Oscar audit: Critics choices for best picture hold up over time

BY MICHAEL SMITH World Scene Writer
Friday, February 08, 2013
2/08/13 at 7:12 AM

At the Feb. 24 Academy Awards, the Oscar for best picture will go to ... a film that the public may or may not believe deserved to win years from now.

Whether the winner is the historical epic "Lincoln" or Iranian-hostage-crisis drama "Argo," one of this year's nine nominees will end the evening immortalized alongside 84 previous best picture winners.

But will that film stand the test of time as the best that 2012 had to offer?

As a fun annual experiment we've conducted for a few years, a panel of 12 Oklahoma film critics, theater managers/owners and people who work in the film industry answered the following questions: In hindsight, if you had a vote for best picture, how would you cast your vote now in the competitions held five, 10, 15 and 20 years ago?

In a first for our panel, each year's best-picture winner was deemed to be the correct choice today, as well - but by varying degrees.

One was an overwhelming winner as judged by panelists, and another won comfortably. But in the other two races, a musical narrowly won - despite some judges feeling that no musicals deserve to win - and one of Hollywood's biggest hits ("Titanic") had to settle for a tie at the top as several panelists panned the sinking-ship saga.

Panelists' choices for the best picture category (2007, '02, '97 and '92)

Key * = Won best picture Oscar

= Vote by panel member

= Movie received no votes from any panel member

2007

No Country for Old Men*
There Will Be Blood
Juno
Michael Clayton
Atonement

Violence follows Javier Bardem in “No Country for Old Men.” Courtesy

"No Country for Old Men" was voted best picture by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for 2007, and the Coen brothers' stylish tale - combining frontier justice in a modern setting with existential dread and a villain with a bad haircut - repeated with our panel.

More than a few experts have touted the film, which also won Oscars for writing and directing and for Javier Bardem's coin-flipping killer, as the best of this century's first decade. At least a couple of members of the panel agreed.

"(It) is a haunting cinematic lament for a country - and culture - that has completely lost its way," Huston said. Hermann said the movie "spoke to my fears about an increasingly violent America. ... I think 'best picture' movies both entertain and touch on subjects that transcend the movie alone, and 'No Country' did that for me."

The pregnant-teen comedy "Juno" won over two panelists, and three voters praised "There Will Be Blood," which featured Daniel Day-Lewis' Oscar-winning performance as oilman Daniel Plainview. Neither the period drama "Atonement" nor George Clooney's fixer "Michael Clayton" enchanted any voters.

Chitwood found Day-Lewis' performance to be "one of the most compelling ever put on screen. He is fascinating, disgusting and familiar all at once." Peck was blunt: "I defy anyone to look away from the epic genius of this movie."

Ultimately, Huston summed up several voters' thinking: "There Will Be Blood" was one of the best films of the decade, but "No Country for Old Men" was "both the year's and the decade's best," he said.

2002

Chicago*
The Pianist
Gangs of New York
LOTR: The Two Towers
The Hours

Catherine Zeta-Jones stars in the musical “Chicago.” Courtesy

When "Chicago" won the Oscar for best picture, it became the ninth musical to take the Academy's top prize - and the first in 34 years (since 1968's "Oliver!"). No musical has repeated the feat since. Five of our 12 panelists selected "Chicago" also, giving it a narrow victory over the Holocaust drama "The Pianist."

"Chicago" is "a dazzling work" and "one of the best-executed movie musicals of all-time," Chitwood said in giving the musical his vote "for revitalizing a genre in grand fashion." Brown is another fan of musicals who welcomed the "groundbreaking vision" of the film that she feels set the stage for shows like "Glee" to succeed today because "film audiences have an ear for music once again."

"Chicago" received the most votes from the panel, but it also received the most abuse. "I hated 'Chicago,' " Younger said. "Proof of what a weak year 2002 was for movies," Peck said. "More like a doll-puppet on Richard Gere's lap," Hermann said, adding that audiences were "razzle-dazzled from seeing that it was emotionally vapid at the core."

Falling one vote short of tying "Chicago" was "The Pianist," which won Oscars for best actor (Adrien Brody) and best director (Roman Polanski).

"It's a meaningful story with any number of messages for humanity: courage, the lessons of destruction and the ultimate transcendent capability of art," Wright said, adding that he can appreciate the "glitz" of "Chicago," but is it "anything more meaningful than that? Nope."

"Chicago" did have meaning, however, for Blake Smith, the theater owner among our panelists: "Not only do I agree with it as the winner, I love how it did at the box office!"

