What Really Should Have Won Best Picture?

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences rarely gets everything right. If we’re being honest, it might be a testament to how impossible it is to properly evaluate the long-term importance of movies that are released just two to four months before the Academy Awards take place. If we’re being cynical, well, larger studios have more money to blow to purchase awards.

Fortunately for me, I’m choosing to be neither honest or cynical about the selection process, because it doesn’t much interest me. What does interest me is re-evaluating how well the Academy did its job over the past 20-ish years. I took a look back at the Academy’s selections for Best Picture since the year 2000, and have revised their selections to reflect what was really the Best Picture of each year. Sometimes, the Academy did well. Other times, they did unbelievably poorly (*cough* the 79th annual Academy Awards *cough*).

Since I will only be focusing on iterations of the awards that awarded films made in the year 2000 and after, the 2000 Academy Awards will not technically be included in this list. They will, however, be used as an example, because they were so incredibly wrong. In 2000, the critical darling of 1999, American Beauty, took home the prize for Best Picture. However, even the director Sam Mendes has acknowledged that Beauty was absurdly overrated at the time. When we look back at 1999, was there any better or more important film than Fight Club? No, there wasn’t, and the poster you hung in your college dorm proves that. Fight Club perfectly encapsulated toxic masculinity and packaged it into an incredibly entertaining and oddly prescient narrative that holds up better than any other millenium-ending film.

Without further adieu, these are the films that should have won Best Picture since 2000.

73rd Academy Awards:

WHAT WON: Gladiator; WHAT SHOULD HAVE WON: Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon

Gladiator is a good film, but it is far from the best by Ridley Scott (that honor belongs to both Alien and Blade Runner). Yet, Gladiator took home the Oscar for Best Picture despite the fact that it did nothing to either revolutionize film or change the way we view a subject.

No, the Academy was never going to award a foreign language film with it’s most coveted prize. Yet, it absolutely should have. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon is Ang Lee’s best film, and the one that elevated him into the pantheon of great directors. It made Martial Arts Films Great Again. While it never quite offers the gritty realism of Gladiator, it’s arguably one of the greatest works of escapist art in cinematic history. Crouching Tiger won’t have you debating social issues or dissecting its deeper meanings like an episode of Black Mirror. It will, however, change what you believe is possible in film.

74th Academy Awards:

WHAT WON: A Beautiful Mind; WHAT SHOULD HAVE WON: Memento

Russell Crowe found himself nominated for Best Actor in a film that won Best Picture for the second year in a row with A Beautiful Mind, a biopic about Nobel Laureate John Nash that has been found, in retrospect, to be wholly inaccurate. The creators have said the film is not supposed to be a literal representation of Nash’s life, but then again, you made a fucking biopic.

Instead, the award should have gone to the second directorial effort from the esteemed Christopher Nolan; Memento. Memento is the type of film that comes around once a generation and represents a complete upheaval of what you believe is possible in a movie. Nolan has become well-known for his affinity to play with the concept of time while creating disjointed narratives. That has never been more obvious or well-executed as it is in this crime drama with simultaneous narratives going both backward and forward in time. Guy Pearce is electric as Leonard Shelby, who searches desperately for the man who raped and murdered his wife and left him with short term memory loss. Nolan is a poet in motion in crafting what stands among his best work, and the very best of 2001.

75th Academy Awards

WHAT WON: Chicago; WHAT SHOULD HAVE WON: Catch Me If You Can

This is one of the Academy Awards that made me stop dead in my tracks and ask just what in the were they thinking. Don’t get me wrong, Chicago is a fine film. In fact, it might even be a Great film. Unfortunately, 2002 was a really good year for movies, and there are two pantheon films from directors you may have heard of (Scorsese, Spielberg) that deserved the award more. However, I can only award one, and so with apologies to Gangs of New York, it belongs to Spielberg’s raucously entertaining Catch Me If You Can.

