2021's Oscar Nominees

As someone who previously eye-rolled at Griffin's take, I probably sound like a bit of a hypocrite by endorsing this piece, but I felt that overall, he was coming from a place more sincere and nuanced than her "Won't someone please think of the comedians?!"

i suppose i’m not coming from a position where i could read a paragraph like that evenly

also need to stop reading about this at all

Fair. I felt like I was done talking/thinking about this some time around Monday afternoon, so I should probably just stop engaging with it, whether the source is reasonable (Kareem) or batshit (Armond).

should've figured that was who "AW" was

Kareem's take was sensible imo

I agree.

also, this growing Twitter consensus that no other celebrities (let alone people in general) should be allowed to voice an opinion about this is fucking weird to me.

The Smith Stan Army turned out to be more dangerous than the K-Hive or Swifties.

BTS Army could still probably take them though

The incident was way beneath the oscars - it was really disheartening and it cast a pall on everything that came after it, in retrospect even more so

but the whole ceremony was also beneath the oscars: the shocking disregard for and dismissal of films, the horrible sound quality of the musical numbers, the relegation of multiple categories to pre-taped segments, the allowance of random non-film people to banter at length while winners like Hamaguchi were played off the stage (three times!)

Too many sex criminals have won Oscars for anything to be beneath them.

wait Jessica Chastain won best actress for Eyes of Tammy Faye? it felt like she was doing a bad SNL character that whole movie.

Wait 'til you see what took the two screenplay awards...

I think this was the worst bunch of nominated best pictures in decades.

Yea these flicks just don't slap

Hard to compare 10 films against 10, but scanning the last few years, some of them look just as mediocre to me.

I've seen far worse years.

what was the Crash year

really incredibly great:
power of the dog
drive my car
west side story
licorice pizza

good but wandered into the wrong class:
dune
nightmare alley

no:
king richard
don't look up
coda

absolutely fucking not:
belfast

better than most years for me idk

I only saw five of the 10, but four of them were somewhere between okay and good, and that's about a normal year.

2018 was waaay worse.

2018's Oscar Nominees

Haven't seen Drive My Car or Licorice Pizza yet, but on the whole this year's batch looked to be just about as decent-to-mediocre, on the whole, as most other recent years. The Power of the Dog is better than anything from the 2020 lineup, but even though I really disliked King Richard, I don't think it is really a whole lot worse than, say, Mank.

guess i agree with BradNelson here at least w/r/t to things I saw with the exception that I thought Belfast was good (though not great). finally watched Nightmare Alley this weekend and enjoyed it but it's no best picture fare.

Good to Great

Drive My Car
The Power of the Dog

Sound, Solid

Licorice Pizza
Dune
West Side Story

Meh

Nightmare Alley
Belfast
King Richard
Don't Look Up

The Hague

Coda

I give you 2008:

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Slumdog Millionaires
Frost/Nixon
Milk
The Reader

Oh, come on: I'm no fan of CODA, but King Richard is definitely worse (for reasons I've gone on about upthread).

And yeah, 2008 is the all-time worst. That 2018 list at least had BlackKklansman.

CODA is shorter though.

2008 was the slate that made us all irate.

1975

Barry Lyndon
Dog Day Afternoon
Jaws
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
Nashville

Personally, there's probably more there for me than the last decade of BP nominees.

I've heard 1975 held up as the best BP lineup ever, and it is hard to disagree.

It's got two all-time top 10 movies, so it scarcely matters that I run pretty cool on the other three.

Cuckoo's Nest (the winner) might actually be my least favorite of the five, and that is about the strongest thing that I can say against that film.

Well, 2021 may not be the worst year, but I think it's going to be the most forgettable.

There are 4 or 5 decent choices. I think Drive My Car will be remembered as the rare foreign film that got a worthy nomination.