RANKING LAST DECADE'S BEST PICTURES!
10. GREEN BOOK
The retrospective rundown: Having been crowned the Academy's movie of the year less than a year ago, it only took a few seconds after Julia Roberts read the name to realize a mistake had been made. And not a La La Land/Moonlight debacle either. I've heard it perfectly described as the second installment in the Driving Miss Daisy cinematic universe. This is not to say Peter Farrelly's Green Book is terrible. The chemistry between Tony Lip (Viggo Mortensen) and Dr. Shirley (Mahershala Ali) is what keeps this engine running. But the white savior narrative (not the only Best Picture on here with that problem, either) is so glaring. Tony saves Shirley from getting beat up by white supremacists, saves him from a police investigation of a gay hook-up Shirley had in a YMCA. And, of course, Tony saves him from loneliness when Shirley is invited to Christmas Eve dinner. The onscreen friendship is palpable, but who would ever go with centering a narrative on Tony's racial redemption versus the life of closeted pianist genius Don Shirley? A gaggle of white producers who accepted the award for Best Picture.
The competition: Black Panther, BlacKkKlansman, Bohemian Rhapsody, The Favourite, Roma, A Star Is Born, Vice
What should've won: While my personal choice was Yorgos Lanthimos's irreverent period film The Favourite, how wonderful would it've been if Roma took the top prize? It would've been a product of the 2018 moment: a movie predominantly released from streaming overlord Netflix, and a Mexican film winning top prize in the Trump presidency. We would have to wait until next year for that milestone.
9. SPOTLIGHT
The retrospective rundown: A reenactment of the team behind the Pulitzer-Prize winning investigation into Catholic priest perversion, looking back I can't help but wonder if Tom McCarthy's Spotlight wouldn't have served better as a documentary. A video I watched on the film recently revealed that McCarthy and cinematographer Masanobu Takayanagi strove for a grounded, non-Hollywood feel. I respect that tone for such a grave matter, but I'm more Team Shattered Glass.
The competition: The Big Short, Bridge of Spies, Brooklyn, Mad Max: Fury Road, The Martian, The Revenant, Room
What should've won: Big Short for its wall-breaking, innovative structure of an impossible topic. Revenant for its epic scope and gorgeous cinematography. Room for its heartbreaking dissection of a family so broken it had to stay together to thrive. Pick one. My personal choice would've been the adrenaline IV that was the fourth installment in the Mad Max series. It's gonzo that this feminist blockbuster revived a dead franchise, but also became an Oscar darling on that February night...y'all remember it bagged SIX trophies?
8. THE KING'S SPEECH
The retrospective rundown: This movie came out when I was completing my freshman year of high school, so you'll forgive me if it's not terribly fresh in my mind. King George VI had to overcome a stutter, I had to overcome geometry. From here til the top spot, I actually consider these great movies, if not great winners. This might be one of the all-time best line ups of nominees in Academy history. The story is inspiring, and the trio of nominated performances were splendid...but it does stink to high heavens of Oscar bait, right? A period piece about a man who had a country's burden on his shoulders. Plus, the Weinstein Company's stench of forcing a voter's hand was still spread all over the Academy.
The competition: 127 Hours, Black Swan, The Fighter, Inception, The Kids Are All Right, The Social Network, Toy Story 3, True Grit, Winter's Bone
What should've won: Besides the Coen brothers remake of the John Wayne classic, pretty much anything could've won here that I would've been happy with. Of course, I was rooting for The Social Network, which was my runner-up for movie of the decade. I watched it slack-jawed on an October weekend, marvelling at the marriage of score, story, acting and scenery. It's been hard to wow me like that ever since. King's Speech was timeless if largely safe...Social Network had the finger on the pulse of Facebook's emerging dominance, along with a Shakespearean backstabbing to boot.
7. THE ARTIST
The retrospective rundown: The Artist is sweet homage that really straddles the line of gimmick. Along with Argo, this was Hollywood telling Hollywood what a good job it's done.
The competition: The Descendants, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, The Help, Hugo, Midnight in Paris, Moneyball, The Tree of Life, War Horse
What should've won: You either love The Tree of Life and hold it to be a cinematic standard or you kinda shrug it off and admit it had pretty pictures. What a madhouse it would've been if that'd won. My personal pick was Alexander Payne's perfectly bittersweet Descendants, my favorite from an absolute masterful filmmaker. Maybe it was an Oscar moment when George Clooney holds his comatose wife and a single tear falls out. Maybe it was just movie magic.