In what is one of Leonardo DiCaprio’s finest roles as well as Steven Spielberg’s most casually entertaining film, Catch Me If You Can feels like lightning in a bottle. Spielberg takes a story about Frank Abagnale Jr, who committed essentially every crime under the sun during his life, and turns it into a personal account of the psychological struggle Abagnale endured. The result is a spectacular, funny, and emotional account of a trouble man’s life and the relationship he had with his father.

76th Academy Awards

WHAT WON: The Lord of the Rings: The Return of The King; WHAT SHOULD HAVE WON: … The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King

It’s not often the Academy gets it right, but every once in a while they don’t stumble over their own pretentious nature or a big fat wad of cash and instead use their collective brain power to do what’s right. I’m not usually a fan of lifetime achievement awards, as you’ll see later and as I already mentioned when it came to Gladiator, but I’m on board for this one. There are people who will thumb their noses and say The Lord of the Rings trilogy is just lowbrow fantasy. Those people are idiots. Shun them from your lives.

The Lord of the Rings is objectively the greatest film trilogy ever made (sorry Star Wars). Peter Jackson may have overstayed his welcome with the overlong and tiresome King Kong and The Hobbit, but he struck magic the likes of which we may never see again with his debut trilogy. Jackson showed the Academy that they could no longer ignore fantasy as they are wont to do, and stormed through the awards show; matching Titanic and Ben-Hur as the most decorated film of all time. Make no mistake, Return of the King deserved every award it won.

77th Academy Awards:

WHAT WON: Million Dollar Baby; WHAT SHOULD HAVE WON: Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

Remember when I said I’m not big on lifetime achievement awards? Again, I’m not saying Million Dollar Baby is a bad movie, but not even Clint Eastwood himself would tell you it’s his best movie. In fact, just two years later he would go without an award for a better film in Letters from Iwo Jima. This list, however, takes long-term importance into higher account than the breadth of a director or actor’s career achievement.

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is a masterpiece in every sense of the word. It is abundantly sad, creative, hilarious, smart, original, and powerful. It is the best performance from Jim Carrey in his illustrious career, with an equally moving turn from Kate Winslet. It is also one of the greatest original screenplays ever written, digging into the core of our humanity and dealing with memory in a way that establishes just how important it is to feel longing. Carrey has never been so vulnerable as he is attempting to erase the memory of the love of his life, and we are all the better for watching it.

78th Academy Awards:

WHAT WON: Crash; WHAT SHOULD HAVE WON: Good Night and Good Luck

Crash is really, really good. In a year that found auteur filmmakers focused on socio-politcal issues, Crash absolutely deserves a spot at the top. In fact, it might deserve the award for Best Picture. So might Brokeback Mountain, and Munich. Despite how well Crash and Brokeback Mountain have aged into a tumultuous 2019 where race and sexual identity dominate social struggles; Good Night and Good Luck is even more relevant to an America that no longer trusts its media.

George Clooney’s most non-Clooney effort ever is also his most important, as it tells the historical story of a man who bucked his news director’s suggestions and aired a story that had the potential to damage both CBS and their sponsors. The prescience of his film to demonstrate the power television has to educate and empower the public feels more important today than ever before. From its black and white cinematography to its increasingly-relevant subject matter, this film is a masterwork from George Clooney.

79th Academy Awards:

WHAT WON: The Departed; WHAT SHOULD HAVE WON: Children of Men

This is it. The most egregious error the Academy has ever made and the reason I’m writing this blog in the first place. Firstly, I have to say that I adore both Scorsese and The Departed. Any other year, I would agree with its selection as Best Picture. But, again, I’m not big on lifetime achievement, and let’s not pretend that Scorsese’s remake of Internal Affairs is anywhere near his magnum opus Goodfellas. It’s certainly not anywhere close to the level of quality and importance that encapsulates Alfonso Cuaron’s masterpiece Children of Men, which wasn’t even nominated.

