Movies Talk! Talkin' about movies!

[prfsnl_gmr]

I won’t go into nominees - so many best picture nominees are so, so bad (e.g., Picnic) - but my least favorite best picture winners are:

From Here to Eternity
Ben-Hur
Kramer vs. Kramer
Ordinary People
Terms of Endearment
Driving Miss Daisy
Forrest Gump
Titanic
Shakespeare in Love
American Beauty
Crash
Slumdog Millionaire

All of them...bleh.

[PretentiousHipster]

First The Best Years of Our Lives, now Ben-Hur, wow you really hate William Wyler. On top of The Heiress I also thought The Collector was great. I didn't see The Big Country yet, but a lot of westerns can suck, unless it's one of those few artsy ones, or Anthony Mann.

[prfsnl_gmr]

Jezebel is pretty good, but that has more to do with Bette Davis than William Wyler.

I’d watch Bette Davis watching paint dry. She was amazing. I’d say the same for Audrey Hepburn, but she made a few really weak films...all directed by William Wyler.

[opa]

I won’t go into nominees - so many best picture nominees are so, so bad (e.g., Picnic) - but my least favorite best picture winners are:

Ben-Hur
Driving Miss Daisy
Forrest Gump

The heck, dude.

[prfsnl_gmr]

Search “Forrest Gump is terrible” on Google. You’ll get:

https://www.indiewire.com/2019/07/forre ... 202154214/

https://www.gq-magazine.co.uk/article/forrest-gump

These articles are all basically on point. Forrest agump is a bad, irresponsible movie.

Driving Miss Daisy is just kind of an uninspired racial reconciliation fantasy that won the award in a year Do the Right Thing, a radically better film, didn’t. I should probably take Ben Hur off my list. Most of the movie is OK, despite an eye-rolling ending. The chariot chase scene is pretty rad, though.

[PretentiousHipster]

Yea it is a very bad film but I kept it at a 3/10 because it was all I watched as a kid.

The depressing thing about Slumdog Millionaire is that it's arguably the most famous Indian movie when I probably wouldn't even call it that. The only other Indian films that made international acclaim is the work of Aamir Khan, and his films are among the worst I've ever seen. Quite a few films are in the imdb top 250, and Disney distributed some of the work.

It's just such a shame because there's quite a few fantastic Indian directors and films out there that you have to dig deep to even hear about. The Golden Lotus awards tends to be good, at least except for the S.S. Rajamouli film that won. I mean, seeing his film Eega was enough. A CGI fly does a musical number. It's on the same level as Crazy Frog in terms of being ridiculous. Cinephiles tend to love it but never specify why... I dunno what they see in it.

[RCBH928]

Looking at the list of Best Picture its hard to tell what is the criteria that is taken into consideration to give that award.

I haven't seen Green Book, but it looks like total garbage.

Gave the following 1 or 2/10 for best picture winners in chronological order:

Cimarron
Gone With the Wind
My Fair Lady
Chariots of Fire
Driving Miss Daisy
Titanic
Shakespeare in Love
Gladiator
Million Dollar Baby
Crash
Slumdog Millionaire

Gone with the Wind seems like very worthy of the award. Also Titanic was something for its time, maybe special effects goes into consideration. I can see why you might not like Gladiator as Best Picture, but who would you suggest as best picture for in the year of Titanic and Gladiator?

The Oscars were always political. Tarkovsky was the perfect example. Praised as one of the best directors of all time, and winning practically every award, but never had an Oscar nominee. I'm sure I know why: he's from the USSR. It doesn't matter what your opinion on communism is as his films weren't political at all, in fact, many were spiritual and even religious, which communism tends to be against. But, the Academy probably thought it would look like they were supporting communism if they nominated his work.

But then again, this is going into social issues which is arguably politics, so it's best not to delve too deep into this :p

To be fair, I can see why they wouldn't give the best picture to a Russian during the Cold War.

You know I just remembered they gave Slum Dog Millionaire best picture. I sometimes think the Oscars try to make a controversial choices for free publicity and keep interest. They also try to push "minorities" to give a more sense of "diversity" and "equality" but in the process they made those who were more deserving lose the recognition.

This far more often goes AGAINST foreign and minority-made films than for them. The Academy has a distinct Western, and specifically American and white, bias. Seeing the Academy Awards as some ultimate standard for film quality is folly. There are many other awards with more egalitarian, even-handed, and open-minded pedigrees.

I think they are trying to break that image by giving awards to Slum Dog and and maybe Parasite. This is not fair for the more worthy. I also think it has to do with business to make the 1B Indians pay attention to the Oscar and the 1B+ Asians.

[prfsnl_gmr]

The depressing thing about Slumdog Millionaire is that it's arguably the most famous Indian movie when I probably wouldn't even call it that. The only other Indian films that made international acclaim is the work of Aamir Khan, and his films are among the worst I've ever seen. Quite a few films are in the imdb top 250, and Disney distributed some of the work.

Have you seen Pyaasa?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyaasa

It is an absolutely gorgeous, moving Indian film. One of the best, most beautiful films I’ve ever seen. I really can’t recommend it highly enough.

[samsonlonghair]

Search “Forrest Gump is terrible” on Google. You’ll get:

https://www.indiewire.com/2019/07/forre ... 202154214/

https://www.gq-magazine.co.uk/article/forrest-gump

These articles are all basically on point. Forrest agump is a bad, irresponsible movie.

