Well said! Avatar is so overpraised it's not even funny, if you take away the 3-D there's nothing all that "wonderous" about that film at all, and it's not the unoriginality that I have a problem with, it's more that I just didn't find it very engaging overall. I'll take the Transformers films over Avatar any day, at least they don't have ridiculously ham-handed and over-the-top messages, it's like "We get it! humans are screwing up the planet! Enough already!" Avatar is nothing more then a mindless blockbuster masquerading as a "thought=provoking" sci-fi film.

Avatar is a great spectacle and fun blockbuster sci fi adventure movie
Is it a great movie?
Not even close.
But is was good for the movie business
Rob

I don't think Avatar is a bad film, it's decent and has competent action scenes, but it would've been alot better if it was half an hour shorter and much less heavy-handed.

That is very true!
I think it did possess amazing visuals and creation of a new world that many had seen before
Rob

"Four Weddings and a Funeral" and "Chocolat" -- good movies, to be sure, but awfully lightweight compared most Best Picture-nominated fare (also "Breaking Away" and "Working Girl," though they precede the dates given here).

But the biggest travesty remains "The Blind Side" -- proof that a standard-order movie-of-the-week made for the big screen CAN indeed strike Oscar gold in this day and age.

...

I think that's Firefly hitting on me.

I would have preferred the embroidered panties.

This is a good thread. Can't believe I missed it.

1990: Dances With Wolves. And to think it won. I still shake my head at the thought of this beating Goodfellas.

1991: The Prince of Tides For obvious reasons.

1992: A Few Good Men. You really need to watch that movie a couple times to fully grasp how fucking awful it is.

1993: Overall, this wasn't a bad year for BP nominees. The Fugitive may be the least of the lot substance-wise, but it was really, really tightly constructed and excellent entertainment, the kind Hollywood doesn't make enough of. So I wouldn't immediately axe any of these.

1994: Forrest Gump. This is hands down the worst BP winner in the post-New Hollywood era.

1995: Just pick any of them. 1995 is one of the worst years for Best Picture.

1996: The English Patient. It was just Oscar bait, nothing else.

1997: The Full Monty. A little too light for my tastes, even though it's not a terrible film.

1998: Life Is Beautiful. There's something about making a game out of living in a concentration camp that kind of rubbed me the wrong way.

1999: The Sixth Sense. Again, for obvious reasons.

2000: Erin Brokovich. Julia Roberts acts like a bitch, wins Oscar. Gimme a break.

2001: A Beautiful Mind. Not bad, just generic. Which made it perfect for Best Picture.

2002: The Hours. Now a lot of people might say Chicago, but that film never tries to be anything other than good entertaining fun. And that's why I liked it. The Hours, on the other hand was one of those "Oooh, look how artistic I am" films. I found it to be pretentious; give me Chicago any day.

2003: Seabiscuit. A horse movie. Nothing special.

2004: Ray. As much as I like Ray Charles's music, this film doesn't shed any new light on him as a performer. It's just meh. Jamie Foxx was good, though.

2005: The next three years are among the best for BP nominees ever. Crash is the least of 2005's crop, but it isn't as bad as so many have made it out to be. Munich still should have won though.

2006: The least of these films is Little Miss Sunshine, but I liked it. So I wouldn't get rid of it. 2006 is fine the way it is.

2007: Michael Clayton is the least of the films, but it's not a bad film. Again, no major quarrells with 2007's lineup.

2008: Slumdog Millionaire. Let's just say that I didn't like this movie; I've gone into greater detail before and will again in time. But it wasn't an enjoyable movie for me when I'd figured the whole thing out 15 minutes in.

2009: The Blind Side. Sandra Bullock adopts black guy as a pet, wins Best Actress.

2010: Not a bad crop of pictures. I wasn't as engaged by True Grit as others, but I can think of worse films.

Agreed with all of these.

But....it wasn't a mystery. I don't see what "figuring the whole thing out" means: the movie makes it very clear where it's going

Allow me to explain:

But Chocolate...this is a movie that begins in the first second by telling you "it is written." It's fate, it's destiny (and, to boot, a movie). He's obviously going to get the girl. Saying that you "figured it out" still seems really weird to me because the movie never pretends otherwise. From minute one, it's clear this is the story of how Jamal gets back to Latika.

I dunno...maybe it's me, but knowing that Jamal and Latika would get back together kind of ruined it for me. I guess that once I knew they'd be together, I wasn't as interested in how they got there. I suppose I'm trying to say that when it comes to the movies, I've always found the journey to be as important as the destination.

do you like any movies told in flashback? isn't your problem with slumdog common to most of them?