6. THE SHAPE OF WATER
The retrospective rundown: Guillermo del Toro's Oscar moment should've come in 2007 when Pan's Labyrinth was eligible, and we all know it. After a string of bigger budget misses (Pacific Rim and Crimson Peak), I don't think anyone would've guessed that this would've been the Academy darling. Sally Hawkins is perfect in the role, and though Michael Shannon's icky section of the film makes it far from a four-star creature feature, this is del Toro's second best adult fairy tale project. When you make the genre you're competing in, that's not bad.
The competition: Call Me by Your Name; Darkest Hour; Dunkirk; Get Out; Lady Bird; Phantom Thread; The Post; Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri
What should've won: A very strong year featuring a slew of pictures with some of the best directors at the helm (Spielberg, Nolan, Anderson, del Toro) along with selections from the filmmakers who we anticipate in the 20's (Gerwig, Peele, McDonagh). Lady Bird is coming-of-age perfection, Get Out is peak social horror, and Three Billboards... had the best ensemble and writing of the year hands down. It really comes down to personal preference, which is the achingly romantic Call Me by Your Name, Luca Guadagnino's magnum opus, a near-immaculate blend of authentic romance, location, score, postcard cinematography.
5. ARGO
The retrospective rundown: One of the biggest upsets of the decade was seeing Ben Affleck's name absent on the Best Director list. He took home the prize at the Globes and the BAFTAs, but perhaps they hadn't yet forgiven him for Gigli. The Gigli jokes stopped after Affleck helmed this terrific 70's thriller. Yes, it's more of Hollywood patting itself on the back, but perhaps the push to make an Oscar for Best Casting is valid; Bryan Cranston, Alan Arkin and John Goodman are the Holy Trinity of a supporting cast. I literally white knuckled my seat as it reached the climax of trying to get the Iranian hostages back to the States. It's come under fire as a good movie but undeserving of the award, and a strange consolation prize to Affleck for not getting the director nom. While I love this movie and proudly had a poster of it in my college dorm room for years, it was not my #1 choice in 2012.
The competition: Amour, Beasts of the Southern Wild, Django Unchained, Les Misérables, Life of Pi, Lincoln, Silver Linings Playbook, Zero Dark Thirty
What should've won: This was a year for the epics. Les Miz made the case for the big screen musical to be seen in its operatic glory. Lincoln and Zero Dark Thirty were electric history lessons. But it was Tarantino's revisionist Django that only gets better with age. At the time, seeing it in the dead of Virginian winter in 2013, it was one of the most thrilling movies I'd ever seen. You won't find your revenge westerns much better than this.
4. BIRDMAN OR (THE UNEXPECTED VIRTUE OF IGNORANCE)
The retrospective rundown: A movie that could've just been chalked up to its gimmick (one shot, no cuts!) ended up being one of the most unique of the decade, helping give Michael Keaton a little meta-late-career boost, and showed that Emma Stone could be Oscar-caliber. The feel of the film is breathless, and you're with Riggan every step of his downward tail-spin. It's a movie you walk out of the theater shaking your head at how they were able to pull everything off so seamlessly.
The competition: American Sniper, Boyhood, The Grand Budapest Hotel, The Imitation Game, Selma, The Theory of Everything, Whiplash
What should've won: This is tough. In a field crowded with biopics of important men (half of them!!), the outliers were appreciated. In the summer of 2014, as I was gearing up to go to college, Boyhood hit me like a ton of bricks. Mason's life timeline lined up almost exactly with my own, and I cringed with Richard Linklater over early 2000's fashion like everyone else. It has collectively become commonplace to call this the most overrated movie of the decade. I have friends who despise it, and I think a retrospective viewing should be in order soon. I would probably go with Damien Chazelle's Whiplash now, an ingenious study on the ethics of becoming the best in your craft. It's a movie that has stayed with me for years and years after just one viewing.
3. PARASITE
The retrospective rundown: I rang in the new Roaring 20's with seeing Bong Joon-ho's Parasite this past New Year's Day. So I can only give it so much perspective from seeing it once in a little arthouse cinema two months ago. It seems like the type of movie that people complain about not seeing anymore; no supernatural/superpowered elements, no premise made for trailer bait. Just a marriage of intelligent writing with a how-can-they-pull-that-off??? sort of midway twist, uniformly excellent performances and a strong 99%-er message. All of the chances in Parasite pay off, and that's a rare, metaphorical thing indeed.
