Worst Post-Crash Best Picture Winner

I hated Slumdog Millionaire the first time I saw it, but I had to pick an option for a GCSE Film student this week and watching it again today recontextualised as a film for young people, it suddenly seemed more charming. The plot is almost surreally contrived, but overlooking that, it is visually spectacular at times and enjoyable enough.

Sadly I’ve seen most of the films here. Birdman was the worst.

I am the only fan of Birdman in the central time zone

AMA

I want to stick up for Birdman as I thought it was an enjoyable black comedy. It's certainly doesn't bore me unlike say... SPOTLIGHT

As bad, pretentious and pointless as Birdman was, out of those I've watched I went with The Artist which was bad, pretentious and pointless in every frame from start to finish.

Any answer that isn’t Argo is wrong.

I haven't seen 8 of these

In descending order:

Argo
Green Book
The Artist
Slumdog Millionnaire
The King's Speech

^^ grisly things to confront in the middle of a stormy night

I may have erred not putting The Artist first. I remember that holiday season arguing with people who thought silent film was a 'genre.' Fun times.

Argo at least works as a decent nail-biting thriller. Politically it's a bit suss perhaps

The Artist was bad.

I'm tempted to vote The King's Speech just for giving Tom Hooper a launchpad for his future horrors

argo is indeed slightly suss in that it’s a total fabrication of what actually happened irl and includes a scene of nail-biting tension based on the terrifying concept of being white in a public space where everyone else is brown and *gasp* some of them are looking at you

I'd watch another movie with Alan Arkin and John Goodman as coworkers.

it’s a total fabrication of what actually happened irl

It stinks, but tot fabrication is the case w/ 5,000 "true" Hollywoodizations

I'm with Karl: Birdman is good

tempted to vote for the hurt locker for being a remarkable achievement in action-thriller filmmaking from a director working at the top of her game which nonetheless is complete imperialist propaganda bullshit, using its veneer of gritty authenticity to promote the baseless idea that iraqi insurgents are such godless savages that they turn dead kids into improvised explosive devices

plus it paved the way for katherine bigelow to co-author her next movie in partnership with the central intelligence agency

Realizing I've only seen two of these (Departed and Moonlight), both good. I guess it would be Departed by default because of that goddamn rat. Don't worry, I'll refrain from voting.

It stinks, but tot fabrication is the case w/ 5,000 "true" Hollywoodizations

The Shape of Water is a weird one to throw in as an Oscars pick, and as far as late period Guillermo del Toro goes, I liked Crimson Peak better despite it dragging

tbh maybe we should vote for the movies we actually liked as enjoyable movies and Oscars best film picks should be exclusive categories

never really understood the visceral hate for Slumdog Millionaire. I mean, it's not great, but it's just Dickens-in-Mumbai what's the big deal.

other things on here are start-to-finish awful in both conception and execution (the Artist, Green Book)

Birdman is stupid and overwrought but Keaton is occasionally entertaining in it

eliminated early, they're too good:

The Departed
No Country for Old Men
The Hurt Locker
Parasite

one of these:

The King's Speech
Argo
Green Book

not one of the rest, since i think they're either vv solid and well-done or at least trying something interesting.

i stick w/Argo as a contender since i think its stupidity coupled w/the in-film "fact" that Hollywood saved the hostages kind of puts it over the top. Affleck is a decent enough filmmaker to have previously made an above-average Heat knockoff and an extremely good Dennis Lehane adaptation, so idk what happened here. maybe he got lucky w/the source material in the other two. He did screw up some good source material w/Live By Night tho.

maybe this should be a poll: when in your life did you realize that some movies are released and promoted in a way specifically to be Oscars bait?

I think I first took note as a late teen with The Cider House Rules

(American Beauty won that year and is arguably more Oscars-baity but it took me a few years to realize it)

From what I've read, The Artist is an underratedly terrible movie too

It's a stunning representation of silent films...if you know nothing about actual films made during the silent era.

Under no circumstances will I defend The King's Speech or Argo. I didn't see Green Book, because I trust those critics who were treating it as a throwback to Driving Miss Daisy.

replace 'stunning' with 'silly' or 'stultifying' and I heartily agree

Here's the real question: does anyone consider their worst post-Crash best picture winner to actually be worse than Crash?

i feel like green book might be worse but fuck if i'm actually gonna watch it to find out

every time I've considered watching Crash I just watch the Cronenberg movie of the same name

I still haven't seen Crash (the Oscar winning one) nor am I ever likely to

i haven't watched most of these because come on, tempted to throw a sardine to the fish-fucking movie but i shd probably vote King's Speech because not enough guillotines

Has anyone here seen all of these?

i haven't seen green book but it's gotta be green book

― na (NA), Tuesday, February 11, 2020 6:07 AM (one hour ago)

King's Speech is decent bored Sunday evening TV fare. It should never be winning awards obviously but its ok

I've seen all of them bar Green Book

the best thing about the king's speech is that the location they used for the speech therapist's office turned out to have earlier been used as a backdrop in a bunch of gay porn

I like Spotlight and Hurt Locker more than Parasite in retrospect.

