vote for the best Oscar-winning Best Pictures of all time

I really love Rebecca, despite George Sanders' cartoon villain (less Basil Rathbone, more Addison De Witt, please)

That's not being that different. Best Years is one of the only completely defensible BPs in history, right up there with Sunrise and the three A's (one of which, Apartment, I haven't seen yet).

I'll probably have to blog my answer to this or I'll never update that thing again.

We will! Sidney Lumet will! (you are so damn Seventies)

outside the text, it amuses me that this light thing destroyed the jingoistic, macho bullshit of saving private ryan, a movie i loathed

I think my main problem with SIL is basically the leads. I agree with some of what you said but the two leads are just basically unwatchable for me.

1. the apartment
2. one flew over the cuckoo's nest (all you ppl NOT voting for this are insane!)
3. casablanca
4. from here to eternity
5. the best years of our lives
6. rebecca
7. midnight cowboy
8. on the waterfront
9. annie hall
10. schindler's list (haha am i really the first one to vote for this? i don't even really like spielberg!)

cuckoo's nest was probably the third Best Pic I saw in a theater (after Oliver! and The Sting) but I haven't seen it in years, it's a much more sanitized rebel story than the psych-sprawl of the novel, and Big Nurse is basically a misogynist's straw woman (yeah, coming from a gyrophobe like me).

If John Waters should've directed Network, then Ken Russell should've directed Cuckoo's Nest.

You Can't Take It With You is a seminal stage comedy, but Capra and his writers basically threw out the last third for one of their most simplistic Big Business jeremiads.

I've cooled on Some Like It Hot over the years tho it's still a lark, but Wilder thought The Apartment was a makeup for SLIH losing to Ben-Hur. But I think the only other Wilder comedy that approaches The Apartment in sophistication is A Foreign Affair.

Eric, Russell def for Cuckoo!

cuckoo's nest was probably the third Best Pic I saw in a theater (after Oliver! and The Sting) but I haven't seen it in years, it's a much more sanitized rebel story than the psych-sprawl of the novel, and Big Nurse is basically a misogynist's straw woman (yeah, coming from a gyrophobe like me).

She creeps me the fuck out, in part because she never hisses or even raises her voice. She's every colorless school nurse who gave you an aspirin but wouldn't excusing your lateness for your next class.

Best Years is one of the only completely defensible BPs in history

I agree, Eric, but I rarely read an intelligent defense.

- Pungent dialogue
- Ambivalent treatment of women (Eastwood the director seems himself confused about the whores: are they victims or instigators?)
- Munny's transformation from flu-ridden sadsack to the merciless psycho killer. It bothered me when I first saw it, but no longer.
- Excellent perfs by Freeman, Hackman (another deserved Oscar), and all the prostitutes, even by the cute one who gets cut up.

I actually like Shakespeare in Love quite a lot, but, predictably, I was an English major.

Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer um slays SOTL.

ah, and we part ways again...

's here.

but was there a newer one?

http://www.ofcs.org/the-best-of-the-best-picture-oscar-winners-part-6/

22. Gone With the Wind (1939)
23. 12 Years a Slave (2013)

Ouch.

http://www.ofcs.org/the-best-of-the-best-picture-oscar-winners-part-6/

Eric pointed out this marvelous juxtaposition:

22. Gone With the Wind (1939)
23. 12 Years a Slave (2013)

Oops. Goddamn cell phones.

DMD at #80 is ridic though

Yeah, of all the vilified '80s winners, that ones by far the best movie, even if it got awarded during the very wrong year.

there are a lot of "good" best-picture winners i have little-to-no personal affection for, but here are some i really like:

how green was my valley
the best years of our lives
it happened one night
casablanca
the godfather
going my way
no country for old men
gigi
the silence of the lambs
rocky

(I admit that I don't love "rebecca")

we should do a thread where we all pick the best american movies of all the years since 1927/28. i.e. "what should have won the oscar?"

or maybe we can even pick the FIVE NOMINEES and one winner, none of which have to actually have been nominated/won.

sure as shit Holiday should've been at least nominated in '38.

we should do a thread where we all pick the best american movies of all the years since 1927/28. i.e. "what should have won the oscar?"

There's an Oscar for best American movie?

I got '95 on lockdown.

most mediocre of my lifetime

Not too hard to improve the nominations tho.

rebecca easily my fav hitch these days

Probably time to revise my list from upthread. Now it'd be more like ...

01. Sunrise
02. All About Eve
03. Annie Hall
04. The Best Years of Our Lives
05. No Country for Old Men
06. How Green Was My Valley
07. The Godfather (I give)
08. maybe West Side Story
09. I dunno, maybe The Hurt Locker?
10. Ordinary People

revised:

Sunrise
All About Eve
The Apartment
The Godfather, Part II
It Happened One Night
From Here to Eternity
How Green Was My Valley
No Country for Old Men
Rebecca
The Best Years of Our Lives
On the Waterfront
12 Years a Slave

Chronologically:

On the Waterfront
The Apartment
Midnight Cowboy
The Godfather
The Godfather II
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
Annie Hall
The Deer Hunter
American Beauty
No Country for Old Men

"American blah blah blah?"--it's okay, I'm aware, I'm aware.

Missed From Here to Eternity--probably that over Annie Hall, but it's close.

1. Forrest Gump
2. Amadeus
3. Rain Man
4. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
5. Silence of the Lambs
6. Titanic
7. Platoon
8. The Godfather
9. Driving Miss Daisy
10. The Deer Hunter

rebecca
sunrise
the apartment
one flew over the cuckoo's nest
the best years of our lives
casablanca
midnight cowboy
how green was my valley
all quiet on the western front
the lost weekend

the lost weekend is a really good movie, I forgot about that one

https://www.slantmagazine.com/film/every-best-picture-oscar-winner-ranked-from-worst-to-best/

don't know the guys who wrote abt Gigi and My Fair Lady, but they're kind of embarrassing

at first I thought, "but a lot of these 'What Should Have Won' choices are dubious too" before realizing they're only choosing from the other nominees