The competition: 1917, Ford v Ferrari, The Irishman, Jojo Rabbit, Joker, Little Women, Marriage Story, Once Upon a Time...in Hollywood
What should've won: Parasite was the only answer. Whines and complaints about EVERY other nominee abounded: 1917 was just watching someone play a video game, Ford... was a dad movie, Irishman was bloated and had bad VFX, Jojo Rabbit was unfunny, Joker was the most polarizing movie of the year, Little Women had confusing editing, Marriage Story was overacted and Hollywood dragged. Parasite isn't a perfect movie, but only five people on Rotten Tomatoes dislike it (compared to the 420 who liked it), Film Twitter seemed to worship it, and I haven't met a person yet who didn't love it, except this guy. After Roma lost to clearly inferior American Oscar bait just the year before, the timing was perfect. And voters seized the moment. The second Bong Joon-ho was announced over clear favorite Sam Mendes I knew it was a done deal, and history will reward this decision.
2. 12 YEARS A SLAVE
The retrospective rundown: Though a slew of cameos that served as the marketing for this film distracts from the gripping narrative at hand, there's not much wrong with Steve McQueen's devastating account of Solomon Northup. It's troubling when the Academy likes to nominate performances where people of color are in subordinate roles (Octavia Spencer in The Help and Shape of Water, Yalitza Aparicio in Roma and Cynthia Erivo in Harriet for recent examples), but the whole point of 12 Years a Slave is to show how a wrongly imprisoned freeman survived in an environment urging him to submit and die. Basically what I'm saying is Chiwetel Ejiofor and Leonardo DiCaprio should've tied for Best Actor this year. This is a film you either see once and never need to again, or you see time after time to appreciate its fearless acting and melancholy cinematography.
The competition: American Hustle, Captain Phillips, Dallas Buyers Club, Gravity, Her, Nebraska, Philomena, The Wolf of Wall Street
What should've won: Remember when American Hustle was, for a brief moment, the major frontrunner in the 2013 race? Yeah, me too (shudders). A lot of these films aren't discussed much now that the hype is long over, except of course for Wolf of Wall Street, which became one of the most discussed and celebrated performances/films of all time thanks to Leo's dedicated quaalude walk, among many other iconic moments. Many including myself think he should've won here instead of his Revenant consolation prize. WOWS would've gone down as one of the wilder winners of all time, but 12 Years a Slave was too well-crafted to ignore. The right movie won.
1. MOONLIGHT
The retrospective rundown: As close to a perfect Best Picture as they come, the second film by Barry Jenkins is also my vote for best film of the decade, and is always crawling its way towards my top five films of all time. At the risk of sounding like a broken record, here are my reasons why. It is simply the result of cutting down to exactly what you need to communicate a story, a blend of cinematic techniques that reflect the protagonist's mood and life. It is in itself a moment for all time.
The competition: Arrival, Fences, Hacksaw Ridge, Hell or High Water, Hidden Figures, La La Land, Lion, Manchester by the Sea
What should've won: This, but there was some stellar competition in 2016. Though Manchester by the Sea is the superior sad film, no movie has made me cry harder and for longer than Garth Davis's Lion. We had an onslaught of superb genre movies competing (sci-fi, war, western and musical all together?!). But nothing outshines Moonlight.
FUN FACTS OF THE DECADE IN OSCAR:
Average runtime of a '10's Best Picture: ~122 minutes.
The longest nominee: The Irishman (209 mins).
The shortest nominee: Gravity (91 mins).
Animated nominee(s): Toy Story 3. That's it. #JusticeforInsideOut.
Non-English-language nominees: Amour, Roma, Parasite.
Documentary nominees: None. Still none?!
My favorite nominee: The Social Network. Poke me if you disagree.
My least favorite nominee: Once Upon a Time...in Hollywood. There are obviously other notably bad nominees (Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close?!) but I had the worst experience with this one. I was squirming in my seat waiting for the explanation behind all these driving scenes, all these gratuitous acting scenes with Rick Dalton in a cowboy costume. To be looking at your watch during a Tarantino film is a depressing thing indeed. The final act barely saved what I considered to be a bore.
My favorite year of nominees: 2017. A who's-who of directorial auteur pictures.
My least favorite year of nominees: 2018. Black Panther was a cut above other Marvel properties, but the VFX alone should've disqualified it from the race. Bohemian Rhapsody and Green Book are so shamelessly Oscar bait that their subtitle should read "for your consideration."
