I am going with CASABLANCA as the best choice and FORREST GUMP as the worst. Both were hard to choose for me. There were many contenders.
Thursday, February 27, 2014
Best picture nominees
I am going with CASABLANCA as the best choice and FORREST GUMP as the worst. Both were hard to choose for me. There were many contenders.
I loved Gigi for the sheer talent of actors, songs and scenery, not to mention a heartwarming story. Lawrence of Arabia was a close second.
ReplyDeleteI agree that Forrest Gump is my least favorite.
Not that Oliver is a bad film. Far from it. But most of the competition was stronger and should have won. Same goes for The Greatest Show on Earth. Of course, subjective as always.
ReplyDeleteWorst would have to be The Greatest Show On Earth followed by The Sound of Music and Rocky.
ReplyDeleteBest would be Lawrence of Arabia, Casablanca or The Godfather 1 and 2.
Yeah, GF 1 ans 2 ran a close second for me. I have never seen the GREATEST SHOW so I can not judge it. Perhaps that is a judgment though.
ReplyDeleteI can sing every word of the score from GIGI so that would be near my top too. So gorgeous.
Although I enjoy them, big, glossy, technicolor movies like Oliver and My Fair Lady seem so dated, especially in comparison to other movies of the era. I guess the days of the musical had already passed when those were chosen as Best Film (there wasn't a better movie than My Fair Lady the year it won? Really?) Of the best picture winners, I like the two Godfathers and The Sting best--what can I say? The seventies are my home.
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ReplyDeleteBest - Hamlet
Worst - Oliver
To my mind, the decades before the 70s were the best for movies. Beginning with the 70s, it has been downhill. But, wait, perhaps my opinion is skewed since I have seen so few movies in theaters since the end of the 60s. It is, after all, tough to wheel a dinosaur into a multiplex. And whatever happened to beautiful movie theaters? They are all gone. Now movies are shown in ugly little boxes. And what is with the painfully loud sound systems in theaters now? Damn, I sound really old, don't I?
BTW, that last movie I saw in a theater was the first installment of The Lord of the Rings. Hated it!
ReplyDeleteI don't go more than a week without going to a movie. Yes, there were more good movies before 1980-the blockbuster notion ruined things. But I am still able to find a movie every week. Living in a metro area, we have three venues at least for foreign and indie films. There is always something. Movies are nearly as important to me as books and I like to see them on a big screen with great sound.
ReplyDeleteI'm chastened to discover how few of them I have seen. I am sure of one thing, though. GOING MY WAY is my nominee for the worst movie ever made.
ReplyDeleteWow that is a lot of movies. I'd probably go with Lord of the Rings.
ReplyDeleteI'm not quite sure AMERICAN BEAUTY and TITANIC deserved 'Best Picture" awards.
ReplyDeleteThey were both pretty awful, Prashant.
ReplyDeleteI'm with Deb on THE STING. I'm not a fan of AMERICAN BEAUTY.
ReplyDeleteOliver! was a poor choice over the other films made that year: Funny Girl; The Lion in Winter; Rachel, Rachel; Romeo & Juliet. The Lion in Winter is far superior to Oliver! and even Funny Girl was a better made musical than the crowd pleasing, oddly buoyant Oliver!
ReplyDeleteGladiator is one of the most boring movies I've ever attempted to watch. Turned it off after 20 minutes. Can't understand why it was nominated or won anything.
Million Dollar Baby is not really Oscar material in my book. It's such a crock of hackneyed old- fashioned movie hokum.
AS for the most deserving: I have a soft spot for All About Eve as one of the best movies ever made. Mostly it's for the dynamite performances and the crackerjack dialogue. I never tire of watching it.
I'm not going to read the other comments before I write this.
ReplyDeleteWithout looking at the list I will go with CASABLANCA because it is my favorite movie at the moment. As for worst there have been several awful choices, even worse than FORREST GUMP, like CRASH. But I am going with the execrable AMERICAN BEAUTY because I hated every phony awful second of it. As an Oscar winner or otherwise I hate that movie.
Jeff M.
I rewatched AB in California and it was awful. Annette Benning was the only good thing in it.
ReplyDeleteI know, tell you how I really feel.
ReplyDeleteFavorites:
All About Eve
Godfather and Godfather II
On the negative side:
Oliver!
Forrest Gump
Out of Africa
The Greatest Show on Earth
CRash
Jeff M.
Yes, Annette Bening was - as always - really good.
ReplyDeleteJeff M.
PS - Others I've rewatched in recent years and still like include The Lost Weekend, The Best Years of Out Lives and Midnight Cowboy, and Annie Hall of course.
The Departed, The English Patent, and Amadeus stunk on ice in my book. American Beauty had it's moments but it went to hell at the end.
ReplyDeleteCasablanca is one of my all time favorites.
As for going to a show, I went once last year and zero times this year. People don't know how to behave in public anymore and I hate having to shut them up.
Oldest to newest, my favorites of the ones listed that I have seen (I have not seen many of them):
ReplyDeleteRebecca
Casablanca
West Side Story
Lawrence of Arabia
Driving Miss Daisy
No Country for Old Men
Best:
ReplyDeleteAll Quiet on the Western Front
Casablanca
On the Waterfront
The French Connection
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
Annie Hall
Worst:
The Sound of Music
Braveheart
I especially hate BRAVEHEART. It's certainly one of the most ridicilous things I've ever seen.
Wow. Not every one but a whole lot of ridiculously overrated films.
ReplyDeleteAmong the best, and unmentioned so far: IN THE HEAT OF THE NIGHT. Among the better of those that might seem more Worthy than actually good: A MAN FOR ALL SEASONS.
Horrible, irresponsible films about important subjects abound, very much including CRASH, AMERICAN BEAUTY, SCHINDLER'S LIST, PLATOON, THE LAST EMPEROR and A BEAUTIFUL MIND (perhaps the least bad of these, more clumsily mediocre than ridiculously clumsily manipulative or otherwise simply ridiculous).