It's a technique I tend to dislike. Although there are some cases where it works better than others. Paul Verhoeven's Black Book was a very good film, and it has an opening section that features the film's heroine several years after the main events of the film (though it probably could have been excised without harming the film).

A better example is Fight Club. It's an excellent film, and when it starts, it's actually toward the end of the story time-wise. But the way the film was written and Fincher's direction made it work.

"Nobody's going to argue that the sonar gizmo was anything but retarded..."
I didn't think it was retarded.

Well you have a higher tolerance for ridiculous plot devices than I do

'Munich' has no place taking 'best film of 2005'. Not only was 'Capote' arguably a better film, but 'A History of Violence' was the best film of that year - and ended up being a Cronenberg film directed by Cronenberg, not a Cronenberg film directed by Spielberg (which is exactly what 'Munich' wants to be, but more on that later).


My problems with 'Munich'? Simple. The plot is utterly contrived, with the suspense scenes mostly just preposterously manipulative sequences of shock value (the child and the phone being the worst offender - people can't be serious when they call that scene a masterpiece of suspense). Also, as I've noted before, it is absolutely annoying that at least two or three of the film's casualties INTRODUCE THEMSELVES before they get murdered. Not as in they are introduced and die later in the film - but they literally walk up to Eric Bana, give them their life story, and get murdered. If you think that's a clever plot device and consider yourself a relatively smart film fan, then here's some advice: go back to college. You have officially failed your 'contrivance 101' course and need to be rehabilitated.

Back to the Cronenberg point - does anyone notice how desperately, and bizarrely Spielberg seems to cling to viscera in order to make his points throughout 'Munich'? I must have missed the sequences in 'The Departed', 'United 93', 'Million Dollar Baby', 'No Country For Old Men', 'Crash', 'The Dark Knight', 'Brothers' and 'The Hurt Locker' where the film's themes and impact were entirely reliant upon visual overkill like hookers being meticulously eviscerated by 'murder tubes' (as they forever shall be known by me), guys heads and arms hanging from ceiling fans, an Olympic team being graphically shot from about seventeen different angles at at several different intervals throughout the film, and Daniel Craig trying to act (am I the only one who thought his inert performance was absolutely awful and wondered why Spielberg decided to cast an action star as a guy who watched people die and barely said anything the entire film?). Absolutely gratuitous on all counts. And then, as has been reported by every critic of the film, ever, Spielberg attempts to connect sex with death at the ending - the point where he almost-literally stopped just trying to be Cronenberg, but kidnapped the man and promised to brutally murder him unless he provided a really pretentious 'dark' conceit that would make film fans, as predictable a lot as any, praise his film as glorious and risk-taking. 'Death gives way to birth, and vice versa'. The chills that gives me. I can't even begin to tell you.

Yes, Spielberg, that maverick genius - compared to who, Gaspar Noe*? 'Munich' is so beneath almost any of his serious dramatic attempts it's almost insulting that people have compared it to 'Schindler's List'. Anyone who can defend that film despite those clunky flaws yet call a film like 'Irreversible' (which covers exactly the same theme) trash needs to start asking themselves some questions. And I already have the first answer 'Yes, you are being a hypocrite.'



* - Obviously Spielberg is MUCH better - but there's little doubt that 'Munich' hypocritically earned plaudits for its relentless barbarianism while Noe's films have garnered severe derision for essentially saying the same things, especially about vengeance, with equally graphic results and less pretentiousness than 'Munich' displays on each frame.

I agree with some of your criticisms on Munich, that ending was just completely unnecessary and gratitious and Craig was not very good in the film. But i'd STILL gladly watch that film over that worthless fucking piece of dogshit Irreversible! and no, me liking Munich over that iflm does NOT make me a hypocrite, it seems you have a bit of a problem with people disagreeing with your opinions.

'Munich' is obviously a better piece of technical filmmaking than 'Irreversible', as almost all Spielberg-directed films are. However, when a Spielberg film requires shock value to maintain interest as opposed to, say, plot twists or genuine dramatic tension, I believe it ranks as far more disappointing than that 2002 film.

I have not said that liking 'Munich' over 'Irreversible' makes you a hypocrite (actually I never called anyone a hypocrite regardless of the result), it makes me think a little; the critics who flock to dark thrillers like 'The Dark Knight' and 'No Country for Old Men' and predict Oscar nods - where were they when 'Se7en' was unspooling nation-wide? I assume most of them were working back in 1995. What made Berardinelli give the latter film three stars, and the other two unconditional recommendations? Do respected directors (which, to provide some context, Fincher was NOT when 'Se7en' was first released) make edgy thematics more palatable to film critics? If someone other than Spielberg directed 'Munich' or created a film of similar visual and thematic qualities, would they be as relentlessly praised without as much severe scrutiny?