Still need to see: Fences. I'm sorry Denzel!
The retrospective rundown: Having been crowned the Academy's movie of the year less than a year ago, it only took a few seconds after Julia Roberts read the name to realize a mistake had been made. And not a La La Land/Moonlight debacle either. I've heard it perfectly described as the second installment in the Driving Miss Daisy cinematic universe. This is not to say Peter Farrelly's Green Book is terrible. The chemistry between Tony Lip (Viggo Mortensen) and Dr. Shirley (Mahershala Ali) is what keeps this engine running. But the white savior narrative (not the only Best Picture on here with that problem, either) is so glaring. Tony saves Shirley from getting beat up by white supremacists, saves him from a police investigation of a gay hook-up Shirley had in a YMCA. And, of course, Tony saves him from loneliness when Shirley is invited to Christmas Eve dinner. The onscreen friendship is palpable, but who would ever go with centering a narrative on Tony's racial redemption versus the life of closeted pianist genius Don Shirley? A gaggle of white producers who accepted the award for Best Picture.
The competition: Black Panther, BlacKkKlansman, Bohemian Rhapsody, The Favourite, Roma, A Star Is Born, Vice
What should've won: While my personal choice was Yorgos Lanthimos's irreverent period film The Favourite, how wonderful would it've been if Roma took the top prize? It would've been a product of the 2018 moment: a movie predominantly released from streaming overlord Netflix, and a Mexican film winning top prize in the Trump presidency. We would have to wait until next year for that milestone.
9. SPOTLIGHT
The retrospective rundown: A reenactment of the team behind the Pulitzer-Prize winning investigation into Catholic priest perversion, looking back I can't help but wonder if Tom McCarthy's Spotlight wouldn't have served better as a documentary. A video I watched on the film recently revealed that McCarthy and cinematographer Masanobu Takayanagi strove for a grounded, non-Hollywood feel. I respect that tone for such a grave matter, but I'm more Team Shattered Glass.
The competition: The Big Short, Bridge of Spies, Brooklyn, Mad Max: Fury Road, The Martian, The Revenant, Room
What should've won: Big Short for its wall-breaking, innovative structure of an impossible topic. Revenant for its epic scope and gorgeous cinematography. Room for its heartbreaking dissection of a family so broken it had to stay together to thrive. Pick one. My personal choice would've been the adrenaline IV that was the fourth installment in the Mad Max series. It's gonzo that this feminist blockbuster revived a dead franchise, but also became an Oscar darling on that February night...y'all remember it bagged SIX trophies?
8. THE KING'S SPEECH
The retrospective rundown: This movie came out when I was completing my freshman year of high school, so you'll forgive me if it's not terribly fresh in my mind. King George VI had to overcome a stutter, I had to overcome geometry. From here til the top spot, I actually consider these great movies, if not great winners. This might be one of the all-time best line ups of nominees in Academy history. The story is inspiring, and the trio of nominated performances were splendid...but it does stink to high heavens of Oscar bait, right? A period piece about a man who had a country's burden on his shoulders. Plus, the Weinstein Company's stench of forcing a voter's hand was still spread all over the Academy.
The competition: 127 Hours, Black Swan, The Fighter, Inception, The Kids Are All Right, The Social Network, Toy Story 3, True Grit, Winter's Bone
What should've won: Besides the Coen brothers remake of the John Wayne classic, pretty much anything could've won here that I would've been happy with. Of course, I was rooting for The Social Network, which was my runner-up for movie of the decade. I watched it slack-jawed on an October weekend, marvelling at the marriage of score, story, acting and scenery. It's been hard to wow me like that ever since. King's Speech was timeless if largely safe...Social Network had the finger on the pulse of Facebook's emerging dominance, along with a Shakespearean backstabbing to boot.
7. THE ARTIST
The retrospective rundown: The Artist is sweet homage that really straddles the line of gimmick. Along with Argo, this was Hollywood telling Hollywood what a good job it's done.
The competition: The Descendants, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, The Help, Hugo, Midnight in Paris, Moneyball, The Tree of Life, War Horse
What should've won: You either love The Tree of Life and hold it to be a cinematic standard or you kinda shrug it off and admit it had pretty pictures. What a madhouse it would've been if that'd won. My personal pick was Alexander Payne's perfectly bittersweet Descendants, my favorite from an absolute masterful filmmaker. Maybe it was an Oscar moment when George Clooney holds his comatose wife and a single tear falls out. Maybe it was just movie magic.
