Personal Ratings of Best Picture Winners

So I guess it is safe to say I have been on a movie watching rampage recently – more specifically watching the movies that not only were nominated for Best Motion Picture but actually ended up winning the award like this year’s Slumdog Millionaire (rated 8.5/10).

First let me get out of the way that I have not seen either of The Godfather films that won the award and I have only seen three movies in the stretch of 20 years spanning from 1969 to 1988. However, I have seen nine of the 10 that won from 1959-1968 and 1999-2008 as well as a total 30 of the past 50 award winners. I am sure as I watch more of these films the list will continue to change and hopefully the next time I post a list like this, I’ll have watched the other 20 that are left off. 

When I first started to think about ranking them, I did not want to give too many films a perfect score as that leaves very little wiggle room to adjust for a following movie if it exceeds expectations or sets the bar even higher. I don’t think I had much of a problem with that as I watched the movies with The Departed being the only one getting a perfect 10/10 and only one other scored above a 9.0 which was The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King at 9.5. 

The more I watch the older movies, the bigger fan I become of them.  As of now, 12 of the top 22 movies that I have rated were produced in 1989 or earlier… that is 20 years is old at the earliest. Two of those movies I have even ranked in my top 6 (Annie Hall and Driving Miss Daisy) which both got a solid 9.0 out of 10. 

Take a look through the list of those that I have seen and let me know what you think. Also, to view the list by year, look after the break, and let me know which ones I should see next from the list. Currently I have Chicago and The French Connection lined up before I hit the weekend.

Rated

Continue reading “Personal Ratings of Best Picture Winners”

Good Deals

A couple of good deals I ran across that appeals to a broad range of people.

1 – Fandango is offering Buy 1 Get 1 Free Movie Tickets on Madagascar Escape 2 Africa Movie when you pay with your MasterCard. Discount shows up at the payment page. Movie opens November 7th. This promotion is limited to the first 250 redemption per day through November 2.

2 – Restaurant is offering 70% off Dining Certificates via coupon code TREATS. $25 certificate is on sale for $10 – 80% off = $2. Please read the minimum spending limits for each “gift certificate” and other restrictions before you purchase.

The Dark Knight: Why So Serious?

Why So Serious?

The Dark Knight is the first film I can remember in a really long time that lasted about 2 and a half hours but did not a dead scene or left the audience asking: When is this movie going to end?

The promotional campaign leading up to the release of movie was remarkable and certainly there were some (albeit a few) but some doubters who wondered whether all this promo would actually yield a decent movie. After seeing it yesterday, I can definitely say this movie has one Academy Award winner if not more. I bought the ticket online just to make sure it wasn’t sold out and even though I got stuck watching it in Menlo Park, it was still a packed house.

Read an excerpt below from Peter Abraham’s Yankee Blog on his review of the movie which accurately sums up what I was thinking.

Director Christopher Nolan starts with a gripping scene and there’s one after another right until the end. There’s no building to a climax here.

Mark down Heath Ledger for a posthumous Academy Award. The Joker is his greatest role and he was better than Jack Nicholson, which didn’t seem possible. Christian Bale does the brooding Batman thing better than the previous Batmans and adds a nice touch of irony.

The supporting cast is over-the-top good. Michael Caine and Morgan Freeman are the wise old heads on Batman’s staff. Gary Oldman is the incorruptible cop. Also dug Eric Roberts as a mobster. Maggie Gyllenhaal is the girl in the middle, Batman’s secret love.

The third man in to the Batman/Joker battle is Aaron Eckhart as Harvey Dent. He’s the key to the whole film from a story sense. The Dark Knight isn’t remotely a goofy comic book movie. It’s a classic battle of good against evil where the protagonists happen to be comic book characters. This film has much more the tone of Michael Mann’s Heat in that it’s about Gotham and it’s internal struggle. Things have to get worse before they better in Gotham and do they get worse. The city (Chicago, never looking more sinister) is a character in the film as much as any person.

The obvious theme that becomes clear right from the start is that you cannot trust anyone. Cops are bad, criminals at times make the better decision, trust kids to do the right thing and no one is safe. No one.

The Joker easily steals the show in this movie and at first I thought all the hype that i had heard and read about leading up to watching this detracted from his Oscar-worthy performance but the more I think about it, the clearer it becomes that he deserves the awards. As Peter wrote, “The most amusing moments are from Ledger, whose Joker is equally a sadistic anarchist and comedian. He makes blowing up a hospital hilarious. This is not a flick for the kids. It’s complex and disturbing at times.”

Don’t flip a coin, go see this and if you get a chance, go see it in IMAX.

