Sunday, March 12, 2023

Ranking Best Picture Oscar Winners

This was not a pleasurable exercise. The only thing worse than a bad movie is an okay one. The lies Argo tells (along with the expert thriller mechanics with which it does so) enraged me more than a dutiful Wikipedia article like Spotlight. But that rage has stuck with me over the last decade whereas I would've flunked a quiz on Spotlight a month after I saw it. And so it goes with the vast majority of Best Picture Oscar winners.

I didn't get a chance to rewatch all of these. But those I did changed in estimation only a peg or two. So I'll never know if Braveheart, Gladiator, A Beautiful Mind, etc. are sitting in their appropriate buckets. Somewhere south of a B-minus is charitable enough (waves hand). I also didn't get a chance to review all the rewatches. But I've provided links to those I did. I'll probably get the most questions about No Country for Old Men. I've long since dispatched it as "Halloween for adults" so will leave it at that here (waves hand once more). As for that one film I refuse to watch, I saw the first Lord of the Rings installment and found it pitilessly dull. Sorry - I cannot stand world building. And even fans acknowledge that the win was less for that particular installment than the series as a whole so why bother? In effect, I saw the first three hours of a ten-hour epic and I'm more than fine with that.

Finally, while I've been watching all the Best Picture noms since 2016 (an "unnerving" project, as my friend Noah told me this week), I will not be watching the others. Skippy (huh?) and Nicholas and Alexandra (zzz) and District 9 (that was nominated?!?), I look forward to forsaking you with some desperately needed Paul Sharits. 

A+

All About Eve

How Green Was My Valley 

A

Parasite  

Midnight Cowboy 

Rebecca

Sunrise (for the pedants)

Amadeus

A-minus

Unforgiven

Casablanca

The Hurt Locker

Moonlight 

Nomadland 

The Best Years of Our Lives

Lawrence of Arabia 

The Broadway Melody

The Last Emperor

West Side Story

All Quiet on the Western Front

B+  

Mutiny on the Bounty

Gigi

Chicago

Million Dollar Baby

Schindler’s List

It Happened One Night 

Cimarron 

You Can’t Take It with You

Gone with the Wind

Ordinary People

The Apartment

The Shape of Water

Titanic 

The Silence of the Lambs

The Lost Weekend

All the King’s Men

Wings

On the Waterfront

Annie Hall

The Life of Emile Zola

The Godfather  

Out of Africa 

In the Heat of the Night 

The Greatest Show on Earth

B

The Great Ziegfeld

My Fair Lady 

Oliver!

Everything Everywhere All at Once

12 Years a Slave 

Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) 

Slumdog Millionaire

Terms of Endearment

The Departed

Rocky

A Man for All Seasons

Dances with Wolves 

Gentleman’s Agreement 

Hamlet 

Marty

An American in Paris 

From Here to Eternity 

The Godfather Part II 

American Beauty

Driving Miss Daisy 

The French Connection

B-minus

Green Book 

Platoon

The Sound of Music 

The English Patient

Gandhi

Rain Man 

Shakespeare in Love

C+

Grand Hotel

The Deer Hunter 

Kramer vs. Kramer  

Going My Way 

Cavalcade 

Spotlight

The Sting 

CODA    

C

The King’s Speech

No Country for Old Men 

Mrs. Miniver

The Artist

One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest

Chariots of Fire

C-minus

Ben-Hur

Patton

Gladiator

A Beautiful Mind

Braveheart

D+

Forrest Gump

D

Tom Jones

 

Crash

Argo 

Around the World in 80 Days

Refuse to watch:

The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King 

                                                                                 

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