1997

Titanic*
L.A. Confidential
Good Will Hunting
As Good As It Gets
The Full Monty

Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet smashed box office records in “Titanic.” Courtesy

Panelists were largely split among three films, with passionate pleas for "Good Will Hunting," but it fell one vote short of the two pictures that tied for the top spot: crime-noir mystery "L.A. Confidential" and the blockbuster "Titanic," which became a box-office phenomenon and won a record-tying 11 Oscars.

"L.A. Confidential" and its 1950s story of corrupt cops, with a brains-and-brawn face-off between characters played by Guy Pearce and Russell Crowe, made an immediate impact on Langston: "I thought it was an instant classic." The film has also held up beautifully 15 years later for fans like Hermann. "It's one of my top-10 favorite movies," she said.

Meanwhile, "Titanic" inspired the most vitriol. "Gag, 8,000 soap operas rolled into one. Predictable, formulaic, boring, overlong, sappy. Shall I go on?" Wright said. Then there were those who appreciated Cameron's unrivaled technical expertise but who offered only faint praise otherwise. "Cameron can do epic entertainment like few others, but his scripts are actually kind of ridiculous," Peck said.

The "spectacle factor" seems to have kept "Titanic" in the running with "L.A. Confidential" with panelists. Like Huston, for example, who admitted that his choice in 1997 would have been "L.A. Confidential." Today, his choice is "Titanic."

"A worthy winner that has emerged beyond the tween-girl phenomenon of its initial run to stand (among) the greatest Hollywood epics of all time. ... That core duo of Jack and Rose are portrayed with sincere passion by the trio of Leonardo DiCaprio, Kate Winslet and Gloria Stuart. Like Rose's heart, this movie will go on. It's timeless."

1992

Unforgiven*
The Crying Game
Scent of a Woman
A Few Good Men
Howard's End

Clint Eastwood earned top honors for his role in “Unforgiven.” Courtesy

"Unforgiven" received more votes from our panel than any film in the four contests, with nine of 12 votes going toward Clint Eastwood's acting/directing triumph. The man who made his name with Westerns has in 20 years never returned to the genre since his "bona fide masterwork," as Chitwood termed the film.

"This choice isn't even close," Huston said of 1992's Oscar race, arguing that "Unforgiven" is "arguably the pinnacle of an entire genre" as Eastwood deconstructed long-held mythology with his grim, revisionist Western.

Rather than black hat/white hat Western archetypes, the characters were complex and conflicted, like Eastwood's anti-hero as a ruthless killer and Gene Hackman's sadistic sheriff.

"Few films upend a genre and an actor's image so completely," Watts said of the last Western to win the Academy Award for best picture, with the only nominee since being 2010's "True Grit."

Both "A Few Good Men" and "Howard's End" failed to gain a single vote from the panel. There was one nod for "Scent of a Woman," and two panelists selected the Irish crime-movie mystery "The Crying Game," which featured a marvelous twist.

"The surprising revelations brought to life the compassion of one human to another without regard to gender. Unforgettable," Wiens said of "The Crying Game."

But the panel was considering humanity through a different lens with "Unforgiven," and considering Eastwood in a new manner after 1992.

"With this film, he sets the stage for an incredible directing run for the next 20 years, redefining the role of 'aging movie star' along the way," Brown said.

2013 Oscars

85th Academy Awards

When: 6 p.m. Feb. 24

Where: Dolby Theatre, Los Angeles, Calif.

TV: ABC, channel 8

About the panelists

Panelists offering their selections from the five best picture nominees of 2007, 2002, 1997 and 1992.

Michael Smith	Tulsa World film critic
James D. Watts Jr.	Fine arts critic
Kim Brown	Former Tulsa World film writer
Clark Wiens	Circle Cinema Foundation co-founder
Adam Chitwood	A Tulsa-based associate editor for movie website Collider.com
Michael Wright	Applied professor of creative writing, theater and film at the University of Tulsa
Greg Younger	Circle Cinema manager
Jeff Huston	Tulsa-based film critic for the website crosswalk.com
Blake Smith	Owner of RiverWalk Movies and Admiral Twin Drive-in
Michelle Langston	Oklahoma City publicist for Sony Pictures and Fox Searchlight
Joshua Peck	Circle Cinema midnight movie programmer
Nancy Hermann	marketing director for Tulsa Performing Arts Center

Original Print Headline: Oscar audit

Michael Smith 918-581-8479
michael.smith@tulsaworld.com

Associated Images:

Ben Affleck stars in “Argo,” which is the front-runner for best picture in this year’s Academy Awards. Warner Bros. Pictures/Courtesy