Thursday Movie Picks - Oscar-Nominated Movies That Should Have Won

Written as part of the weekly blogathon hosted by Wandering Through the Shelves. Join us by picking three movies that fit the week's theme and writing a bit about them - it's easy and fun!

Well, as I mentioned just yesterday, the most wonderful time of year is upon us: OSCAR NIGHT! I wish I were a little more excited for this Sunday's ceremony, but... well, this season has turned into one of those years where all the precursors are in lockstep, and this year is so much richer than having the same winners over and over would have us believe.

But, in order for somebody or something to win an award, others must lose, and that's what we're focusing on today: movies that were nominated for an Oscar that should have won. In my opinion, of course, since it's my blog. For the purposes of today, I'm focusing solely on Best Picture just to lessen the list of potentials a bit. And look, even narrowing it down to just the big award, there were PLENTY I could have picked. But let's be honest: In one of the early years of this new millennium, the Academy made one of their worst choices for Best Picture when they instead could have made one of their best. Just imagine looking at a ballot with ANY of the following three films on it and saying, "Nah, A Beautiful Mind was better than that!"

Gosford Park (Robert Altman, 2001) Quite brilliantly taking the piss out of the classic British Manor House Murder Mystery on its head, Altman works his customary magic with perhaps the best ensemble he's ever had (after Nashville of course, because nothing is better than Nashville). Julian Fellowes's screenplay is just delectable, the performances are indelible (witness the genesis of Downton Abbey's Dowager Countess in Maggie Smith's Oscar-nominated performance), and the costumes and sets are, of course, gorgeous. It's one of the best films of Altman's career, and given his filmography, that's saying something!

The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (Peter Jackson, 2001) Stupid, silly Academy "waiting until the third LOTR film to honor the whole trilogy." This is even sillier in hindsight, since the first of the trilogy is still the best. The world-building here is just jaw-dropping, expanding outward throughout while somehow never overwhelming the whole endeavor. That the film works as both first chapter and as a stand-alone film as well as it does is a testament not only to Tolkein's source material, but to Peter Jackson's meticulous, gorgeous direction: This is a big gosh-darned MOVIE movie, one that latches onto the ability of cinema to transport us to new worlds and then goes full-speed ahead, completely immersing us in Middle Earth. Gorgeously designed, flawlessly edited, beautifully scored, and powerfully performed, this is the greatest fantasy film ever made. (It's also the first movie I saw more than once in theaters, so you can probably guess which of these three was my pick to win...)

Moulin Rouge! (Baz Luhrmann, 2001) Baz Luhrmann's dizzying whirligig of a musical is certainly the MOST movie of 2001, but it's also the most visionary. A bit of Old Hollywood razzle-dazzle by way of the ADD-afflicted MTV generation, Moulin Rouge! throws a century's worth of pop culture and cinematic tropes into a blender, mixes it all up, and comes up with an elemental story (penniless writer falls in love with consumptive courtesan-with-a-heart-of-gold) in phantasmagorical gilded-age dressing and an almost punk-rock attitude. It's too much at first, but by the time Ewan McGregor and Nicole Kidman are singing a medley of love songs at each other on top of a giant elephant as CGI fireworks explode all around them, the film has swept you off your feet into its mad embrace, causing an intoxicating head rush you won't ever want to escape.

My 2018 Oscar Ballot

It's the most wonderful time of the year: OSCAR TIME!!

I've never been one for making public predictions - there's something too final and kind of scary about it, almost like putting it out into the universe is an invitation for chaos, and frankly the chaos of the final five minutes of last year's Oscar ceremony is all I can take, thank you very much!

HOWEVER, I did recently share what my Oscar ballot would look like (if the world was a just and fair place and I was an AMPAS member) on The Film Scoop Podcast, which I was recently invited to co-host with Matt St. Clair, and I figured I would share it here in a slightly expanded version for you all to read!

In case you're wondering, my personal nominees will be posted after the Oscars - because that is when the 2018 film year TRULY begins, Roman calendar be damned!

Let's start at the bottom and work our way up, shall we?

Obligatory Oscar Reaction Post

...soooooooooooooooo you may have noticed that don't tend to do these things right away. I'm no good at snap judgments - I tend to not know when to stop. I did manage to spit out something over at The Film Experience about the Best Song performances that we got (don't get me started on the ones the fucking producers decided to cut...), but happily my reaction to the show overall was much stronger than that.

Chris Rock did a valiant job as host. The monologue was killer, except for the Stacey Dash bit (it took me a good minute to remember why anyone would think having her do that would be funny, by which point Rock had already moved far beyond it). The Compton cinema bit went on a bit too long but it was pretty funny, and really a good reminder of what the public in general, NOT just black people, think about the Oscars. No one knows most of the films that get nominated for the Oscars. One of my co-workers even said to me on Monday that he had no clue the Oscars were even on this weekend, and when he saw The Revenant recently, he had no idea that it was even nominated.

