15th in a series of polls examining the opinion of you, the TrekBBS users. Which of the original five Academy Award nominees actually should have won? Up next: Best Picture, 1997... which nominee deserved the award most? Comments encouraged.
TrekBBS Academy Awards #15: Best Picture, 1997
- Thread starter Star Treks
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I'm guessing L.A. Confidential will win this poll, but I really liked Good Will Hunting despite being somewhat cheesy. As Good As It Gets was a very funny movie too, but comedies never win the Oscar, do they?
The year of the Great Rip-off. LA Confidential was so visibly superior to the others. Good Will Hunting was good but not on the same level.
For comparison, the top-rated English language feature films of 1997 on IMDB are:
L.A. Confidential (8.4)
Good Will Hunting (8.0)
As Good as It Gets (7.8)
Boogie Nights (7.8)
The Sweet Hereafter (7.8)
Donnie Brasco (7.7)
The Game (7.7)
Gattaca (7.7)
Jackie Brown (7.6)
Chasing Amy (7.5)
Cube (7.5)
The Ice Storm (7.5)
Lost Highway (7.5)
The Full Monty and Titanic both score 7.2.
Some other noticeable films of 1997: Grosse Pointe Blank (7.4), Contact (7.3), Mrs. Brown (7.3), Amistad (7.1), Kundun (7.0), and The Wings of the Dove (7.0).
The Full Monty shouldn't have been nominated. It was a decent film, but nowhere near strong enough to merit inclusion in the five best of the year. There were a lot of films more deserving of its slot, particularly Boogie Nights, The Sweet Hereafter, The Ice Storm, Contact, and the excellent and very underrated The Wings of the Dove.
My vote for the winner likely won't be the popular one, which is that I think Titanic deserved its win. The film certainly has its flaws, but overall Cameron pulled off a monumental piece of filmmaking in crafting an old-time epic that captured the attention of the world like few films have ever done. L.A. Confidential is a great film and would have been a worthy winner, but I'll stick up for Titanic as being the correct winner.
L.A. Confidential (8.4)
Good Will Hunting (8.0)
As Good as It Gets (7.8)
Boogie Nights (7.8)
The Sweet Hereafter (7.8)
Donnie Brasco (7.7)
The Game (7.7)
Gattaca (7.7)
Jackie Brown (7.6)
Chasing Amy (7.5)
Cube (7.5)
The Ice Storm (7.5)
Lost Highway (7.5)
The Full Monty and Titanic both score 7.2.
Some other noticeable films of 1997: Grosse Pointe Blank (7.4), Contact (7.3), Mrs. Brown (7.3), Amistad (7.1), Kundun (7.0), and The Wings of the Dove (7.0).
The Full Monty shouldn't have been nominated. It was a decent film, but nowhere near strong enough to merit inclusion in the five best of the year. There were a lot of films more deserving of its slot, particularly Boogie Nights, The Sweet Hereafter, The Ice Storm, Contact, and the excellent and very underrated The Wings of the Dove.
My vote for the winner likely won't be the popular one, which is that I think Titanic deserved its win. The film certainly has its flaws, but overall Cameron pulled off a monumental piece of filmmaking in crafting an old-time epic that captured the attention of the world like few films have ever done. L.A. Confidential is a great film and would have been a worthy winner, but I'll stick up for Titanic as being the correct winner.
Very rarely. Excluding musicals with some comedy in them (such as My Fair Lady), there have been four comedies that have won Best Picture: It Happened One Night in 1934, You Can't Take It With You in 1938, The Apartment in 1960 (a bitter-sweet comedy/drama), and Annie Hall in 1977.
L.A. Confidential. Much better film than all the others. I don't hate Titanic, I just hate the stupid romance in it.
I still don't understand why The Ice Storm was totally ignored by the Academy- it should have at least scored a Best Actress nomination for Sigourney Weaver.
I still don't understand why The Ice Storm was totally ignored by the Academy- it should have at least scored a Best Actress nomination for Sigourney Weaver.
I just re-watched it for the first time since I saw it in theaters. I thought it was dreadful... and I kind of liked it the first time around.
Technically it is a masterpiece, but I thought the old lady framing story was just soooo cheesy.
The only one on the list that I've seen is Titanic. On a technical level, it is indeed a masterpiece, and fully deserving of most of the Oscars it won.
Best Picture? Well, as I haven't seen any of the other nominated films, I can't really compare them... but the script for Titanic didn't really do much for me. I haven't felt any urge whatsoever to rewatch it since I first saw it in theatres back in 1997. I have a feeling that it probably wouldn't be my first pick if I'd seen all the films on that list.
