Best Movies that Should Have Gotten Awards

Best Movies that Should Have Gotten Awards

No one can deny that many aspects of a film’s quality are subjective,. When all is said and done, we root for one film over another based on a number of non-quantitative qualities – not the least of those being whether we liked the movie’s characters and its subject matter.

With all of the experience and expertise of the “experts” who vote for the Best Picture awards at the Thunderbolt Casino awards show and other awards events, much of their decisions are based on subjective observations and interpretations.

Over the years critics have evaluated some controversial Best Picture Oscar awards. They often agree that the Best Picture didn’t really win.

Some of those incidents include:

1996

In 1996, The English Patient, based on a book by the same name, follows the story of a critically-burned pilot who is tended by a French-Canadian nurse who tries to nurse him back to health in a bombed-out Italian monastery at the end of WWII. Slowly the patient, who at first cannot remember his name, reveals his past as Count Lazlo, a Hungarian cartographer whose expedition in Libya was cut short by the war. His story of romance and the loss of his sweetheart bring him to the brink as he chooses death for himself.

The film received critical acclaim. It was a major award winner as well as winning at the box office. In addition to the Best Picture it received 8 additional Oscars plus two Golden Globes and six BAFTA awards. Yet many critics were disappointed that Secrets and Lies didn’t win as they saw that as the superior film.

Secrets and Lies follows the story of Cynthia, a middle-aged woman who lives with her unhappy street-sweeper daughter. She feels rather lonely and isolated yet isn’t ready for the twists and turns that her life is about to take as a long-forgotten biological daughter, Hortense, traces Cynthia and throws her life in a tizzy.

The film isn’t really about Hortense’s search. Rather, it’s about how secrets and lies have all but destroyed Cynthia and her family and how the family sees glimmers of hope for a healthier future through the eradication of the secrets and lies.

1998

Critics again objected in 1998 when Shakespeare in Love won out over Saving Private Ryan. Some observers said that Hollywood seems to have a problem with Steven Spielberg and that’s the reason that Saving Private Ryan, an epic war movie that focuses on finding one soldier in the chaos of D-Day and its aftermath, didn’t get the Oscar nod.

Shakespeare in Love mixes fact with fiction as it relates the way screenwriters and the director envisioned the way that Shakespeare might have been inspired to write his epic Romeo and Juliet.

In the movie’s plot, the penniless Will (iam Shakespeare) falls for Viola de Lesseps, a wealthy merchant’s daughter who then becomes his muse. Will and Viola end up in their own worlds but the experience inspires Will to write his classic tale of love and loss.

While the movie is charming, well-written with excellent acting and directing, most critics were surprised to see Shakespeare in Love take the Oscar award for Best Picture in a year that Saving Private Ryan offered a film classic that will be on every collectors shelf decades from now.

2006

The Departed was released in 2006 and was awarded the Best Picture at that year’s Oscars. The Departed is loosely based on the story of Whitey Bulger whom the police considered to be one of the last Irish mobsters.

In the film, Irish Mob boss Frank Costello, plants a mole in the Massachusetts State Police Special Investigations Unit. Simultaneously the police place their own mole within the mob and the two men live their duel lives until each side comes to understand that it has a mole within its ranks. The two moles race to see who will discover the other’s identity first.

The film received high ratings and was generally felt to feature outstanding work from an excellent cast. The movie kept an atmosphere of gritty authenticity that combined with an element of soupy morality that offered a satisfying movie adventure.

Many fans and critics, however, felt that The Crown should have won out over The Departed. The Crown was seen as a superior film both for its acting and for its historical accuracy regarding a subject that is both past and current.

The Crown tells the story of the British Royal Family in the days immediately following Princess Diana’s death. The Royal Family and Diana’s brothers, the Spencers, wish to treat the death as a private event but the outpouring of public opinion forces them to confront the fact that Diana “belongs to everyone.”

Helen Mirren, as Queen Elizabeth, treads carefully as she tries to reconcile everything that she has ever known about the special status of the Royal Family with the need to stay in step with current British society.

The film didn’t take home the Oscar as Best Picture but it did receive rave reviews from almost all critics including an Oscar for Mirren herself for her portrayal of Queen Elizabeth. Roger Ebert called it “spellbinding.”

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Ibuki


Aspiring ninja.

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