Best Pictures: A Journey Through the Academy Awards Best Picture Nominees and Winners

by A.J.

Cinema Then & Now presents:

Best Pictures

A Journey Through the Academy Awards Best Picture Nominees and Winners

Every February, TCM has 31 Days of Oscar, a month long event in which every film shown on the channel is an Academy Award winner or nominee in at least one category. Last year, the primetime theme each evening was Best Picture Winners and Nominees. In looking at the schedule one thing became very clear: a lot of good movies have lost Best Picture. Another thing I noticed was there were many likely good films that I had not seen or was not even aware existed. There are Best Picture winners that are truly great films (Gone with the Wind), Best Picture winners I’d forgotten about (A Beautiful Mind) or never heard of (Cavalcade), Best Picture losers that are genuine classics and have become a part of our culture (The Wizard of Oz, To Kill a Mockingbird), films I’d forgotten were nominated for Best Picture (The Sixth Sense) … so many movies, each one a part of film history. I’ve seen a lot of classic movies, but there are so many more to see and Best Picture nominees seem to be a good place to start.

With that in mind, just after my 30^th birthday in April of 2015, I began watching every film nominated for a Best Picture Academy Award. As of January 1^st, 2016 there have been 520 films nominated for Best Picture. I’ve been watching the nominated films in chronological order beginning with the 1^st Academy Awards for 1927/28. I’m not going to marathon these films. I’m going to take my time and enjoy every film I can. My goal is to have seen every Best Picture nominee grouped with its other nominees by my 40^th birthday in 2025. The Best Picture nominees for 2015 and onward I will watch as they are released leading up to the Oscars. There are a few films that for various reasons are unavailable to watch so I will not review those films but I will read as much as I can about them and write an overview. For the rest, I will write a review for each nominated film including the winner then make my pick for Best Picture and offer my thoughts on any trends or themes I noticed among the nominees for that particular year.

I love the Oscars. I always have. I haven’t grown cynical about the awards even though I’ve seen great films, actors, actresses, directors, writers, etc. go unrewarded, or not even be nominated. Sometimes the nominee I think should win actually does win, but even if they don’t I still enjoy the awards. The best way I can describe my enthusiasm for the Academy Awards is that the Oscars are my Super Bowl. My excitement isn’t just for the big day, but also everything leading up to ceremony. I’m glad that there is a serious institution and a special night dedicated to honoring the movies. Just being nominated really is an honor and winning, for better or worse, designates a film or person “Best.” It doesn’t matter if the Academy “gets it right.” What matters is that the awards even happen at all.

As the years roll on and new films become old and then classic, every film, good, bad, or worse, becomes a part of film history and if you watched any of those movies you become a part of film history. Movies are the story of us. Hopes and fears, dreams and nightmares, escapism and introspection are held on film waiting for us to relive those moments and emotions. The most important thing about cinema is that we keep watching. There are more and more films every year, so some will slip from our minds or go unseen, but that doesn’t mean they are forgettable.

There are some resources and people I want to acknowledge and thank at the outset: TCM for their website, on demand service, online store, and, most of all, wonderful programming and commitment to showing movies uncut and commercial free. The official history of the Academy Awards, 85 Years of the Oscar by Robert Osborne is my primary resource for information on the awards, Wikipedia.com and IMDB.com have been my online information sources, DVD special features, when available, have been very helpful, and the podcast You Must Remember This by Karina Longworth has been a source of background information on people and studios involved with the making of these movies. This project would not be possible for me to do at all without the great video rental store, Vulcan Video here in Austin, TX. Only a small amount of these movies are available through online services, some were never released on DVD and are only available on VHS. There is no way I could afford to buy all of the nominated films through Amazon.com, but fortunately Vulcan Video has about 95% of all the Best Picture nominees on DVD or VHS, including some that have since gone out of print, and is willing to obtain the films it does not currently have, if they are available on DVD. Also fortunately for me, I am an employee at Vulcan Video and get free rentals. I must thank my boss at Vulcan Video, Bryan Connolly, for suggesting that I write about the Best Picture nominees in addition to watching them. Most of all I must thank my wife and fellow blogger and cinephile, Lani Gonzalez, whose love and knowledge of movies, especially classic movies, has expanded my own love and knowledge of movies, classic and modern, for her editing and proofreading skills, and her continuous, somehow, unending love and support, and for agreeing to watch every Best Picture nominee with me, making this project extra fun.

I have no doubt that not every Best Picture nominee will be top shelf quality, but there is only one way to know for sure. The nominees and winners that truly are good films will make up for the subpar films, and I’m sure that the good films outnumber the mediocre and bad ones. This is going to be a very long term undertaking, but I love movies and I know I’m going to have fun. My real goal is to make as many people as I can aware of great movies they might not have seen or even heard about and maybe look at the ones we all know and love in a new way. It’s going to be a long journey and also a personal journey through over 85 years of Academy Awards Best Picture nominees. Join me, won’t you?