Jan 30 2009
Oscars 2009: Best Picture
I don’t generally put a lot of stock in what wins Best Picture each year. As I mentioned in a previous post, I tend to look more fondly at the winners and nominees of the screenplay awards. There’s usually at least one nominee in this category that disappoints, but this year, the Academy has excelled at mediocrity in the their list of the five best films of the year. I don’t think it was a particularly great year for film, but I still think that even they could have done far better.
THE NOMINEES
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button - I’ve heard a lot of people gripe about this film’s inclusion, but I really don’t think it’s that bad. Let’s face it, this is one of those films that, unless it totally and completely sucked (which it didn’t), was going to be nominated for this award. It had Oscar written all over it from minute one. Still, the generally lukewarm response to the film seems to indicate that the only Oscars it will take home are the more technical fare (which it undoubtedly deserves).
Frost/Nixon - I really don’t understand the people that nominated this film for Best Picture. I found it to be painfully average and this is coming from someone who is an admitted politics nerd. This should have been right up my alley, but instead I found the mediocrity to be terribly disappointing. Call me crazy, but I think that the best pictures of the year should be more than paint by numbers historical drama.
Milk - Prior to the SAG and Golden Globe wins of Slumdog Millionaire, I had a sinking feeling that Milk could be this year’s late breaker. It felt a lot to me like Crash (no disrespect to Milk, even though I think it’s an overrated film, I definitely think it’s better than Crash). I think this film has benefited greatly from the political uproar over the passage of Prop 8 and that will help it on Oscar night. However, Slumdog has proven that it has near unstoppable momentum and the window that I thought Milk might crawl through has gotten much smaller. I didn’t love the film. Beyond Sean Penn and Josh Brolin’s performances I was fairly unenthused, but in this sad crop of nominees, it’s still better than a few.
The Reader - If you haven’t figured it out by now, The Reader is the source of a lot of my rage at this year’s crop of nominees. I thought the movie was a complete mess and the fact that it’s made to to the most prestigious categories annoys me greatly. The recent announcement that the Academy is bending the rules to allow deceased producers Anthony Minghella and Sydney Pollack to be nominated for this award, seems to prove that that is the real motivation for this nomination. I have great amount of respect for Minghella and Pollack, but I would much prefer to have them remembered for a film that was actually good (like, I don’t know maybe the movie produced last year that was nominated for Best Picture: Michael Clayton).
Slumdog Millionaire - It’s got all the momentum, with the exception of the recent whispers that the young Mumbai actors got short-changed on the salaries. I think in another year this movie probably would have been outshined, but this year, it’s clearly the belle of the ball and considering how the crew behind this film were concerned that they’d even get a major release, it does make for quite a story.
THE FORGOTTEN
The Dark Knight - Oscar could have shaken off that clear prejudice it has against more commercial films by nomination this film for Best Picture. Alas, they simply proved what everyone already knows about that stick up the Academy’s butt. Still, it is hard to feel bad for a film that raked in barrels full of money and was seen by almost every person on the planet. It would have been nice to see the mold of this category broken a little, but I think we all know that nomination or no, The Dark Knight has cemented itself in film history and its success will leave an indelible imprint on the genre.
Doubt - I can’t understand why this film never seemed to pick up traction this awards season. Beyond the many acting nominations, it just never seemed stick in people’s minds. It’s really a shame, as I think this quiet little film made much more of an impression on me than several of the movies that actually received nominations.
Revolutionary Road - Clearly the Academy had no real love for this movie and I can understand why. It’s not for everyone. It’s very melodramatic and incredibly depressing. However, if we’re going to pick between Kate Winslet lead films this year, this one beats the pants off of The Reader.
WALL-E - The Best Animated Feature category has been quite frustrating since its inception. It’s bad enough that the Academy seems to struggle to come up with that third nominee every year, often stinking up the category with something that doesn’t deserve to be there (thankfully, that’s not true this year), but it’s basically excused them from ever having to recognize an animated film in the Best Picture category. WALL-E absolutely deserved a better shot at being nominated in this category, but at least the filmmakers can rest assured that they’ll take home the Best Animated Feature trophy.
The Wrestler - This film was just so horribly ignored by the Academy and, as with Doubt, I just don’t get why. It does seem like Oscar had a thing for big sweeping historical epics that spanned lifetimes with this year’s crop. Maybe if we had gotten to see vivid scenes of Randy the Ram fighting in the ring when he was a pup and what lead him to rock bottom the film would have appealed to them more. It’s incredibly vivid portrait of this character and the simplicity is what makes it so great.
