Best Picture: 1999
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Big Magilla
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This was the first, and so far, only, year where I saw all five Best Picture nominees before the nominations were announced. I miss the days of going to the movies with friends every weekend. (Now I have the money to do it--then we mainly relied on our parents--but not the time.)
My pick is The Sixth Sense.
At the time, I liked it a lot, but as a growing film fan, I was afraid to say I liked it too much, because I didn't want to look like a populist. The Insider is a fine film too, with some powerful moments. The Cider House Rules suffers from the Miramax backlash, but Miramax has gotten worse movies nominated; When my friends and I saw it, we didn't even really think about the abortion themes--we just liked the whole coming of age story. The Green Mile was gunning to do the same thing that Shawshank did, only take it to the winners circle; But The Green Mile is a crap story--I can at least see why people love Shawshank based on the story--and there was just no excuse for it to go on for over three hours. It's stupid, and a total bore. American Beauty I thought was hot stuff at the time, but now I think it's probably done as much damage to popular culture as any other movie in the past decade. Not only has it lead to several imitators--almost all terrible--its success also was directly responsible for the unspeakable Six Feet Under, and can probably be linked to those other TV shows that think they're doing something daring by portraying suburbia as a hotbed of hypocrisy and lies. Most of the blame can be put squarely on Alan Ball--he has nothing but contempt for the characters, and Sam Mendes brings nothing to the table than overcomes such a loathsome worldview. A truly dreadful movie.
My pick is The Sixth Sense.
At the time, I liked it a lot, but as a growing film fan, I was afraid to say I liked it too much, because I didn't want to look like a populist. The Insider is a fine film too, with some powerful moments. The Cider House Rules suffers from the Miramax backlash, but Miramax has gotten worse movies nominated; When my friends and I saw it, we didn't even really think about the abortion themes--we just liked the whole coming of age story. The Green Mile was gunning to do the same thing that Shawshank did, only take it to the winners circle; But The Green Mile is a crap story--I can at least see why people love Shawshank based on the story--and there was just no excuse for it to go on for over three hours. It's stupid, and a total bore. American Beauty I thought was hot stuff at the time, but now I think it's probably done as much damage to popular culture as any other movie in the past decade. Not only has it lead to several imitators--almost all terrible--its success also was directly responsible for the unspeakable Six Feet Under, and can probably be linked to those other TV shows that think they're doing something daring by portraying suburbia as a hotbed of hypocrisy and lies. Most of the blame can be put squarely on Alan Ball--he has nothing but contempt for the characters, and Sam Mendes brings nothing to the table than overcomes such a loathsome worldview. A truly dreadful movie.
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FilmFan720
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