But it sure helps. For many, especially Americans, the Oscars light the way through the crowded field of movies every year. In , movies were released theatrically in North America, and dozens more at least were released directly to digital platforms. Watching movies is my job, and I still only saw about last year, and only or so were new releases.
Furthermore, eight of the 10 highest-grossing films both in North America and worldwide in were big franchise blockbusters owned or in one case co-produced by Disney. So it makes a lot of sense that Oscar movies become a kind of counterbalance to the blockbuster behemoths. Yet many people make a ritual of watching, or trying to watch, the full list of Best Picture nominees before the ceremony which is three weeks earlier than usual this year, so good luck.
Even if other, better movies also came out in the preceding 12 months, the Best Picture contenders are often a good place to start. The nominations for documentaries and international formerly foreign-language films also spotlight more niche films, some of which may depend on Oscar recognition to get distribution or find their way onto a broader variety of platforms.
Is it a perfect situation? Sure, important movies get shut out all the time, as the stunning Korean thriller Burning did last year. But some break through. The list of Best Picture winners from the past decade has some highs — Moonlight and Spotlight spring to mind — but it certainly has the Green Book s and Argo s to match. But I suppose the possibility of bad choices along with the good just comes with the territory.
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For instance, the Cannes Film Festival is arguably the most prestigious global film festival in the world, but at the festival , the directors of two films in the main competitions were conspicuously absent, even though their movies played were debuting there.
Kirill Serebrennikov, director of the Russian rock musical Leto titled Summer in English , was under house arrest. Serebrennikov, an outspoken critic of Vladimir Putin, had been charged with masterminding an embezzlement plot that caused harm to the state. Serebrennikov was released in April The celebrated Iranian director Jafar Panahi was absent from the festival as well.
A seat was reserved for him at the premiere of his film 3 Faces , which criticizes the patriarchy of his home country. But the seat remained empty: Panahi, his wife, his daughter, and 15 of his friends had been arrested in and charged with creating propaganda against the Iranian government.
In , his documentary This Is Not a Film , which chronicled his life under house arrest, was smuggled out of the country in a birthday cake so that it could premiere at Cannes. And two more of his movies premiered at the Berlin Film Festival in and , winning major awards. But today, would Iran ever submit a film from a director like Panahi for Oscars consideration? Unless it was deemed sufficiently apolitical, such a selection seems unlikely. Other countries, including China, have been known to place filmmakers and artists under house arrest such as Ai Weiwei and Deng Chuanbin when they or their works are perceived as a threat to the state.
So even though filmmakers from these countries often make movies celebrated by major festivals and critics around the globe, many of their films will never stand a chance of being selected by their countries to serve as the official Oscar entry.
In some cases, with enough work and resources behind their campaigns, filmmakers working in restrictive countries may be able to eke out a nomination. Serna is a film historian and an associate professor of cinematic arts at the University of Southern California. Brody agrees. The exclusion of some of the major works of world cinema for political reasons is a big reason the Academy needs to change its approach to recognizing world cinema. Curiously, though the Academy relegates the process of submitting films for consideration to sometimes-shadowy groups selected by individual countries, the organization sometimes overrules the resulting submissions anyway.
The first is that the Academy rules a film is not primarily told in a language other than English. This became an issue most recently with Lionheart , which Nigeria submitted as its official entry for the Oscars.
But English is the official language of Nigeria. Are you barring this country from ever competing for an Oscar in its official language? Of course, movies like Lionheart are technically eligible to compete in all the other Oscar categories. And any film that qualifies for Best International Feature can also compete in other categories; in , the North Macedonian documentary Honeyland is a contender both for Best International Feature and Best Documentary Feature.
But given how heavily a successful Oscar campaign depends on a wealth of resources and ability to court potential voters , films with small budgets from countries where English is either the official language or the lingua franca like Nigeria, Ghana, Sierra Leone, and Liberia are at a serious disadvantage. If anything, it now feels like a decent pilot for a peak-TV series you may or may not stick with over a season.
Mutiny on the Bounty Whether you prefer this to any of the other adaptations of the novel may depend on how much you buy Clark Gable as Fletcher Christian — we prefer Charles Laughton as Bligh, and Marlon Brando as Fletcher, now that you mention it — but this was a massive hit at the time.
It feels studiously literal to the text, which makes some sense considering that the book had only come out two years earlier, but a little too restrained. The film also played a special role in Oscars history: It received three nominations for Best Actor, which led to the creation of the Best Supporting Actor category the next year. Argo The crown jewel of the Ben Affleck renaissance — the Benaissance? The movie is clunky and awkward today, but its heart is always in the right, well-meaning place, even if it strains itself often with all its back-patting.
