There are winners and losers in movies. Sometimes the cables get crossed and great movies are sent to the showers in favor of movies that really suck. Here are some glaring examples of good movies that lost Best Picture to some real rags.
‘Raging Bull’ somehow lost the award for best film of 1980 to ‘Ordinary People’. ‘Raging Bull’ is a graphic look at the brutal world of boxing seen through the turbulent life of Jake LaMotta. ‘Common People’ was a boring look at a dysfunctional family. Too bad LaMotta wasn’t part of the family. He could have put them to sleep before they slept the public.
‘Chariots of Fire’ beat ‘Raiders of the Lost Ark’ in 1981. I remember the preview of ‘Chariots of Fire’: a group of boys running down a beach. Naturally, I assumed they had just left the theater playing shit like that. Meanwhile, Indiana Jones was breaking the whip on the first of the action-adventure films in the “Raiders” franchise. This was a no-brainer, but the Academy was wrong. Very bad.
‘The Last Emperor’ won the best picture award in 1987. Did anyone see this movie? “Fatal Attraction” was nominated that same year, and few people will forget what was on the menu in this movie. Take a live rabbit, add a married man’s crazy girlfriend, and you’ve got a recipe for shock and future marital fidelity.
“Shakespeare in Love” won the Oscar for Best Picture in 1998. Remember the guy who single-handedly bored and confused you in high school English? A movie about his love life somehow beat “Saving Private Ryan” at the Academy Award in 1998.
1996 was the year ‘The English Patient’ won the Best Picture award. It could be assumed that the film was about a sick Englishman. That’s all I can tell you about this movie because I never tried to watch it. Instead, I saw the 1996 Best Picture nominee ‘Jerry Maguire’ because I like to be awake during a movie and have a little laugh along the way. Show me how funny.
2002 was the year ‘Chicago’ won the Best Picture award. ‘Chicago’ was a musical. That’s the single best possible reason to avoid this movie as a handshake club for a contagious leper colony. It crushed ‘Gangs of New York’ for Best Picture in the Academy’s eyes. Give one to the atheists as proof that there is no God when things like this happen.
The last movie on my list is the 1968 Best Picture winner: ‘Oliver’. All the nominees sucked that year, so they probably gave it to ‘Oliver’, a musical, by default. Her competition that year included ‘Funny Girl’ (another musical), ‘The Lion in Winter’ (boring British monarch), ‘Rachel Rachel’ (boring school teacher) and ‘Romeo and Juliet’ (boring Shakespearean play).
The real winner of 1968 was ‘Bullitt’, a Steve McQueen classic featuring the best car chase ever filmed for the big screen. It wasn’t even nominated for Best Picture. With that, I would like to thank the Academy for turning the ball over the years, many times.