Did They Get it Right? – Best Picture – Oscars 2010

Here are the ten nominees: (Winner in Bold)

127 Hours

Black Swan

The Fighter

Inception

The Kids Are All Right

The King’s Speech

The Social Network

Toy Story 3

True Grit

Winter’s Bone

Biggest Snub:

Secretariat

My Overall Thoughts:

Once again, with a list of 10 films on this list, it feels as if the Academy stretches the “bar” a bit and includes films that are good but not great in the final list.

It seems as if they felt that they were required to name ten films on this list despite many of them not really deserving to be on the list.

Looking at the list, I am still shocked that they expanded the list of nominees to 10 because it gives a greater status to films that shouldn’t really be in this class of eliteness.

What’s interesting is that most of these undeserving films for the BP nomination are all lead by amazing performances. Perhaps, those performances are what’s  give the impression that the films are better than they truly are.

My Rankings:

Movies

• 10.-Black Swan – Great performance by Portman, but a complete mess of a film that makes little to no sense.
• 9. – The Kid’s Are All Right – More or less mediocre film that has its moments, but overall doesn’t really deliver like it could have.
• 8. – 127 Hours – Franco does a great job here, but the film itself isn’t as emotionally poignant as one would hope and expect.
• 7. – Winter’s Bone – Lawrence shows here how great an actress she is, but the story is a bit lacking and doesn’t give the epic feel that is sorely needed.
• 6. – True Grit – Good film but doesn’t add much to the original film’s premise. Steinfeld is great here and it’s fun watching Bridges, Damon and Brolin. The Coen Brothers always have interesting ways of telling stories and this is no exception, but the truth is that there isn’t much added to this story that would really warrant it being remade besides their more realistic views of violence and the story itself.
• 5. – The Fighter – The performances of the four main actors are brilliant here, but the story itself is a bit lacking which doesn’t bring it up to the level where it really should deserve a nomination.
  
• 4. – The Social Network – Sorkin once again shows how amazing a writer he is with this film. This movie was a front-runner for a time but due to controversy over its accuracy, it lost a lot of steam along the way.
• 3. – The King’s Speech – Amazing historical epic that has some amazing performances.  Not the very best film of the year, but close enough to still be deserving of its win.
• 2. – Toy Story 3 – PIXAR proved with this film that even the third film in a trilogy can be amazing.  The message here about growing up is quiet poignant and the use of animation to give over this message is the perfect medium.
• 1. – Inception – Nolan is one of the best directors around and he is able to create a world here that is so vivid and full of surprises. The story works on so many different levels and the fact that you never know what is real or not makes things even more amazing to watch unfold around us. This is clearly the best film of the year from both a technical and narrative perspective.

Do I agree with the Oscar winner? – Yes and No!  The King’s Speech is a superb historic film but the two other films that I rank higher probably wouldn’t have had a chance at winning BP because of the genre’s they belong to.  I am looking forward to the day when an animated film or a psychological action film will be able to take home that top gold statue.

Let me know what you think about these films and my rankings!