Children of Men is an absolute whirlwind of gorgeous cinematography, daring set pieces, spectacular acting, and prescient writing. It is one of the greatest adapted screenplays in cinematic history and challenges its audience to grasp the dangers of xenophobia as well as the human race’s impact on the world around them. Set in a dystopian United Kingdom with an extremely xenophobic government and a London taken straight from Pink Floyd’s Animals, Children offers one of the most hauntingly plausible futures for humanity through the lens of a world where babies don’t exist. In a time when America is caging refugees, asylum-seekers, and immigrants, Children of Men has only risen in its relative importance. It is essential viewing, and lives among the best films of all-time.

80th Academy Awards:

WHAT WON: No Country for Old Men; WHAT SHOULD HAVE WON: No Country for Old Men

One year after failing to even nominate what many critics have called the greatest film of that decade for Best Picture, the Academy nailed it. The Coen Brothers have a laundry list of phenomenal films, from Raising Arizona to Fargo to The Big Lebowski, yet No Country for Old Men sits atop them all as the Coen’s masterwork. If Children of Men offers the greatest adapted screenplay of the century thus far, No Country for Old Men is its runner-up. The Coen brothers bring Cormac McCarthy’s novel to life in devastating fashion. With help from Javier Bardem in his career defining performance, the decision to award No Country was effectively a no-brainer.

81st Academy Awards:

WHAT WON: Slumdog Millionaire; WHAT SHOULD HAVE WON: The Dark Knight

“A fucking Batman movie? For BEST PICTURE?” Yeah, you read that right, a fucking Batman movie. For Best Picture.

Ask yourself a really simple question: which film has had more impact on the future of film and what’s possible in it between Slumdog Millionaire and The Dark Knight? It’s not even close. Cinemas have been dominated by superhero films, many of which have been elevated in quality and allowed to become more artistic endeavors (Thor: Ragnarok, Logan) because The Dark Knight existed. Christopher Nolan wrote a crime film and dropped Batman into it. The Dark Knight is as much The Departed as it is The Killing Joke. And I haven’t even mentioned the miracle that is Heath Ledger’s Joker, in what is definitively a Top-Five performance of the 21st century. It’s an auteur’s take on a traditional comic-book film and it completely changed the standard that future comic-book movies would be held to and judged by. It’s also the only reason that every Academy Awards show since has nominated up to 10 films, because (you guessed it) The Dark Knight wasn’t even nominated.

82nd Academy Awards:

WHAT WON: The Hurt Locker; WHAT SHOULD HAVE WON: Inglourious Basterds

The Hurt Locker is a great-with-a-capital-G film. It’s view on war as a drug and the adrenaline-junkie nature of a bomb squad is both revelatory and nuanced. It is not, however, the cinematic landmark that is Quentin Tarantino’s World War II romp about Jewish-American soldiers brutally killing Nazis.

Is there anything more viscerally pleasing than watching Hitler have his face shot to pieces by a Jewish-American soldier while a cinema full of Nazi brass burns to the ground? No. Is there anything more impressive than Christoph Waltz’s three-language performance stepping into the shoes of Tarantino’s greatest villain Col. Hans Landa? No. Is there a better written film in Tarantino’s cinematic library? No. Inglourious Basterds is the best film of 2009, full stop.

83rd Academy Awards:

WHAT WON: The King’s Speech; WHAT SHOULD HAVE WON: Inception

Is Christopher Nolan really good at making movies or do I just really like Christopher Nolan? Yes.

