Worst best picture winners (Oscar) (1 Viewer)

[General Malaise]

meh, it just left me empty - couldn't give one flyin' fiddler's #### about any of the characters.  just waaayyy too cartoonish and over the top - outrageousness for outrageousness sake is boring and trite (see also: Fiction, Pulp).

it should've been titled "National Lampoon's Ordinary People" - because that's how it rubbed me 

Didn't see it that way, but I'm a fan of Alan Ball so maybe he just strikes me right in the zone with his work (though I couldn't get into True Blood; no use for anything vampire/zombie related).  Plus, cheerleader nudity!

 

[otb_lifer]

Plus, cheerleader nudity!

as titillating as that was (see whut i did thar?  ),  it was, once again, an empty note for me. 

the only part that even remotely resonated was when Lester declines to bang Angela - and then she asks him how he's doing ...and, for the first time, we see him genuinely smile - because somebody actually gave a #### about him. 

now, i realize that the aforementioned scene is basically the gist of the flick - especially considering what happens immediately afterwards, followed by Lester's soliloquy.  got it.  

but, ferchrissakes, did they take any dozen wrong turns getting there ... to me, it could've been an all-time great piece of cinematic art.  it had so much ####### potential, but, as i said earlier, they chose to play the 'let's push the envelope!!!1!!!1!' card way too much - and that includes the nekkidness 

was a visually remarkable film, though ... the art direction and cinematography are some of the greatest and most vivid i've ever seen (Kubrick-esque, if you will) ... 

like i said "IT COULDA BEEN SOMEBODY" - but, in my eyes, it failed to deliver the greatness it aspired to.

 

[rockaction]

Weird. "American Beauty" had such resonance with me in my twenties, but I can't watch it anymore. I'm not sure that Annette Benning screaming "We lived in a duplex!" even as making fun of existential angst could be anything other than self-parody. 

But I'm being harsh. I wrote a three page paper on that movie back when I loved it.  

 

[simsarge]

Moonlight will be forgotten.

Not by the La La Land crew or Warren Beatty

 

[Mrs. Rannous]

The adults (except for the mother) aren't shown except from the waist down because it's supposed to show it from the POV of a kid.....with the idea that adults (to children) are "faceless" or generic until they effect kids lives. 

No problem there.  But there are ways of communicating "officialdom" without showing anyone from the waist up.

 

[Mrs. Rannous]

yep- 1941. How Green was My Valley won ahead of Kane, Maltese Falcon, Sergent York, Suspicion (Hitchcock).

I really loathe How Green was My Valley.  I've never gotten the love for this.  Your valley was green because everyone dies?  It's a movie to shoot yourself in the head to.  WTF?

 

[Mrs. Rannous]

I was asking why you thought Gladiator was bad

why are you talking about ET?

Sorry.  It was a two movie crossover.  Gladiator had so much potential.  But the soap opera plot and overwrought everything was just too much.  (And just how did he ride that horse all that way?  I don't think so.)

And all that shaky cam is a deal breaker for me.