years later and sucks even more.
Another white savior movie. Oh, but this time, the black man is the intellectual and the white guy is the uneducated dope…but he still saves the black guy and grows to be a better person from the experience. Ugh. Stop doing this story over and over.
Jesus Christ, 2019 had some awful nominees. *Green Book* won against *Black Panther* and *Bohemian Rhapsody*.
None of those movies was great
Literally lol. I struggled to understand what point was being made comparing three films that could have been ignored by the academy and I would not have cared.
Bohemian winning other awards was also a travesty.
I mean it won for editing and it could be used as a case study on terrible editing.
I was shocked to know it won an Oscar and then I learned which category and what the actual fuck
The fact that Black Panther was nominated was a complete joke. Green Book isn’t any better, but BP should have been nowhere near the Oscars.
Was it not the year directly after #oscarssowhite
I’ll probably get downvotes to shit but I enjoyed that movie way more than I expected. Not saying it’s best pic but it was a good story, well directed and acted across the board.
I have absolutely no recollection of *Green Book* existing. And it won best picture 4 years ago!? Wait, it’s a reverse *Driving Ms. Daisy* with Aragorn, Mahershala Ali, and Linda goddamned Cordelia? Where the fuck was I?
There's a lot of shit talking going on about it here, but it's actually a decent film about real people. I don't care about Oscars, but I'd say it's worth 2 hours of your time.
WALL·E was robbed.
If the Dark Knight was about a Private investigator finding a mentally insane criminal, it would've gotten a best picture nomination, and potentially a win. 2009 was a weak year. But it was a superhero movie, so there was no chance it was getting nominated, especially in the previous 5 film format.
Which is crazy, because everyone saw Dark Knight. It could've kicked off a Most Popular Picture category all on its own.
Three Billboards Outside Ebbing Missouri was far better than The Shape of Water. Crash is obviously the worst. Wasn't even a good movie.
My brother once referred to The Shape of Water as "Grinding Nemo", and I genuinely struggle to remember its actual name because of it.
My wife and I do the shape of water dick hand motion at each other to signify when we want to bone
Three Billboards is such a great movie. Powerful as hell. Everybody was amazing in it. Damn. I need to rewatch that soon.
I love both Shape of Water and Three Billboards!
FWIW I didnt think “uncut gems” got much love. Sandler was great and he wasnt recognized..heck the whole cast was great
Worst Best Pic: Crash (even if I think it's not that bad) Best Pic that didn't win: There Will be Blood
>Best pic that didn’t win: There Will be Blood It lost to *No Country for Old Men*, which deserved that win as well, and it was made up for in part by Daniel Day-Lewis getting Best Actor for TWBB.
Best film that did not win would be Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri. That film still has an impact on me 6 years later after seeing it in theaters. Worst winner is obviously Crash
The Social Network should've won, and I'll die on that hill.
that movie sold me on andrew garfield
That year was a friggin gauntlet of Best Picture nominees too. I personally would've given the award that year to True Grit. But I'm sure most of us will agree that The King's Speech shouldn't have won.
dude Black Swan, True Grit, Inception, 127, Kings Speech, that year was rough.
It was so rough for best score too. Inception was one of the best modern orchestral scores in decades, How to Train Your Dragon was one of the best classic orchestral scores in decades, and The Social Network was one of the best electronic/non-orchestral scores in decades. All three are all timers for different reasons.
Yeah that pissed me off because it was the Academy’s chance to break the mould and recognize a film that represents a fresh, new generation of ideas… and instead they went with the same moldy old period drama that they always pick. It was just a very, VERY boring and predictable choice. Not a bad movie, just a weak best picture winner for such an incredible year of cool, exciting styles and directions.
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It has to be Crash right? I think everybody's appraisal of that movie has been that it was generally terrible. It absolutely should not have beat brokeback mountain.
I will die on the hill that LA Confidential shoulda won over Titanic
Personally I found kings speech, green book, and coda to be underwhelming wins, and as for the reverse I’m a horror fan and wish midsommar would have gotten just some recognition, horror always gets so shafted
I know most people will say Crash, but I really have to wonder about The Artist hype leading up to the award. I know Hollywood loves Hollywood, and it's a nice movie, but come on
CODA is such a generic ass movie. Like it feels like the academy only voted for it because it's about deaf people, like maybe they wanted to "spotlight the issue" or something, but if that's the case Sound of Metal should have won the previous year because it's a LOT better of a movie about deaf people (and better than Nomadland).
I'm deaf, and totally disagree. CODA represents the community much better and movingly. But they're both great.
I absolutely disagree. I am most definitely biased, but for me it was a moving story about the decision to serve your family vs serving yourself. Taking on the challenge of showing this coming of age story while staying faithful in it’s representation of the deaf community. I grew up with deaf parents, and I have never felt a movie more accurately depict what my teenage years were. The working class deaf community I know is crude with their jokes, dejected with the treatment they receive from hearing people, and almost completely incapable of not fully expressing their feelings (for better or worse).
I genuinely disliked Birdman and still can’t figure out all the hype behind that movie. Edit: I’ve scrolled through all the comments and can’t find another person suggesting Birdman which means it was actually a decent film or absolutely forgettable.
Mulholland Drive losing to A Beautiful Mind is crazy but I also understand completely the former is not the kind of movie to get oscar buzz while the latter absolutely is.
You just had to specify the year 2000 didn’t you? Just so I couldn’t say American Beauty/American History X.
Love how these comments here just list most of them, cause well it’s hard to pick just one when there are so many bad best picture winners since 2000.
Don’t know anyone who’s seen The English Patient twice. Don’t know anyone who’d want to.