Best Picture and Director 1996

[Big Magilla]

1996 was another year in which they seemed to me to have gotten it all wrong.

Three films which opened in the first half of the year were my picks for the year's three best films - Fargo, which opened in April; Flirting With Disaster, which opened in March and Lone Star, which opened in June were to me, far better than anything that came later. Rounding out my top ten list were Jerry Maguire (mid-December); The English Patient (November); Secrets & Lies (October); Breaking the Waves (November); Sling Blade (November); The People vs. Larry Flynt (Christmas Day, though it could hardly be called a Christmas movie) and Shine (November).

I didn't have a problem with the Best Picture nods given Secrets & Lies and Shine other than that they prevented Flirting With Disaster and Lone Star from getting the nominations they deserved, but that probably wasn't going to happen anyway.

You can keep your Silver Linings Playbook, David O. Russell's best film to date is still Flirting With Disaster as far as I'm concerned and John Sayles remains the most under-rated writer/director of the last three or four decades, although he did receive a writing nomination for Lone Star as well as a previous one for Passion Fish. The year wasn't a total loss, however. The year's best film, Fargo was in the race for Best Picture and Director giving me an opportunity to vote for it here.

As for The English Patient, I found it a decent rendering of a near-impossible novel to turn into a film. I thought it deserved its technical nods, but nine wins was a stretch, albeit not a surprising one. More often than not, as we have seen, the Best Picture award goes to the film with the best production values among the nominees.