movie list

[firecat]

Via surelars, below is a list of all the films nominated for a Best Picture Academy Award since 1970 (with the winning picture at the top of the list for each year, with the exception of 2006). Bold the ones you've seen.

As surelars said: Some of these I'm not sure if I've seen or not. When I doubt I left it as "not seen

Comments

[firecat]

For amusement and movie taste calibration purposes, I've marked where I agree or disagree with your opinion. If I disagreed, I put my rating after the /. If I agreed, I left your rating.

Five Easy Pieces**/***
MASH**
Cabaret****/***
The Sting**/***
Chinatown***
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest**/***
Jaws**/***
Network**
Annie Hall****/*
Star Wars**/****
Kramer vs. Kramer**
Ordinary People**
Gandhi**/****
E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial**
Tootsie**/***
Terms of Endearment*
The Big Chill**
Amadeus***/****
The Color Purple***/* (I liked the book OK, but the movie was Spielberg)
Kiss of the Spider Woman***
Witness**/***
Hannah and Her Sisters*** (although I don't know if I'd like it now. I've gone off Woody Allen)
Dead Poets Society**/***
Ghost***
The Crying Game***/****
The Shawshank Redemption**/****
Babe**/***
The English Patient*/***
Titanic**
The Full Monty***/****
L.A. Confidential***/**
Elizabeth**
The Sixth Sense****
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon**/****
A Beautiful Mind***
The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring**/***
Lost in Translation**
Mystic River***/**

[bastette_joyce]

Annie Hall****/*

What??! Explain yourself, girl! :) (This is one of my faves of all time. No, I'm not insulted that you didn't like it. But I am surprised. You really hated it?)

The Shawshank Redemption**/****

This sort of surprises me, too - it doesn't seem like your kind of film. I gave it 2 stars mostly because I've seen it too many times. :-/ I did like it the first 3 or 4 times, though. :) And I liked the ending a lot, when Tim Robbins comes walking up to Morgan Freeman on the beach and you see them hug.

[firecat]

I saw Annie Hall several years after it came out, after I'd already gone off Woody Allen (as in, the personality of his characters in movies began to really irritate me). And although there are exceptions, I tend not to like movies about contemporary life, with characters who are a lot like people I know. I tend to feel alienated by them because I don't experience life the way the characters do.

I like Shawshank Redemption because, in Roger Ebert's words, it is "a movie about time, patience and loyalty" and "about continuity in a lifetime, based on friendship and hope." I like the slow pacing.

Ultimately though if I only see a movie once (I've only seen those movies once) whether I like it has a lot to do with my mood when I watched it.

[bastette_joyce]

I tend not to like movies about contemporary life, with characters who are a lot like people I know. I tend to feel alienated by them because I don't experience life the way the characters do.

Huh. And I so strongly identify with Woody Allen's characters - at least his earlier ones, and I consider Annie Hall to be one of the early movies. (In later movies, a more nasty side of him emerged, which I don't identify with.) His neurotically insecure yet comical persona is so much like me. Not to mention the hypochondria. I don't remember which movie it was where he possibly had cancer and was waiting for the results of a test. His ruminations during that time were so, so familiar.

It really makes me feel sad when people knock him, especially his "insecurity shtik", because that's who I feel I am. You haven't said that's why you don't like him, but many people do. Why is it so wrong to be insecure? And how is mocking emotional insecurity even the slightest bit different from mocking someone with a physical disability?

Sorry - I accidentally stumbled on a soapbox and decided to step on it. :) I'm feeling a bit tender tonight, so it doesn't take much to get me going...

[firecat]

I'd much rather have a real friend who self-identifies as having insecurity and hypochondria issues than see movies with a character who has those issues (especially movies set in contemporary US). I feel that some Woody Allen films exaggerate and mock those traits and that doesn't feel compassionate to me. (I know that plenty of folks disagree with me on that.)

So for me it doesn't have to do with disliking insecurity; it has to do with how some films present insecurity.

[bastette_joyce]

I feel that some Woody Allen films exaggerate and mock those traits and that doesn't feel compassionate to me. (I know that plenty of folks disagree with me on that.)

I think a lot of people do agree with you, and maybe they feel he's being insensitive toward shy, insecure people. But I always read his "insecurity shtik" as really being about him, so it's not like he's making fun of other people - he's laughing at himself more than anyone. I also find the humor disarming and charming. If I can laugh at the fact that he's so nervous about meeting his blind date that he accidentally hurls a vinyl album across a room, then maybe my own insecurities don't seem so weird.

I wouldn't feel this way if I thought he was making fun of people who he saw as different from (and inferior to) himself. But I've always gotten the feeling that he is essentially playing himself over and over, and, in the early movies anyway, there was a kind of endearing nebbish thing that I identified with and liked.

I know that ever since that whole blowup with Mia Farrow and Soon-Yi, it's uncool to like Woody Allen, and in fact, I don't really think that much of him personally. It just doesn't stop me from liking his movies - the ones I do like, that is.

(The spellchecker software for this forum was apparently not written by Jews - it's underlining both "shtik" and "nebbish". :))

[firecat]

Your point makes sense and I'm glad that his movies make you feel good and don't come across as mean.

Isn't it "schtick"? :)

[bastette_joyce]

Isn't it "schtick"? :)

(Note: "schtick" is also underlined.) There's no standard spelling of Yiddish words, because they are transliterated from the Hebrew alphabet. I guess there is a standard for transliteration, such as for translations of books, but in more casual writing, people end up spelling the words all different ways anyway. But maybe the spellcheck people (another note: "spellcheck" is underlined) have yet another way of spelling it, and neither of us knows what it is. More likely, it's not in their dictionary at all...

[firecat]

I can't figure out where I turned off spellcheck on LJ, but I'm glad I did.

[bastette_joyce]

Whoops, I went off on my tangent so far, I forgot to reply to what you had said about not liking movies about contemporary people.

You do like a lot of movies that are either fantasy, or set in a different time period. Do you find that those people experience their lives in ways that are closer to yours?

[firecat]

No, I don't necessarily think those people experience life in ways that are closer to me. But because the movies are fantasy or set in a different culture or a different time period, I don't expect to identify with the characters. I often feel like I am supposed to identify with certain characters in movies set in the contemporary US and it alienates me when I don't identify with them at all. (This was part of why I really disliked About Schmidt, which I saw with you and which you liked. I felt like I was supposed to identify with Schmidt and oh boy did I not.)