On that note... I really need to see more of those films, especially L.A. Confidential. It probably looked boring to me when it was released (I was in my early teens), but now it has greatly piqued my interest.
Best Picture? Well, as I haven't seen any of the other nominated films, I can't really compare them... but the script for Titanic didn't really do much for me. I haven't felt any urge whatsoever to rewatch it since I first saw it in theatres back in 1997. I have a feeling that it probably wouldn't be my first pick if I'd seen all the films on that list.
On that note... I really need to see more of those films, especially L.A. Confidential. It probably looked boring to me when it was released (I was in my early teens), but now it has greatly piqued my interest.
I loved Contact (yes, even the ending) - one of my favorite movies, and probably high on my list of underrated flicks of the 90s.
Titanic; it soon got hit by a backlash that is still going today, but I unabashedly love the movie.
To tell you the truth, I thought this was a pretty slow year for the Oscars. None of the movies listed above were all THAT great, IMO. A few of them good movies, for sure...but none of them extraordinary.
If it hadn't been for that stupid love story, Titanic might have been good. But to tell you the truth, by the time Leonardo DeCaprio slipped off into the deep, I couldn't possibly have cared less. They were just annoying, by that time - the two of them.
And I generally like Kate Winslet, so that's saying alot.
If it hadn't been for that stupid love story, Titanic might have been good. But to tell you the truth, by the time Leonardo DeCaprio slipped off into the deep, I couldn't possibly have cared less. They were just annoying, by that time - the two of them.
And I generally like Kate Winslet, so that's saying alot.
trevanian
Rear Admiral
LA CONFIDENTIAL is superb and really deserved it; the only thing that didn't work for me was Basinger, who oddly enough, won for it. I love GATTACA as well, and LOST HIGHWAY is among Lynch's best for me, just on Loggia's scenes if nothing else.
I still can't even get through TITANIC. I've seen maybe a half hour or 40min altogether, and to me it is just ... schmaltz. I liked all of Cameron's other movies to some degree or other (well, only the first and last acts of TRUE LIES), and I think Kate Winslet is one of the most superb actresses of the last few decades, but TITANIC? TITANIC?! nuh-uhh.
EDIT ADDON: didn't mean to be redundant, I was responding after reading the first part of the thread, didn't realize poster above said pretty much the same as me.
I still can't even get through TITANIC. I've seen maybe a half hour or 40min altogether, and to me it is just ... schmaltz. I liked all of Cameron's other movies to some degree or other (well, only the first and last acts of TRUE LIES), and I think Kate Winslet is one of the most superb actresses of the last few decades, but TITANIC? TITANIC?! nuh-uhh.
EDIT ADDON: didn't mean to be redundant, I was responding after reading the first part of the thread, didn't realize poster above said pretty much the same as me.
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I saw Titanic to see what the big deal was, and as my girlfriend (now wife) and I left the theater we simultaneously vented our incredulity at what a banal, derivative and uninspired piece of junk was setting all these box office records. And I was a big fan of the Titanic story, I'd read most of the books on the disaster that were in print at that time. I don't think the movie deserved any non-technical nominations, despite its commercial success. It was no better than the George C. Scott Titanic TV movie that came out around the same time, it just had a lot bigger budget.
I voted for L.A. Confidential, which I think was one of the best films of the decade, but not only do I think The Full Monty deserved to be nominated, it would be my second choice for best picture. Though it played for comedy, it was also a serious look at issues of class and socioeconomic perceptions of individuals' worth in society. Its approach was light but not sentimental, which I found all the more moving, not to mention a difficult feat to combine with successful comedy.
Pistol-caliber shots to the face/lower skull are often survivable. The last scene made it pretty clear that White had been shot in the jaw, not likely life-threatening with a police .38 Special.
--Justin
I voted for L.A. Confidential, which I think was one of the best films of the decade, but not only do I think The Full Monty deserved to be nominated, it would be my second choice for best picture. Though it played for comedy, it was also a serious look at issues of class and socioeconomic perceptions of individuals' worth in society. Its approach was light but not sentimental, which I found all the more moving, not to mention a difficult feat to combine with successful comedy.
Pistol-caliber shots to the face/lower skull are often survivable. The last scene made it pretty clear that White had been shot in the jaw, not likely life-threatening with a police .38 Special.
--Justin
Thanks, I did not know that. Still, I'll have to take another look at the scene. Crowe's character looked pretty dead by the end to me.
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