Community Forums > Movies & TV

Khushrenada's Annual Oscar Thread. 2017 Edition.

(1/7) > >>

Khushrenada:
So, normally I'd have created this thread about a month ago when the Oscar nominations are released but at the time they came out, there were two movies I hadn't seen yet which were Hacksaw Ridge along with Hell and High Water. I was able to see those both by the end of the first week of February but then was involved in other forum stuff and put it off for awhile. Plus, I had the idea to look back at my past threads and revisit them to make a bigger event out of this all but that idea is a bit of a time sink and I just haven't been able to spare the time like I wanted.

With the Oscar's happening tomorrow/tonight, it's probably best I get this thread up and launched already. Should be interesting considering Plugabugz and Nickmitch have been posting some thoughts on some of these films in the Movie Review thread. In addition to the movies nominated, I'd like to talk about other films that have come out this year but that may be done a bit later after getting the Oscar business taken care of first.

In case you've forgotten or are reading this in the future and can't remember, these are the nominated films for the year:

Arrival
Fences
Hacksaw Ridge
Hell or High Water
Hidden Figures
La La Land
Lion
Manchester by the Sea
Moonlight

BlackNMild2k1:
I've only seen 1 of those movies - Arrival (kinda boring imo)
but I've heard that Fences, Hidden Figures, Moonlight and Lion all happen to be really good.
I image those are the 4 minority movies as well.

I hear La La land is probably not gonna be a movie I like, and I know nothing about the other 3, even though I did just get Hacksaw Ridge though Netflix this weekend, so I might check that out real soon.

Khushrenada:
First up, I want to say that despite hearing people say that 2016 was a good year for movies or that there were a lot of great gems released this year (often said with critics listing their top choices of the year), I have to disagree quite a bit with that statement. I've found 2016 to be a rather weak year for movies. At least, from what I've seen so far. There was nothing this year that really enraptured me like in years past with Room, Inside Out, Whiplash, Nightcrawler, or Gravity to name a few. A movie where you walked away after viewing it and knew you had seen something special that thrilled or moved me. I didn't really get that buzz or movie high from anything I've seen this year. To me, most movies this year either had some element holding them back or something was lacking. I even went through a period where I was very disinterested in anything being released or even wanting to go to the theatre which felt like an arduous task for awhile. That feeling went away somewhat with the better caliber of movies released in December for awards season but it's still left my take on the year as being a bit of a disappointment cinematically.

Now, it is my plan to elaborate more on these movies but for now I'm just going to give a quick rundown of how I'd rank the Best Picture nominees.

9 - Fences
8 - Moonlight
7 - Lion
6 - Manchester By The Sea
5 - Arrival
4 - Hacksaw Ridge
3 - Hell or High Water
2 - Hidden Figures
1 - La La Land

So, considering Nickmitch's recently posted opinions on Moonlight and La La Land, I sense there could be some disagreement between us on those films so I do want to elaborate more on my rankings here. However, I do want to make the disclaimer that although La La Land is my number 1 choice, it's kind of a default choice because it is a weak year and the competition is weak. There are some years where you've got a couple all-time classic movies nominated the same year like Pulp Fiction and The Shawshank Redemption losing to Forrest Gump or The Conversation and Chinatown losing to The Godfather Part 2. If one of those or some other famous runner-up was entered into this year's competition, it probably could've won this year. To me, this is a repeat of 2008 and its very weak line-up where Slumdog Millionaire was the big winner. It's how it goes. Some years you get a bunch of strong films released at the same time fighting it out and some years you get some weaker films fighting it out.

To be completely honest, I'm flexible on the 5 - 9 rankings. They could all tie for 9th for all I care. The only stuff I really liked was the top 4 I've got listed but I've still got some issues with them. Anyways, that's the quick intro I wanted to make on them. For now, I'm off to bed and I'll be back later to start getting into this with more detail.

Khushrenada:

--- Quote from: BlackNMild2k1 on February 26, 2017, 03:48:32 AM ---I've only seen 1 of those movies - Arrival (kinda boring imo)
but I've heard that Fences, Hidden Figures, Moonlight and Lion all happen to be really good.
I image those are the 4 minority movies as well.

--- End quote ---

Oh great! Now I hate minorities based on my rankings.  :-[ :'(

BlackNMild2k1:

--- Quote from: Khushrenada on February 26, 2017, 04:03:49 AM ---
--- Quote from: BlackNMild2k1 on February 26, 2017, 03:48:32 AM ---I've only seen 1 of those movies - Arrival (kinda boring imo)
but I've heard that Fences, Hidden Figures, Moonlight and Lion all happen to be really good.
I image those are the 4 minority movies as well.

--- End quote ---

Oh great! Now I hate minorities based on my rankings.  :-[ :'(

--- End quote ---

Well, not to make this a racial thing, but I also hear that La La Land is about a white guy who's trying to "save" Jazz. And there's nothing wrong with that, on the surface, but I haven't seen the film to judge it any deeper than the description that was given to me. But it's also a musical and outside of Disney animated movies, I don't really like musicals.

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[#] Next page