Oscars: Sometimes right, sometimes very wrong

After “Green Book” won the Oscar for Best Picture, I decided it was time to check it out. I don’t trust the Oscars much, but I’d heard good things about the movie.

I’d also read that it was kind of an all-male “Driving Miss Daisy,” which won the Best Picture Oscar in 1989. That worried me a bit because it’s probably not a coincidence when you tally up the Best Picture choices over the decades. Safety over edginess has usually been the philosophy.

“Green Book” wasn’t bad. Entirely predictable, but with excellent performances from Best Actor nominee Viggo Mortensen and Best Supporting Actor winner Mahershala Ali. I left the theater having enjoyed my time spent there. I can’t say, though, whether it should’ve won Best Picture. I only saw “Roma” and “Black Panther” from the list of nominees, and I thought “Green Book” was better than those two.

Through the years, I’ve had my ups and downs with the Oscars when it comes to Best Picture. Some years I think the picks are spot on; other years I think they couldn’t be worse choices even if they were the only films made that year.

Spot on: “On the Waterfront,” “The Godfather” and “The Godfather: Part II,” “Platoon,” “Schindler’s List,” “Moonlight,” “The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King” (even though it honestly was an award for the entire film trilogy).

Not so spot on:

› “The French Connection.” Great movie, but Stanley Kubrick’s “A Clockwork Orange,” as searing as it is to watch, is a true classic and a better film.

› “The Sting.” Pleasant and enjoyable, but mostly a way to get Paul Newman and Robert Redford back together after the success of 1969’s “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.” “The Exorcist” was better and more influential.

› “Out of Africa.” A sappy, uninteresting love story instead of “The Color Purple” or “Witness”? C’mon.

› “Dances With Wolves.” I like “Dances With Wolves” very much, one of my favorites. But it’s no match for “Goodfellas,” one of the Top 5 greatest crime dramas ever.

› “The English Patient.” A chick-flick that even my wife didn’t like. At one point, she leaned over to me in the theater and asked, “Is this movie ever going to be over?”

› “Shakespeare in Love.” Harvey Weinstein goes fullcourt press on Oscar voters and gets his film the win. This flaccid film is better than “Saving Private Ryan”? Really?

› “Gladiator.” A C-grade movie with A-grade special effects.

Shawn Ryan