6. THE SHAPE OF WATER
The retrospective rundown: Guillermo del Toro's Oscar moment should've come in 2007 when Pan's Labyrinth was eligible, and we all know it. After a string of bigger budget misses (Pacific Rim and Crimson Peak), I don't think anyone would've guessed that this would've been the Academy darling. Sally Hawkins is perfect in the role, and though Michael Shannon's icky section of the film makes it far from a four-star creature feature, this is del Toro's second best adult fairy tale project. When you make the genre you're competing in, that's not bad.
The competition: Call Me by Your Name; Darkest Hour; Dunkirk; Get Out; Lady Bird; Phantom Thread; The Post; Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri
What should've won: A very strong year featuring a slew of pictures with some of the best directors at the helm (Spielberg, Nolan, Anderson, del Toro) along with selections from the filmmakers who we anticipate in the 20's (Gerwig, Peele, McDonagh). Lady Bird is coming-of-age perfection, Get Out is peak social horror, and Three Billboards... had the best ensemble and writing of the year hands down. It really comes down to personal preference, which is the achingly romantic Call Me by Your Name, Luca Guadagnino's magnum opus, a near-immaculate blend of authentic romance, location, score, postcard cinematography.
5. ARGO
The retrospective rundown: One of the biggest upsets of the decade was seeing Ben Affleck's name absent on the Best Director list. He took home the prize at the Globes and the BAFTAs, but perhaps they hadn't yet forgiven him for Gigli. The Gigli jokes stopped after Affleck helmed this terrific 70's thriller. Yes, it's more of Hollywood patting itself on the back, but perhaps the push to make an Oscar for Best Casting is valid; Bryan Cranston, Alan Arkin and John Goodman are the Holy Trinity of a supporting cast. I literally white knuckled my seat as it reached the climax of trying to get the Iranian hostages back to the States. It's come under fire as a good movie but undeserving of the award, and a strange consolation prize to Affleck for not getting the director nom. While I love this movie and proudly had a poster of it in my college dorm room for years, it was not my #1 choice in 2012.
The competition: Amour, Beasts of the Southern Wild, Django Unchained, Les Misérables, Life of Pi, Lincoln, Silver Linings Playbook, Zero Dark Thirty
What should've won: This was a year for the epics. Les Miz made the case for the big screen musical to be seen in its operatic glory. Lincoln and Zero Dark Thirty were electric history lessons. But it was Tarantino's revisionist Django that only gets better with age. At the time, seeing it in the dead of Virginian winter in 2013, it was one of the most thrilling movies I'd ever seen. You won't find your revenge westerns much better than this.
4. BIRDMAN OR (THE UNEXPECTED VIRTUE OF IGNORANCE)
The retrospective rundown: A movie that could've just been chalked up to its gimmick (one shot, no cuts!) ended up being one of the most unique of the decade, helping give Michael Keaton a little meta-late-career boost, and showed that Emma Stone could be Oscar-caliber. The feel of the film is breathless, and you're with Riggan every step of his downward tail-spin. It's a movie you walk out of the theater shaking your head at how they were able to pull everything off so seamlessly.
The competition: American Sniper, Boyhood, The Grand Budapest Hotel, The Imitation Game, Selma, The Theory of Everything, Whiplash
What should've won: This is tough. In a field crowded with biopics of important men (half of them!!), the outliers were appreciated. In the summer of 2014, as I was gearing up to go to college, Boyhood hit me like a ton of bricks. Mason's life timeline lined up almost exactly with my own, and I cringed with Richard Linklater over early 2000's fashion like everyone else. It has collectively become commonplace to call this the most overrated movie of the decade. I have friends who despise it, and I think a retrospective viewing should be in order soon. I would probably go with Damien Chazelle's Whiplash now, an ingenious study on the ethics of becoming the best in your craft. It's a movie that has stayed with me for years and years after just one viewing.
3. PARASITE
The retrospective rundown: I rang in the new Roaring 20's with seeing Bong Joon-ho's Parasite this past New Year's Day. So I can only give it so much perspective from seeing it once in a little arthouse cinema two months ago. It seems like the type of movie that people complain about not seeing anymore; no supernatural/superpowered elements, no premise made for trailer bait. Just a marriage of intelligent writing with a how-can-they-pull-that-off??? sort of midway twist, uniformly excellent performances and a strong 99%-er message. All of the chances in Parasite pay off, and that's a rare, metaphorical thing indeed.
