Kevin John Bozelka: 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+

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