It still feels sort of daring for , and for good reason: Its existence got director Elia Kazan hauled in front of the House Un-American Activities Committee. Beautiful movie stars Robert Redford and Meryl Streep , big epic score which won an Oscar for John Barry , gorgeous African plains for sweeping panoramic shots, and a love story in which someone dies and someone else carries them in their heart for the rest of their life. We bet it made your mom cry. To our mind, director Tom Hooper has made precisely one great film: the little-seen true-life soccer drama The Damned United.
But the movie never busts out of its tame, slightly cheeky straitjacket, and the smoothness of its execution can be a bit cozy at times. Still, you respect the effort that went into A Man for All Seasons more than you love it. Richard Attenborough was never a particularly inspired director, but he could put one foot in front of the other; this is sturdily constructed, a highly conventional biopic done unusually well.
Chariots of Fire Is it possible for a movie to win Best Picture simply for one song? This is a basic, well-done sports film, but the song made it into something epic. But in the lead role, Sidney Poitier certainly does, and he rises above its faults as a figure of dignity and strength. This topic would be tackled a lot better in the years to come.
An insufferably reactionary and conservative view of the counterculture? A movie that made millions and millions of viewers bawl their eyes out? The Watergate break-in? Forrest was the guy who called it in to the cops! Soft and sentimental, Forrest Gump was, happily, out in the world before social media. But even lesser Capra from this era is better than just about anything else you might be watching.
Around the World in 80 Days The movie is so famously overstuffed that it even finds a place for Buster Keaton for a few stray seconds. Grand Hotel The only film ever to win Best Picture without being nominated in any other category, that might be because every movie star from the era is in it, from John and Lionel! The Sound of Music Total malarkey, and you probably know every word to every song anyway. Robert Wise expertly guided this adaption of the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical, putting aside the darker elements of the true story for a rousing sing-along.
Julie Andrews sells The Sound of Music with her effervescent performance, and the wooden, awkward bits around her are, now, almost endearing — a kitschy self-own acknowledging the unreality of the whole operation.
It would have been very easy for Gladiator to be another dumb summer spectacle. But Scott and his budding star gave it soul. Shakespeare in Love We turned out to have a lot to learn on both counts. But taken for what it is, this is a charming little superhero origin story in which the hero is Shakespeare. Tom Stoppard co-wrote the script and has such affection for Shakespeare that the film is chock-full of in-jokes for Bard aficionados. The Marvin Hamlisch score adapting Scott Joplin tunes is still great, though.
The damn thing works because the damn thing works, barreling over you without a concern for subtlety or restraint. Patton Biopics are often thought of as cradle-to-grave highlight reels of iconic individuals.
Patton George C. Scott , who will lead American troops to glory near the end of World War II, despite some recent failed military operations. Scott is magnificent in the role, but this is no simple rah-rah portrait of a true American hero. And yet, this movie is enormously affecting, capturing Ralph Fiennes and Kristin Scott Thomas at their most beautiful as star-crossed lovers playing out their fate in the African desert.
Midnight Cowboy The grittiness has faded as the years have gone on, but the focus on the two timeless, defeated characters at its center is still powerful and sad and rare: You care about these two dirtbags, in spite of it all. The characters linger, even if the New York of the film no longer does.
Except Eastwood kept making films — really good films. Million Dollar Baby epitomized the spare emotionality of his later work, following a trailer-park-trash boxer Hilary Swank who trains with an aged grump Eastwood , both of them finding redemption as she rises up the ranks. The film succumbs to saccharine, but for the most part the tears it wrings are earned.
Haters to the back. Robert Redford deliberately dialed everything way back in his first film and showed a directorial skill, and restraint, that surprised many; it turned out that the matinee star had a depth to him behind the camera as well. The ending is still stunning, nearly 40 years later; this is a movie of raw emotions, from start to finish. Kramer vs.
Kramer Perfectly in tune with its cultural moment, Kramer vs. Of all the fine actors in Spotlight , Rachel McAdams is the one to whom we keep returning. Terms of Endearment James L. Then he turned his attention to movies, and the first film he directed won five Academy Awards including three for himself. Brooks masterfully inspires emotion in this mother-daughter tale, as Shirley MacLaine and Debra Winger play characters whose eternal friction belies a bond neither can fully articulate.
Weirdly, Rocky never gets mentioned. And yet, Rocky is the sort of rousing Oscar winner that, in retrospect, has plenty of holes and weak stretches. Think about how history might have been different if John Wayne, who had been offered the part of Willie Stark the up-from-nothing country lawyer who ends up becoming as corrupt a politician as the people he railed against and despised , had accepted it.
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