The competition: 1917, Ford v Ferrari, The Irishman, Jojo Rabbit, Joker, Little Women, Marriage Story, Once Upon a Time...in Hollywood
What should've won: Parasite was the only answer. Whines and complaints about EVERY other nominee abounded: 1917 was just watching someone play a video game, Ford... was a dad movie, Irishman was bloated and had bad VFX, Jojo Rabbit was unfunny, Joker was the most polarizing movie of the year, Little Women had confusing editing, Marriage Story was overacted and Hollywood dragged. Parasite isn't a perfect movie, but only five people on Rotten Tomatoes dislike it (compared to the 420 who liked it), Film Twitter seemed to worship it, and I haven't met a person yet who didn't love it, except this guy. After Roma lost to clearly inferior American Oscar bait just the year before, the timing was perfect. And voters seized the moment. The second Bong Joon-ho was announced over clear favorite Sam Mendes I knew it was a done deal, and history will reward this decision.
2. 12 YEARS A SLAVE
The retrospective rundown: Though a slew of cameos that served as the marketing for this film distracts from the gripping narrative at hand, there's not much wrong with Steve McQueen's devastating account of Solomon Northup. It's troubling when the Academy likes to nominate performances where people of color are in subordinate roles (Octavia Spencer in The Help and Shape of Water, Yalitza Aparicio in Roma and Cynthia Erivo in Harriet for recent examples), but the whole point of 12 Years a Slave is to show how a wrongly imprisoned freeman survived in an environment urging him to submit and die. Basically what I'm saying is Chiwetel Ejiofor and Leonardo DiCaprio should've tied for Best Actor this year. This is a film you either see once and never need to again, or you see time after time to appreciate its fearless acting and melancholy cinematography.
The competition: American Hustle, Captain Phillips, Dallas Buyers Club, Gravity, Her, Nebraska, Philomena, The Wolf of Wall Street
What should've won: Remember when American Hustle was, for a brief moment, the major frontrunner in the 2013 race? Yeah, me too (shudders). A lot of these films aren't discussed much now that the hype is long over, except of course for Wolf of Wall Street, which became one of the most discussed and celebrated performances/films of all time thanks to Leo's dedicated quaalude walk, among many other iconic moments. Many including myself think he should've won here instead of his Revenant consolation prize. WOWS would've gone down as one of the wilder winners of all time, but 12 Years a Slave was too well-crafted to ignore. The right movie won.
1. MOONLIGHT
The retrospective rundown: As close to a perfect Best Picture as they come, the second film by Barry Jenkins is also my vote for best film of the decade, and is always crawling its way towards my top five films of all time. At the risk of sounding like a broken record, here are my reasons why. It is simply the result of cutting down to exactly what you need to communicate a story, a blend of cinematic techniques that reflect the protagonist's mood and life. It is in itself a moment for all time.
The competition: Arrival, Fences, Hacksaw Ridge, Hell or High Water, Hidden Figures, La La Land, Lion, Manchester by the Sea
What should've won: This, but there was some stellar competition in 2016. Though Manchester by the Sea is the superior sad film, no movie has made me cry harder and for longer than Garth Davis's Lion. We had an onslaught of superb genre movies competing (sci-fi, war, western and musical all together?!). But nothing outshines Moonlight.
FUN FACTS OF THE DECADE IN OSCAR:
Average runtime of a '10's Best Picture: ~122 minutes.
The longest nominee: The Irishman (209 mins).
The shortest nominee: Gravity (91 mins).
Animated nominee(s): Toy Story 3. That's it. #JusticeforInsideOut.
Non-English-language nominees: Amour, Roma, Parasite.
Documentary nominees: None. Still none?!
My favorite nominee: The Social Network. Poke me if you disagree.
My least favorite nominee: Once Upon a Time...in Hollywood. There are obviously other notably bad nominees (Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close?!) but I had the worst experience with this one. I was squirming in my seat waiting for the explanation behind all these driving scenes, all these gratuitous acting scenes with Rick Dalton in a cowboy costume. To be looking at your watch during a Tarantino film is a depressing thing indeed. The final act barely saved what I considered to be a bore.
My favorite year of nominees: 2017. A who's-who of directorial auteur pictures.
My least favorite year of nominees: 2018. Black Panther was a cut above other Marvel properties, but the VFX alone should've disqualified it from the race. Bohemian Rhapsody and Green Book are so shamelessly Oscar bait that their subtitle should read "for your consideration."
Still need to see: Fences. I'm sorry Denzel!
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