Oscar watchers have now become an insular, self-selecting group, and I for one am perfectly fine with that.

I'm also perfectly fine with most of the winners from 2015. I was hoping against hope that Todd Haynes's near-perfect Carol wouldn't walk away empty-handed (I predicted it for Costume Design), but I can't get mad at Mad Max's sweep of the tech categories. That fucker is one superbly, often ingeniously, well-crafted film. It's so balls-to-the-wall creative that it's amazing it even got nominated, so I'm thrilled that AMPAS members recognized that great craft can be found anywhere. I was happiest for its wins in Production Design and Editing, the two elements that I thought contributed most to the film's narrative and adrenaline rush.

Weirdly, I correctly predicted ALL of the Short winners this year. That NEVER happens. Of course, my predictions elsewhere kind of sucked the big one. For which I mostly couldn't be happier. I honestly thought they were going to go whole-hog for The Revenant in the techs instead of Mad Max. And though I had Spotlight as my Best Picture prediction for a while, I ended up switching it to The Big Short for some reason. Probably because it won the PGA.

This year's ceremony was actually suspenseful for once, in part because of the seeming three-way race for Best Picture (thank you, guilds!), and in part because the Mad Max sweep really did make it feel early on like that film might be a huge spoiler. But then Lubezki made history by winning his third Best Cinematography Oscar in a row, the acting categories all went as expected (Mark Rylance in Supporting Actor being only a mild surprise, as he was the only person nominated for every single precursor award), and Alejandro Gonzalez Iñàrritu became the third person to win back-to-back directing Oscars.

Wait, so all those Mad Max craftspeople just did everything all on their own then? #Oscars

— Dancin Dan on Film (@dancindanonfilm) February 29, 2016

I dunno. I'm commentaried out. I'm fine with the Best Picture winner, the Acting winners are all deserving (if not all for their winning performance), the crafts winners were entirely on point, and the ceremony itself was fun to watch (although it really is a pity about Stacey Dash, Sam Smith, and that fucking thank you scroll).

Coming soon: Oscar's Ballot vs. My Ballot vs. My Oscar Ballot

Obligatory Oscar Nominations Reaction Post

So, yeah, the Oscar nominations happened this morning. And they were....

...

...well...

...

Look. This was a crazy year. What little consensus there was to be found among precursors was for either films everybody had long since written off, films that came out of nowhere at the "right time", or films that we could only pray would have such good luck with AMPAS. So it shouldn't be shocking that what (few) surprises there were this morning weren't exactly exciting ones.

And it shouldn't be surprising either that the nominations are very heterosexual, very white, and very male. Because THE MAJORITY OF FILMS PRODUCED tick those three boxes, either together or separately. You can come up with any number of fixes to this problem, but to quote Emmy Winner Viola Davis, you cannot win awards for parts that simply aren't there.

But I'm not one to talk about the politics of... well, of anything, frankly. So, on to the nominees, and my reactions.

Best Picture

The Big Short

Bridge of Spies

Brooklyn

Mad Max: Fury Road

The Martian

The Revenant

Room

Spotlight

Nice. I've only missed Bridge of Spies and The Revenant.... WAIT. STOP. WHERE IS CAROL?!?! Although I should note that this was only a shock because at the point in the announcement, Carol had gotten six nominations, so it looked like Best Picture was a real possibility again.

Best Director

Lenny Abrahamson, Room

Alejandro G. Inaritu, The Revenant

Tom McCarthy, Spotlight

Adam McKay, The Big Short

George Miller, Mad Max: Fury Road

You cruel bastards, to give us Lenny Abrahamson (who did wonders with Room) but deny us Todd Haynes?!?! But, they've never cottoned to him before, even when his films have gotten other nominations, so I guess this is par for the course.

Best Actress

Cate Blanchett, Carol

Brie Larson, Room

Jennifer Lawrence, Joy

Charlotte Rampling, 45 Years

Saiorse Ronan, Brooklyn

This is really pretty good. Although I haven't seen Joy or 45 Years yet, the other three are firmly at the top of my list for the year. My heart weeps for Lily Tomlin, though, who was just brilliant in Grandma in that way that only she can be. But instead, Jennifer Lawrence gets to be the youngest actress to 4 nominations, so....

Best Actor

Brian Cranston, Trumbo

Matt Damon, The Martian

Leonardo DiCaprio, The Revenant

Michael Fassbender, Steve Jobs

Eddie Redmayne, The Danish Girl

BORING.

