The Oscars 2010

Best Picture Oscar Winners Category: 11th March 2010

After a break upon reaching our first milestone of 100 movies watched in the 2009 Movie Challenge we, the gang at The Movie Challenge,  have returned for 2010 and what better time to do so than the week of the Oscars.  This year we are on a new blog site and we have a few more changes coming but expect from us in 2010 the same old routine of picking movie categories and reviewing movies within that category every week.  And so to begin 2010 with our new category.  Oscar Best Picture winners.  This weeks movies include Braveheart, Titanic, A Beautiful Mind, Crash, No Country for Old Men, Slumdog Millionaire and the 2010 Best Picture Oscar winning movie.

82nd Annual Academy Awards, March 7th 2010

The week of the 82nd Annual Academy Awards brought with it much buzz.  This year with a wider field of 10 nominated for the Best Picture Oscar ranging from an animated children’s movie to a mammoth CGi undertaking and a gritty war movie it seemed like anyone could win.

Best Picture Nominees 2010

• “Avatar” James Cameron and Jon Landau, Producers
• “The Blind Side” Gil Netter, Andrew A. Kosove and Broderick Johnson, Producers
• “District 9” Peter Jackson and Carolynne Cunningham, Producers
• “An Education” Finola Dwyer and Amanda Posey, Producers
• “The Hurt Locker” Kathryn Bigelow, Mark Boal, Nicolas Chartier and Greg Shapiro, Producers
• “Inglourious Basterds” Lawrence Bender, Producer
• “Precious: Based on the Novel ‘Push’ by Sapphire” Lee Daniels, Sarah Siegel-Magness and Gary Magness, Producers
• “A Serious Man” Joel Coen and Ethan Coen, Producers
• “Up” Jonas Rivera, Producer
• “Up in the Air” Daniel Dubiecki, Ivan Reitman and Jason Reitman, Producers

In the end The Hurt Locker directed by Kathryn Bigelow won the coverted award surprising audiences everywhere.  We too wondered what could be so special about this low budget flick which could take down the highest grossing movie ever made.  We realised that money doesn’t always equal quality but after Cameron’s Titanic win of 1997 we decided this week to take a walk back through the Oscar’s Best Picture winnners just to see exactly where The Hurt Locker fit in, and we were pleasantly suprised. Here are my reviews.

James

	Title	Rachel’s Score (/5)	James’ Score (/5)	Total Score (/10)
1	Braveheart	3.5	3.5	7
2	Titanic	4	3.5	7.5
3	A Beautiful Mind	4.5	4.5	9
4	Crash	4	4	8
5	No Country for Old Men	3.5	3.5	7
6	Slumdog Millionaire	4	4	8
7	The Hurt Locker	3.5	3	6.5

Average 7.5/10

Reviews

• Braveheart: Best Picture Oscar Winner 1995: I think Mel Gibson is underrated as a film maker and I believe that, in the interest of good cinema, people need to decide to leave him be so he can get down to making some more good movies.  I do think that Braveheart went a little too long but it’s length surely helped put William Wallace into a good spot for a killer ending.  Brendan Gleeson rocked his Scottish accent a lot harder than Gibson does.  If you’re bound by historial accuracy keep in mind that this isn’t entirely a true story but Wallace obviously was a real person who no doubt hacked a lot of Englishmen to pieces.  Some bloody war scenes that today would still get a wince from a violence hazed audience.  By no means the deepest film ever made but if someone murdered my wife I’d burn Brittain to the ground too.  You’ve been warned Brittain.

• Titanic: Best Picture Oscar Winner 1997 : To be as succinct as possible I’d say that Jim Cameron sucks at dialogue and characterisation (Winslet and DiCaprio should sue him for making them do such bad acting) but he sure can deliver thrills and action like a pro.  The second half of this movie, the disaster half, more than makes up for the awful introduction and set up first half (what was all that stuff with Bill Paxton?).  One thing he did manage to convince me of was that Jack and Rose did love each other which gave a deeper level of intensity and fear during the second half of the movie and it made the ending a winner tear jerker wise.

• A Beautiful Mind: Best Picture Oscar Winner 2001: There’s not a whole lot for me to say about this movie but the one thing that did capture me was Russell Crowe’s performance.  Generally I can’t stand people “acting” crazy (or drunk) and for a lot of this movie I was naturally annoyed but something about this films persistance with John Nash won me over and made me more sympathetic to a (real life) character than I ever remember being.  The fact that I cared so much about John Nash is why I scored this movie so highly.  It was very moving.

• Crash: Best Picture Oscar Winner 2005: Something in the sound design and music gave this movie a huge amount of it’s atmosphere and mood.  Basically it’s about a bunch of racists learning about love and compassion and it doesn a good job.  I doens’t deserve to be reduced to such a small sentance but there isn’t much more to it.  It’s good, watch it, but block your ears when the guy from The Mummy starts talking.

• No Country for Old Men: Best Picture Oscar Winner 2008: It’s been said that this films ambiguious ending needs not be scoffed at and that audiences should be more open minded about movies that deviate from a more standard 3 act piece.  Well I agree and that’s all well and good but if it’s a movie that delievers a standard first act and a standard second act (as this movie does) than the lack of an ending of any kind is justifiably dissapointin.  Apart from that (which is huge) everything about this movie is very very good.

• Slumdog Millionaire: Best Picture Oscar Winner 2009: Danny Boyle is awesome, go watch 28 Days Later, right now!  There is something about using a video camera to make an Indian slum beautiful to look at that lets you know that Danny Boyle knows what he is doing.  The story is told mostly throuhg flashbacks of two brothers trying to survive homelessness while one of them ends up on Who Wants To Be A Millionaire trying to find his lost love.  The cinematography and music is brilliant and makes this movie what it is.  Boyle rules!

• The Hurt Locker: Best Picture Oscar Winner 2010: This movie scored the lowest on our list this week and I believe that’s mostly because it has no plot and the only message it wanted to send waited until the last 2 mintues of the movie and has already been said many times before.  It did have great performances and it was directed very well.  I think Bigelow very much deserved the Best Director Oscar she got for this movie but I don’t think the movie deserved the Best Picture Oscar it got.  I honestly think (from the perspective of someone who loves cinema and thinking and talking about it) that Avatar deserved it more.  Watch that instead.

Reviewed by James

So what do you think?  Do you think that The Hurt Locker should have scored so low (with a score of 6.5)?  Or are you a fan?  And did Avatar really deserve to win?   What are your favourite Oscar winners and why?