King's Speech wins this, although I viscerally hated Birdman. But at least there was an idea there.

the king's speech is a great demonstration of how the formula of 'man overcomes odds to achieve his goal through dedicated montage training' has been honed to such a fine art that it can even be effectively applied to the story of an inbred oaf overcoming the odds to talk into a microphone in an empty room

i do enjoy this high-school-essay-ass paragraph from the king's speech wiki

Principal photography took place in London and around Britain from November 2009 to January 2010. Hard light was used to give the story a greater resonance and wider than normal lenses were employed to recreate the Duke of York's feelings of constriction. A third technique Hooper employed was the off-centre framing of characters.

I voted for King's Speech, not because it was the worst film necessarily but because it was the one that made me angriest when it won. I haven't seen Green Book though.

tempted to vote for the hurt locker for being a remarkable achievement in action-thriller filmmaking from a director working at the top of her game which nonetheless is complete imperialist propaganda bullshit, using its veneer of gritty authenticity to promote the baseless idea that iraqi insurgents are such godless savages that they turn dead kids into improvised explosive devices

This is so otm. I found The Hurt Locker so much more ethically repellent than most of the films on this list (though that's not saying a lot). Jeremy Renner is great though.

remember in Argo where they go "Argo fuck yourself!"?

this is obviously Green Book, which I've never seen. King's Speech is at least entertaining, if not remotely close to being 'best'.

Bigelow is a deeply regressive filmmaker

xps

even her best movie (Near Dark) can be read as a fundamentally conservative family-values film

remember in Argo where they go "Argo fuck yourself!"?

yeah i concede that this was good tbf

Honestly Ive been tempted to watch Argo again and wonder if it might hold up as popcorn fare if I just pretend its a dumb fictional Tom Clancy thing

remember when TKS was supposed to augur a new decade of Eighties Prestige Pictures

thank fuck we dodged that bullet

oops this was supposed to be a vote for worst :/

voted King's Speech because it was so mind numbingly boring. I mean I disliked Birdman for most of the same reasons as everyone else but I didn't walk out thinking, "I wasted 2 hours"

Given the length of his lifetime, I'm sure he managed to bust out a couple of "tits" before he died.

why was it hard to tell Slumdog was fraudulent the week it came out? (see also American Beauty)

― a Mets fan who gave up on everything in the mid '80s (Dr Morbius), Monday, February 10, 2020 11:10 AM (yesterday)

bc I was 19 :P

Xpost I'ma let bg clean that one up

AQUA DONG

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

These are the four worst. But they're all masterpieces next to Crash.

The King's Speech
The Artist
Argo
The Shape of Water

I've only seen six of these, so I voted for The King's Speech, which was the worst of the six.

I've seen seven, of which Argo was the worst. Still voting for Green Book though.

Green Book is the only one I haven't seen, because it is the worst.

I enjoyed all the others, to a greater or lesser extent. Slumdog Millionaire perhaps least.

From best to worst...

No Country for Old Men
Parasite
Moonlight
The Departed
The Hurt Locker
12 Years a Slave
Spotlight
Slumdog Millionaire
Green Book
Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)
The Shape of Water
Argo
The Artist
The King's Speech

that's close to how I would place them

I had no idea Birdman won best pic. I enjoyed it as a weird little comedy.

Words can’t express how much I hated The Shape of Water; it cemented my opinion that GDT is the worst critically lauded director working today. Although it did open my eyes to the idea that apparently a lot of women secretly want to shag a fish-man.

Words can’t express how much I hated The Shape of Water

Ditto. Of the eight films I've seen in this poll, this is the only one I outright hated.

apparently a lot of women secretly want to shag a fish-man

I suspect the big attraction for women was that he was mute.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

I'm surprised at the numbers for NCfOM and Departed.

would like to hear the thinking of four voters

I think a few people admitted to having had misread the poll as best, not worst

at least I hope so

In my movie theater career career NCfOM generated some of the funniest audience feedback from dumb people going to see it just bc it won best picture, including my favorite (mightve told this story before): the lady who walked up to the counter afterwards and goes “So I don’t get it... it was all just a DREAM?”

Jones used to read Word Up! magazine

some day I'm going to show someone the director's cut of The Counselor and tell them it was No Country for Old Men

lol wait there’s a director’s cut of the counselor?

In my movie theater career career NCfOM generated some of the funniest audience feedback from dumb people going to see it just bc it won best picture, including my favorite (mightve told this story before): the lady who walked up to the counter afterwards and goes “So I don’t get it... it was all just a DREAM?”

― turn the jawhatthefuckever on (One Eye Open), Sunday, February 23, 2020 6:26 PM (twenty-three minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

lol this was p close to my experience. at the end, some lady yelled out "that's IT?"

xp yes, and although I forget the differences, it is definitely better

..and apparently 20 minutes longer

The Blu-Ray of The Counselor comes with both cuts and yes, Scott's version is better than the version I saw in a theater. (It's a good movie; I like it. You have to meet it where it is, though - it concedes nothing, in any cut.)

No Country for Old Men 4
The Artist 3

In what world?