Hey! Where’s my Oscar?!?

16 comments January 24th, 2008

The thing to remember during this season of Oscar fever is that the movie that wins Best Picture is almost never the actual best picture. Usually it’s a pretty-good, fairly safe mainstream movie that either captures the mood of the moment or rewards someone who’s been in the business a long time and has (according to the Academy) earned the honor for previous work. A few recent examples:

Clive Owen stars in “Children of Men,” the real best picture of 2006.

2006: Martin Scorsese’s “The Departed” won both Best Picture and Best Director. It’s solid, don’t get me wrong, but it’s nowhere near Scorsese’s best work. Too bad “Taxi Driver,” “Raging Bull” and “Goodfellas” were beaten by “Rocky,” “Ordinary People” and “Dances With Wolves,” respectively. For my money, last year’s best movie was “Children of Men,” a pretty amazing piece of cinema that combined powerful themes with jaw-dropping filmmaking.

2004: “Million Dollar Baby”? Really? I love Clint Eastwood, and I’m glad he’s still making interesting movies in his autumn years, but this cliched boxing drama wasn’t one of them. With cardboard characters, a by-the-numbers plot and a “controversial” ending few would find controversial, all it needed was warm, homey narration from Morgan Freeman to cement its mediocre status. Oh, wait. It had that, too. The real shame is that two truly excellent movies came out the same year: “The Incredibles” and “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.” I know the academy won’t give the statue to an animated film (that’s why they created the “Best Animated Feature” category), but “The Incredibles,” animated or not, was exciting and complex in a way few live-action moves are. And “Eternal Sunshine,” with direction by Michel Gondry and a truly brilliant script by Charlie Kaufman, was — no kidding — the best love story of the last 25 years. (At least it won the screenplay Oscar.)

1999: This was the best year for films in recent memory, but “American Beauty” — 1999’s Oscar winner — was far from the year’s best film. Too pleased with itself for its supposedly “edgy” plot, “Beauty” wasted strong performances from Kevin Spacey and Annette Bening in its quest to be both hip and heartwarming. Meanwhile, truly edgy movies like “Fight Club,” “Being John Malkovich” and “South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut” were ignored, along with just-plain-good movies like “The Limey,” “The Matrix,” “Office Space,” “American Movie,” “Toy Story 2,” “Iron Giant” and the list goes on … and on. All of them better than “American Beauty” by a long shot.

I could say more —  and probably will in a later post — but I’d like to hear your take. Agree? Disagree? Have examples of your own? Share ‘em with us!