Inception is incredible. So much of this list has been about what these films did to change the future of cinema, buck convention, and force us to re-imagine what is possible in a film. Many scenes have altered my perception of what a movie can do, and one of them is without a doubt the hallway fight in Inception. Also, the freight train. Also, the Morocco chase. Also, the snowmobile chase. Also, the timing of the entire final dream heist. Also, the ambiguous ending. Inception is hallmark scene after hallmark scene after hallmark scene, and the best part? It still holds up, in 2019, when the status quo for special effects and computer animation has been brought to new heights by Marvel’s Avengers. Nolan’s affinity for practical effects, like literally constructing a hotel hallway that turns on multiple axes and throws Joseph Gordon Levitt around like a rag-doll, shines on and creates a timeless feel for his films. Inception kicks ass.

84th Academy Awards:

WHAT WON: The Artist; WHAT SHOULD HAVE WON: Drive

The Gos God strikes for the first time on this list in what stands as one of his best performances in Drive as, uh, Driver. Seriously. This is the most existential action film ever made and it’s all the better for it. It’d be easy to watch the first few minutes and write it off as simply a B-movie with a devilishly handsome leading man. You’d be wrong, and also stupid, if you did that. Ryan Gosling is a tour de force despite hardly ever saying a word. He’s a maelstrom of unleashed terror and violence during an elevator sequence that belongs in a time-capsule. The whole movie feels unhinged, relishing in every blood splatter, gunshot, and gear shift. While it wasn’t recognized by the Academy, that’s their loss. Drive is cinema on cocaine, and it is beautiful.

85th Academy Awards:

WHAT WON: Argo; WHAT SHOULD HAVE WON: The Master

People hate The Master. They also love it. Paul Thomas Anderson’s most divisive work follows Joaquin Phoenix and Phillip Seymour Hoffman in two of the best roles of their respective careers. It also makes its audience think in a way that Argo doesn’t. Both films have a case for Best Picture, but where Argo comes across as casually entertaining albeit brilliantly made, The Master is a more rigorous treatise on what to expect from a film. Its divisiveness is part of its quality. Art strives to be loved, and it strives to be hated. It strives to be misunderstood, debated, argued over, dissected, reveled, and reviled. The best art divides its audiences. What it doesn’t do is leave anyone not caring. From the first frame to the last, love it or hate it, The Master demands your attention.

86th Academy Awards:

WHAT WON: 12 Years A Slave; WHAT SHOULD HAVE WON: 12 Years A Slave

Sometimes, a movie comes around and makes the Academy’s job easy. So easy, there’s absolutely no way they could fuck it up. That was 12 Years A Slave. It’s daring. It’s revolutionary. It’s uncomfortable. Steve McQueen does his best to chain the audience as much as he does chain Chiwetel Ejiofor in the defining role of his career. It would be easy to get lost in the history of the true story brought to life by McQueen and executive producer Brad Pitt, if they didn’t make it so abundantly clear that the fragile nature of freedom remains even in modern times. 12 Years A Slave doesn’t pull any punches. It drops its audience directly into the brutality of the American slave trade. It will haunt you. It should.

87th Academy Awards:

WHAT WON: Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance); WHAT SHOULD HAVE WON: Boyhood

Boyhood might just be the most personal film ever made. It’s ambition, being filmed over 12 years to highlight the growth of its titular character growing up as a child of divorce. Is it as ambitious as Birdman, which famously saw director Alejandro Inarritu stage an entire film in seemingly one take? You bet your ass. It’s small, intimate, and withheld, but it’s also incredibly personal and deeply impactful. Ethan Hawke is incredible as a dead beat dad, while Patricia Arquette does her best as a single-mother who can’t meet a good guy. The performances are virtuosic, especially from Ellar Coltrane, who shows us the realities of growing up in a broken home and the struggle of carving your niche in the world. Boyhood is a cinematic masterpiece.