 

Best Supporting Actress

Jennifer Jason Leigh, The Hateful Eight

Rooney Mara, Carol

Rachel McAdams, Spotlight

Alicia Vikander, The Danish Girl

Kate Winslet, Steve Jobs

What. The. FUCK. There are only two women nominated here who actually deserve to be here (Leigh and Winslet). Two of them are emphatically LEADING PERFORMANCES (Carol is told largely from Mara's perspective and Vikander is arguably the freakin' TITLE CHARACTER), and the last is a performance from an actress I love who has barely anything to do and does the bare minimum with the part. How Julie Walters in Brooklyn or Joan Allen in Room or even Jessica Chastain in The Martian couldn't break into this field I will never know.

Best Supporting Actor

Christian Bale, The Big Short

Tom Hardy, The Revenant

Mark Ruffalo, Spotlight

Mark Rylance, Bridge of Spies

Sylvester Stallone, Creed

It's alright. Just alright. To be honest, there weren't many inspiring performances for this category this year. I would have preferred to see Michael Keaton represent Spotlight (Ruffalo overdoes it), and would have preferred to see anyone in The Hateful Eight make it in over Bale, but he's fine. The other three I haven't seen, but it sounds like it's Sly's to lose. To Rylance, my personal hero.

Best Original Screenplay

Bridge of Spies

Ex Machina

Inside Out

Spotlight

Straight Outta Compton

Best Adapted Screenplay

The Big Short

Brooklyn

Carol

The Martian

Room

They did pretty well with the Screenplay categories this year. The only one that doesn't seem to fit is Straight Outta Compton (which admittedly I haven't seen), but what to put in its place? I'm glad Tarantino didn't make it in this time (Hateful Eight is easily his worst screenplay), but the ones I would have rather seen make it (Grandma, I'll See You In My Dreams, It Follows) were never big enough hits, commercially or critically, to ever break in at the Oscars. Frankly, I'm just thrilled that Inside Out, the year's most original, inventive film made it. And we got Brooklyn, Room, AND Carol in Adapted, so I don't feel as awful as I thought I would that Aaron Sorkin's brilliant Steve Jobs script didn't make the cut. Especially since a lot of The Big Short works where it probably shouldn't have, and The Martian is as enjoyable as it is largely due to the surprisingly funny screenplay.

Best Film Editing

The Big Short

Mad Max: Fury Road

The Revenant

Spotlight

Star Wars: The Force Awakens

Frankly, I thought The Big Short was over-edited, but there's always one in this category that is really "Most" as opposed to "Best". The other four all deserve their spots and I would really only add Room, because the escape sequence is the best thriller filmmaking of the year, mostly due to the editing. This nomination for Star Wars made me think it was in play for Best Picture. It missing there is probably for the best, though.

Best Cinematography

Ed Lachman, Carol

Robert Richardson, The Hateful Eight

John Seale, Mad Max: Fury Road

Emmanuel Lubezki, The Revenant

Roger Deakins, Sicario

Best category of the year. Easily. Not one of these doesn't belong here, and while it would have been nice to acknowledge the difficulty of filming in the Room set, Abrahamson's Directing nod I guess makes up for it. This is such a wonderfully diverse set of films, cinematography-wise, and they all look stellar. I can't even pick a favorite.

Just kidding. It's Carol.

Best Costume Design

Sandy Powell, Carol

Sandy Powell, Cinderella

Paco Delgado, The Danish Girl

Jenny Beavan, Mad Max: Fury Road

The Revenant

Such a good category, and then.... The Revenant. Let's nominate some dead animals! Where, oh where, are those GLORIOUS Crimson Peak creations? Or those impossibly cool Man From U.N.C.L.E. duds? BUT, double Sandy Powell, who really outdid herself this year on those two films. BRAVA!

 Best Production Design

Bridge of Spies

The Danish Girl

Mad Max: Fury Road

The Martian

The Revenant

Why do outer space movies always get nominated here? All space stations/shuttles in movies look exactly alike to me. Really, outside of the big rigs of Mad Max, nothing here is particularly inspiring. Crimson Peak would eat all of these films for breakfast.

Best Visual Effects

Ex Machina

Mad Max: Fury Road

The Martian

The Revenant

Star Wars: The Force Awakens

FUCK. YES. EX. MACHINA. Ava is the single best special effect of the year, bar none, and their budget was miniscule compared to the rest of the films on the shortlist. So glad it was nominated, especially alongside the incredible practical effects and gonzo stunts of Mad Max.

That's all for now. The dirty (bakers') dozen. Really, pretty much all I feel comfortable talking about. You can (and by now, probably have) find the whole list of nominations elsewhere. What did you think of the nominations?