The Academy sometimes gets it wrong with Best Picture
The academy, it turns out, doesn’t always pick the best movie of the year
You and I can disagree on a movie, but time gets the last word — even over the Oscars.
Year after year, the academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences deems one movie better than all the others, to the consternation of many.
But years later, it’s not necessarily the best picture winner whose lines are recited by memory on repeated viewing — let alone embraced by generations unborn when the movie was first released.
We bet you haven’t watched these best picture winners since. In each case, we include a film it beat that we bet you have.
1. ORDINARY PEOPLE OVER RAGING BULL (1980)
With the death of Mary Tyler Moore, people claim to be revisiting this lugubrious movie starring her and Donald Sutherland as parents of a suicidal teen (Timothy Hutton). Don’t believe it. Meanwhile, Raging Bull went on to be acclaimed by critics and fans as the best film of the ’80s — another Martin Scorsese film the academy would overlook and atone for later.
2. THE HURT LOCKER OVER AVATAR (2008)
I enjoy seeing an ex-wife get revenge on an Oscar stage as much as anyone, but not that many people watched Kathryn Bigelow’s above-average war movie in the theatres, let alone on DVD or cable. It has its flaws, but I’ve watched her ex, James Cameron’s Avatar many times (I even saw the Cirque du Soleil version, Toruk). For that matter, I’ve rewatched fellow best picture nominees District 9, Inglourious Basterds and Up multiple times as well.
3. CHARIOTS OF FIRE OVER RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK (1981)
Boy, those 1924 Olympics really resonate. Meanwhile, Raiders is so ingrained in our culture, that there was recently a documentary about two Mississippi kids who created a shot-by-shot recreation of it in the ’80s that was recently completed with the blessing of Steven Spielberg. Like Scorsese, Spielberg was considered “not good enough” by the Academy for most of his career.
4. GANDHI OVER E.T. THE EXTRA-TERRESTRIAL (1982)
Both stories about a little wrinkled guy with a message of peace from a faraway place. But count the number of times you’ve heard somebody say, “ET … phone home,” in a funny voice versus the number of times you’ve heard them say (in a funny voice), “When I despair, I remember that the way of truth and love has always won.”
5. THE ENGLISH PATIENT OVER FARGO (1996)
A lovely, complex, nearly three-hour film that embodies everything the name Merchant-Ivory stood for. And no, I haven’t watched it since. Fargo? Maybe next to The Big Lebowski, it’s my Coen brothers film of choice to encounter channel-flipping. I still laugh at the same spots and see something new every time. The academy didn’t “get” the Coens back then. And they kind of still don’t (otherwise Hail, Caesar! would have got an invite).
6. DANCES WITH WOLVES OVER GOODFELLAS (1990)
Gosh, but Dances with Wolves was a work of art, wasn’t it? I mean, it hardly felt like three slow-moving hours of the Old West at all. (And hey, it inspired Kevin Costner to go on and make Waterworld and The Postman.) Yup, Scorsese loses to an “important” movie yet again. It only seems like I watch GoodFellas every other week.
7. DRIVING MISS DAISY OVER FIELD OF DREAMS (1989)
Pandering racial comfort food was easier to swallow, than something real on the subject like Do the Right Thing (for which Spike Lee at least got a writing nod that year). Yeah, I’m a baseball fan and a sucker for schmaltz, but I have rewatched Field of Dreams many times since, and it remains just a notch below Bull Durham in the formidable contributions of Kevin Costner to the baseball movie genre.