88th Academy Awards:

WHAT WON: Spotlight; WHAT SHOULD HAVE WON: Mad Max: Fury Road

I’ve changed my tune on Mad Max: Fury Road. While I wasn’t as into blogging my thoughts as I am now way back in *checks notes* 2015, I would have told you Fury Road was a beautifully shot and animated spectacle with very little plot and an average performance from its leading man. Upon repeat viewings, I’ve discovered something disheartening about myself in 2015. I was an idiot. Fury Road is a movie powered by rocket-fuel. Fuck a plot. Fuck exposition. Who needs it? Give me Charlize Theron in one of the best performances of her career escaping from the crazed Immortan Joe, evading a caravan that exudes as much toxic masculinity as it does fireballs. I’ve come around on Fury Road getting over my initial disappointment in the lack of exposition or dialogue, to realize that it is simply a perfectly crafted work of cinematic art. And for a Mad Max film to be, at its core, a feminist landmark? Sign me up.

89th Academy Awards:

WHAT WON: Moonlight; WHAT SHOULD HAVE WON: La La Land

I’m a sucker for a good love story. Both Moonlight and La La Land are wonderfully crafted love stories that circumvent the traditional formula and punch you right in the gut. La La Land, however, is not just a love story between characters. It’s a love letter to American cinema, and boy does it love American cinema. It’s the Gos God’s second entry on this list, and his second-best performance, but the movie truly belongs to Emma Stone, who dazzles as Mia.

Director Damian Chazelle finds every opportunity to undermine the typical Broadway musical tropes, instead inventing transitions and segues between songs that make the songs feel organic instead of forced. Have you ever seen a musical and wondered just why do these people keep singing the story? Not La La Land, in which song is the only way for Chazelle to tell his story. Stone and Gosling aren’t the best singers? That’s the point, loser. This isn’t Wicked, it’s not about highlighting Idina Menzel’s range. It’s about passion, honesty, and real-life; not idyllic fantasy. It’s one of the best of films of the decade.

90th Academy Awards:

WHAT WON: The Shape of Water; WHAT SHOULD HAVE WON: Lady Bird

See, I could have easily picked Dunkirk and had all of you tell me I’m a shill for Christopher Nolan. But I didn’t, because Dunkirk was only the second-best film of 2017. Lady Bird shines a light significantly brighter than Christopher Nolan’s atypical war epic. It’s also much more lasting than Guillermo Del Toro’s film The Woman Who Fucks A Fish. (Full disclosure: I adored The Shape of Water upon first viewing, and while I still think it’s really good, it has waned a bit over time.)

Lady Bird is essentially Boyhood except with a girl and it only takes place over a few days and it’s funny as all hell. A slice of life comedy that offers Saoirse Ronan a role so well-written how could she not have given her best performance to date? Greta Gerwig wrote and directed this masterpiece of personal cinema, highlighting the relationship between a daughter and her devilish mother. Laurie Metcalf is a lightning bolt as Lady Bird’s mother, and the film’s climax that amounts to a verbal fisticuffs between mother and daughter will destroy you. Ronan and Metcalf play off one-another perfectly, and beautifully, and Gerwig’s script never falters. Lady Bird is a miracle of a coming-of-age film.

91st Academy Awards:

WHAT WON: Green Book; WHAT SHOULD HAVE WON: literally any other film of 2018 but for the purposes of this blog, BlacKkKlansman

The 91st Academy Awards are a complete atrocity. I don’t even know who was voting for these films. Green Book is a white savior wet-dream where only Mahershala Ali bothered to thank the real-life African-American man the film was based on, Don Shirley. Spike Lee was so infuriated by the Academy’s selection he walked out of the processions. I don’t blame him. His film, BlacKkKlansman, was a masterwork that was under-served by an Academy that chose instead to shower the mediocre Bohemian Rhapsody with awards it didn’t deserve.

BlacKkKlansman is a brilliantly photographed, written, acted, and executed film about a black man who infiltrates the KKK in the 1970s. It’s at once hysterical and powerful and remarkably uncomfortable. It’s also extremely important, and while Lee might be a bit on the nose by including real footage of David Duke and the Charlottesville riots, it does serve to hammer home the point. Shame on the Academy for not awarding what was, and will be, the best film of 2018.