Driving Miss Daisy is just kind of an uninspired racial reconciliation fantasy that won the award in a year Do the Right Thing, a radically better film, didn’t. I should probably take Ben Hur off my list. Most of the movie is OK, despite an eye-rolling ending. The chariot chase scene is pretty rad, though.

I'll grant you that Do the Right Thing is a drastically better movie than Driving Miss Daisy. I couldn't even sit through Driving Miss Daisy. Do the Right Thing gets better every time I watch it.

The Forest Gump backlash, on the other hand, comes across as a little silly. I read that indiewire article you linked. It's just some guy complaining about politics. He barely even talks about the movie in the headline of his own article. C'mon. This is just certain audience members projecting their own politics onto the movie.

I couldn't follow the link to the GQ article. Something about a connection error. Might just be the firewall at work. So I can't comment on that.

Forrest Gump isn't a masterpiece, but it's a pretty good movie. You know why? Because there's a million ways to look at it and analyze it. Was Jenny a tragic abuse victim, or did she forward that abuse to Forrest? Both are valid viewpoints. At first it seems a little cornball for Forrest to miraculously outgrow his leg braces. When Lieutenant Dan asks Forrest if he knows what it feels like to not be able to use your legs, the whole conversation hits home. We could probably spend all darn day talking about Forrest Gump. For a movie that's supposedly naive, it's remarkably nuanced.

It's also worth noting that movies about people with mental impairments or disturbances oftentimes end with that person killing someone. Consider Of Mice and Men, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, or Sling Blade. These movies are all critical darlings, but they each perpetuate the notion that people with mental impairments or disturbances are dangerous. Forrest Gump, on the other hand, succeeds in life and does everything he can to help others along the way.

I'd be remiss if I didn't mention the music. The Soundtrack to Forrest Gump is on par with American Graffiti for capturing some of the most popular music of the 50s, 60s, and 70s. In many cases, the music in the movie tells the audience when that scene is taking place.

Don't get me wrong, Forrest Gump isn't my favorite movie or anything. I just see it for what it is. It's an allegory about America, not an inherently political statement. The theme of the movie is that everyone in America can affect history without even realizing it. We each just try to do the best we can with what we have. I see no reason why that message should offend anyone's sensibilities. But then again, a lot of this movie can be open to interpretation... something that can't often be said about bad movies.

[PretentiousHipster]

Looking at the list of Best Picture its hard to tell what is the criteria that is taken into consideration to give that award.

I haven't seen Green Book, but it looks like total garbage.

Gave the following 1 or 2/10 for best picture winners in chronological order:

Cimarron
Gone With the Wind
My Fair Lady
Chariots of Fire
Driving Miss Daisy
Titanic
Shakespeare in Love
Gladiator
Million Dollar Baby
Crash
Slumdog Millionaire

Gone with the Wind seems like very worthy of the award. Also Titanic was something for its time, maybe special effects goes into consideration. I can see why you might not like Gladiator as Best Picture, but who would you suggest as best picture for in the year of Titanic and Gladiator?

I'll ignore the foreign films and try to aim for stuff that I can see the Academy choosing.

The problem with Gladiator was the drama and character development aspects. All they do to make you feel bad for the main character is kill his family. The drama part with the emperor was so poorly done as well. Some of the action scenes were decent though. For that year I would probably choose The House of Mirth and maybe You Can Count on Me. But then again, on they shoot pictures don't they's 21st century list, In the Mood for Love is the #1 of all time. Ivansxtc is vastly underrated, but I don't think it came out in theatres until 2002. It looks like garbage because it was extremely low budget, even if it had Danny Huston and Peter Weller in it, and it was also during the early digital camera phase. That being said, it's a great modernized adaptation of Tolstoy, and shows hedonism quite well. Danny Huston gave one of my all time favourite performances. My #1 all time favourite performance is Gérard Depardieu in Welcome to New York. He wasn't even acting like a human in that.

Titanic is of course just cliche after cliche. The bad news is that I can't really think of a good replacement because it's stuff that the Academy would never choose. Starship Troopers is easily one of the best films of all time though, but I think Showgirls is Verhoeven's best. I find it hilarious because he made Robocop and Starship Troopers so it was clear that he established himself as a satirical director, but to this day people think Showgirls is still so bad it's good or unintentionally funny.

The depressing thing about Slumdog Millionaire is that it's arguably the most famous Indian movie when I probably wouldn't even call it that. The only other Indian films that made international acclaim is the work of Aamir Khan, and his films are among the worst I've ever seen. Quite a few films are in the imdb top 250, and Disney distributed some of the work.

Have you seen Pyaasa?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyaasa

It is an absolutely gorgeous, moving Indian film. One of the best, most beautiful films I’ve ever seen. I really can’t recommend it highly enough.

I was actually thinking about that when it comes to one of those fantastic Bollywood films! I also really loved Umrao Jaan. Pakeezah and Mahal are other Indian musicals I've enjoyed. There's also the work of Satyajit Ray (obviously), Mani Kaul, Adoor Gopalakrishnan, Ritwik Ghatak, and some other minor films like Court (you're a lawyer right? You might get a kick out of this), Amma Ariyan, and The Bogeyman. These are more western-friendly though.