Batman Is Back

Richard Corliss of the TIME Magazine has written an intriguing review of The Dark Knight that makes next Friday (release date 7/18/08) seem like forever and a half away. I won’t discuss any spoilers as I have carefully tried to avoid them myself but there has been quite the anticipation since the release of Batman Begins in 2005 for this film. Reportedly, Heath Ledger has played an Oscar Award worthy of an acting job reprising the role of The Joker and from what I have read and seen in trailers, I have a feeling his final acting performance is going to live up to those expectations.

“… And for reassurance, Nolan brings back old friends from Batman Begins: Michael Caine as Bruce’s butler Alfred and Morgan Freeman as Fox, who takes care of Bruce’s toys.

Actually, they’re just diversions from the epochal face-off of Bruce and the Joker. For a good part of the film, when the two embrace in a free fall of souls — one doomed, the other imperiled — you may think you’re in the grip of a mordant masterpiece. That feeling will pass, as the film spends too many of its final moments setting up the series’ third installment. The chill will linger, though. The Dark Knight is bound to haunt you long after you’ve told yourself, Aah, it’s only a comic-book movie”

To read the entire TIME Magazine review, here it is: Batman Is Back — The TIME Review. Anyone up for going to see this in IMAX?

Wall-E Review: One of the Best Sci-Fi Movies

I saw this movie earlier today and it turned out to be much better than I thought even though I had read the Rotten Tomatoes review (which put it at 97%) and Yahoo! Movie users which gave it an A- overall grade. Here is a review from Gizmodo which certainly sums up my feelings on the movie. If you get a chance, I would recommend this one – it certainly is a great movie disguised as a cartoon.

One of the Best Sci-Fi Movies in Years, Disguised as a Cartoon (Gizmodo)

Wall-E might be the most sympathetic, lovable robot ever created on film. While R2-D2 was hilarious and endearing, he had the benefit of C3PO to translate for him and a cast of human characters to carry the weight of the story. At the end of the day, R2-D2 was simply comic relief, but his descendant, whose voice was also created by Ben Burtt, is so full of humanity that you feel like your heart might just burst. Simply put, Wall-E is a masterpiece.

The first 40 minutes or so of Wall-E are almost completely without dialogue. Instead, the story is told visually, as we see Wall-E, the abandoned garbage bot, puttering around a staggeringly rendered post-apocalyptic Earth. He goes around doing his job, as he has for the past 700 years, compacting trash into cubes and stacking them into immense towers. On the side, he collects remnants of humanity to keep for his own amusement. Zippo lighters, Rubik’s Cubes, Christmas lights: these are what Wall-E surrounds himself with. Because he’s so alone (except for a little cockroach), these dirty, abandoned objects are his companions, his contact with humanity.

He watches Hello, Dolly! on an iPod that he somehow hooked up to a VCR, emulating the dancing and learning about love. (That’s not the only Apple reference in the movie: he makes the classic Mac bootup sound when he turns on, and his love interest EVE was designed by Jonathan Ive). When you see Wall-E try to imitate the dancing using a hub cap he collected just for that purpose, you know that this is more than a piece of machinery. Proving Pixar’s raison d’etre, this little silent robot has more humanity in him than most movie characters played by actual humans.

Immediately, we realize this isn’t your typical kiddie cartoon. No pop culture jokes? No instantly-recognizable celebrity voices? A decimated, humanless landscape full of towers of garbage and decrepit buildings? A lonely robot trying to learn about love and humanity through centuries of its trash? This looks more like a beautiful, haunting sci-fi movie than a children’s movie, because that’s exactly what it is.

Wall-E features loving nods to everything from Brave New World to 2001 to Star Wars without ever feeling derivative. Instead, it builds on them, making what has the potential to be an almost relentlessly bleak world into one full of complete joy and levity. It always has that undercurrent of melancholy just under the surface, as we never really forget that humanity has utterly destroyed the planet and turned itself into a race of pudgy, helpless babies, but heart of the story is Wall-E and his longing for love.

And isn’t that the sign of great science fiction? While on the surface it’s a movie about robots and spaceships set centuries in the future, deep down it’s about humanity and its place on Earth and in the universe. It uses its out-of-this-world settings and characters as a lens to reflect our own world back at us, showing us both the beauty and the ugliness of our existence through the eyes of a guileless, trash-compacting robot.

In a movie season that’s overpopulated with tired superhero movies, remakes and sequels, it’s incredibly refreshing to see a movie that stands on its own as a completely new and unique creation. It’s safe to say you’ve never seen anything like Wall-E, and you might not see anything like it again. Go. Go see it as soon as you can.