Never let it be said that have a nice day! eschews the basic principles of "fairness" and "balance" in media "reporting", nosireebob! Our recent column eviscerating some of the "worst" Oscar winners in history is certainly one of our favorites; however, as turnabout is fair play, here are some of our picks for "best" picture winners at the Academy Awards. Feel free to amend this list with some of your own favorites. And now, in no particular order...
Midnight Cowboy (April 7, 1970)
I will say upfront that at least one other film in 1969 gave this movie a legitimate run for its money, that is Sydney Pollack's They Shoot Horses, Don't They?. Truth be told, "Horses" probably should have won; if I had a vote, I think it edges out "Cowboy" (if only by percentage points). But having said that, I am nonetheless delighted that the John Schlesinger opus took down the little gold statuette. Both films take a rather dim view of the myth of American Exceptionalism by focusing on characters who are in every sense "unexceptional" and elevating them to heroic status. Both movies essentially make the argument that isolation in the extreme from the mainstream of society can kill you, figuratively and literally, but "Cowboy" takes its argument a step further. Homosexuality was most definitely not a topic of discussion in mainstream American anything in those days, but Midnight Cowboy addresses the subject head on, utilizing complex central characters and a likewise narrative structure. The movie may not have delved into the subject quite as deeply as the novel by James Leo Herlihy on which it is based, but the fact that a mainstream Hollywood film would even go there at all in the 1960s is impressive in and of itself. "Cowboy" stands as the only X-rated film to win an Oscar in any category.
The French Connection (April 10, 1972)
One of my all-time favorite Oscar winners, and one of my all-time favorite movies, this William Friedkin epic made a boatload of greenbacks upon its release in 1971. Critical and commercial success usually don't hurt a Best Picture candidate's chances at the Oscars but this film lived up to the hype. (Pauline Kael didn't like it, but she didn't like Bonnie and Clyde either, so go figure). Yeah, at least two other movies that year were in the same ballpark in terms of quality, Monte Hellman's Two-Lane Blacktop and Alan Pakula's Klute, but "Connection" gave new meaning to the term "riveting". Gene Hackman delivered a star-making, Oscar winning performance as "Popeye" Doyle, a vice cop obsessed nearly to the point of madness in his pursuit of a slimy drug kingpin. And of course, there is that damn car chase. CGI technology did not exist in any shape or form in 1970 when this film was shot in the bitter cold streets of New York City. Those were real cars driven by real people crashing into all that stuff, and very nearly running over other real people in the streets. As legend has it, director Friedkin went "renegade" and, ignoring all the rules of filmmaking protocol and common sense, simply went out into the streets and ordered stunt driver Bill Hickman to show him some "hairy" driving. Hickman responded in no uncertain terms, and cinematic history was made in spades.
The Godfather, Part Two (April 8, 1975)
The first installment of Francis Ford Coppola's epic mafia franchise is undoubtedly the most beloved of the series (hey, anything starring Marlon Brando can't be all bad), but I must admit that the more overtly complicated sequel to that film is my personal favorite. Al Pacino actually builds on the performance in the original film that made him a movie star, and shows us Michael Corleone's slow but sure descent from humanity into something akin to Night of the Living Dead. However, it may be Robert DeNiro filling in for Marlon Brando who leaves the strongest impression in this film. Remember, this is pre-Taxi Driver; DeNiro was far from a household name yet, and Coppola was taking nearly as big a chance on him in this movie as he was taking with casting Brando in the original film explicitly against the wishes of the suits at Paramount Pictures. DeNiro is then handed the nearly impossible task of crafting an original interpretation of the Godfather character that simultaneously evokes Brando AND makes the audience forget about Brando. That's a pretty tall order, folks; I imagine they'd have to cast Daniel Day-Lewis if this film were being made today. Reportedly, Paramount head Robert Evans had been such a pain in the ass on that first film that Coppola demanded Evans be barred from the set for its sequel. And he was.
American Beauty (March 26, 2000)
I was pretty blown away by this film at the time of its initial release. Kevin Spacey, riding the wave of well-received turns in films such as LA Confidential and The Usual Suspects, among others, earned a well-deserved Oscar for his performance as a burned out company hack suffering from mid-life crisis. Critical and commercial response to American Beauty was pretty strong when it first made the rounds of the multiplexes at home and abroad, but inexplicably, the movie has since found itself the victim of a certain backlash at the hands of a few mainstream critics. In 2005, some rag that nobody took seriously called Premiere named "Beauty" as one of the "20 most overrated movies of all time". Well, la-de-freakin'-da. Now I will allow that this film does bear some resemblance to a couple of older pictures, Save The Tiger and Ordinary People. Jack Lemmon won an Oscar playing a burned-out businessman in "Tiger" not that different from the character Spacey plays in "Beauty", and "People" concerns a troubled family on the brink of collapse. That would be a valid criticism, but only the most superficial viewing of American Beauty would lead one to conclude that the film is itself superficial. This movie does NOT celebrate the best humanity has to offer, it instead amplifies the WORST aspects of the human character. The rosy veneer the picture was adorned with was intended to make the content a little more palatable. Half-assed movie "critics" who subsequently claimed this film had all the depth of a Hallmark greeting card missed the point entirely.
The Departed (February 25, 2007)
Finally, the one that made it! I will never forget the day after that year's awards had been passed out, I came across an item in the entertainment section of one of the Chicago dailies, in which the writer (somebody you've never heard of) had the gall to opine, "THE DEPARTED? The guy who made Taxi Driver and Raging Bull won for THE DEPARTED? Really?". Well, uh...YEAH, dipshit. And he deserved it, too. Now we have previously discussed the fact that Raging Bull's Oscar "loss" should be considered one of the all-time greatest Academy Awards miscarriages of justice. Taxi Driver had no chance to win as it was one of three movies that were too busy getting ripped off by Rocky the year of their release. In fact, Scorsese could well have won for several other films over the course of his illustrious career. Goodfellas, Casino, The Aviator--all worthy of a Best Picture award. The Gangs of New York certainly had a shot, but it did not win and I'm glad it didn't. "Gangs" was an extremely flawed movie, and it would have been more of an embarrassment for Scorsese to have won for that one. The Last Waltz was easily deserving of an award for Best Documentary, but it didn't even get nominated, I don't think. At any rate, Martin Scorsese is one of the few directors still working in Hollywood today who can take what should have been a routine programmer action/cop flick, and elevate the thing to Oscar-worthy proportions. The Departed isn't really the standard shoot-'em-up it's disguised to look like; it's more a movie about duplicity. We could also get into metaphors about "redemption" and "sins of the father" and all that sort of thing, but that would be a bit much, even for this column.
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