Welcome back to the Best Picture Expansion Project, where we imagine that the new Academy rule for Best Picture Oscar nominees, which increases the field from five films to ten, was in effect between 1943 and 2008.
Yesterday, we imagined the five extra nominees for 2008, and today we’re looking at 1995, which has one of the weirdest Best Picture slates in recent memory.
Before we begin—and per Ferretrick’s excellent suggestion—you may want to check out this list of Oscar-eligible films that were released way back in 1995.
My suggested nominees are after the jump, and I want to know yours. How many of us will support Canadian Bacon?
Actual Best Picture Nominees
Apollo 13
Babe
Braveheart (winner)
Il Postino
Sense and Sensibility
In Retrospect: Yikes. I went to see Apollo 13 at a theater in Martin, Tennessee (what’s up, Governor’s School for the Humanities!), and at the time, I remember liking it. But that was mostly because I was 16 and on a field trip. A recent viewing revealed that this film is a brick of hard cheese… which is what we should expect from Ron Howard and Tom Hanks, even when they don’t have a church-baiting mystery up their sleeves.
Also… Braveheart? Really? With the proto-Passion of the Christ violence porn?
Those two aside, the other nominees are solid (Il Postino, Babe) or even great (Sense and Sensibility), but if you look at the acting, directing, and writing nominees, you’ll notice how many worthy films got overlooked in the big category.
The Expansion Pack
6. The Usual Suspects
It won Best Supporting Actor and Best Original Screenplay, and it’s just as engrossing today as it was during Clinton’s first term. In fact, I’d say it’s one of the best films of the nineties.
7. Dead Man Walking
Fourteen years later, and I’m still gobsmacked. How how how did Braveheart win Best Picture, while this heartbreaking, inspiring, and politically balanced look at a man’s last days on death row didn’t even get a nomination? Susan Sarandon won a much-deserved Oscar as Helen Prejean, a nun who fights to save convicted killer Matthew Poncelet (Sean Penn, in a career-changing performance), and the image of her tired-yet-steely face staring through the glass in a prison visiting room remains vivid in my mind.
8. Clueless
Don’t get it twisted, y’all. Comedy this good is very hard to pull off. In a world with ten Best Picture nominations, can’t we give one to a movie this tasty? Can’t Oscar roll with the homies?
9. Richard III
By rights, this movie should have made Ian McKellan a star (though Gods and Monsters is a respectable breakthrough film.) Shakespeare’s verse gets honored by brilliant performances from McKellan, Annette Bening, Kristin Scott Thomas, Maggie Smith, and Robert Downey, Jr., and the play’s desperate malice seeps into everything from the frantic cinematography to the menacing WWII-era costumes. If you’ve ever wondered why this play once reportedly caused a woman to spontaneously abort her baby, then check out this movie and imagine it’s happening fifteen feet in front of you.
10. The American President
Look… yes. It’s a glossy Aaron Sorkin movie that predicts The West Wing while simultaneously ringing every bell in the rom-com churchyard. But when a feel-good movie is this snappy, it actually makes me feel good. That deserves recognition. (You’ll notice that this is the second movie on my list that features Annette Bening. I don’t think I’ve ever talked about this here, but I love her and want her to be my fictional aunt who takes me all over the world in a vintage car and sometimes lets me steer while she adjusts her headscarf.)
The Snubs
Still no Leaving Las Vegas. Or at least not for me. I can only take so many dark and depressing films on a single list of nominees, which is also why I’ve left Se7en and Twelve Monkeys out in the cold. Of the three, Twelve Monkeys is number 11 for the year.
9 responses so far ↓
1 katy // Jun 30, 2009 at 8:04 am
I will never understand why you still hear people ranting about the 1994 best picture race, which for some reason really pushes a button with people … and yet this egregiously awful 1995 race almost never comes up. What a terrible lineup.
Totally agree: Usual Suspects should have been nominated, and should have won. I don’t remember being mad about this at the time, but I think that just speaks to how different the Oscar race was back then.
I was in college and following all these films really closely — in fact, I saw EVERY FILM YOU MENTIONED, which never, ever happens any more — and I remember just gamely pulling for Babe. No righteous indignation about the Usual Suspects snub at all.
But hey, what about Toy Story? Shouldn’t that be on the list? Was it eligible? It seems like the Best Picture Expansion Project really means nine slots every year a Pixar film came out …
2 katy // Jun 30, 2009 at 8:09 am
Actually, though, re-reading it, I would have been okay with Dead Man Walking winning it, too. That film holds up. I wonder what Oscar voter politics led to that film being excluded?
3 Roommate Joe // Jun 30, 2009 at 8:42 am
Katy, I totally agree with you that 1994 was a strong Best Picture slate. Sure, “Gump” won, but the other four — that’d be “Pulp Fiction,” “Shawshank,” “Four Weddings and a Funeral” and “Quiz Show” — are movies that I loved and still love today. It certainly holds up.
Mark, I really like your additions — know that “Clueless” JUST misses my cut (and, like you, “12 Monkeys” sits as my #11). I will say I don’t think the fact that “The American President” presages “The West Wing” is a mark against it. Much as I grew weary of Sorkin, that show holds up.
As for my “expansion pack,” I’ll throw in:
“The Usual Suspects”
“Dead Man Walking”
“Before Sunrise”
(my Top 3 of the whole year)
then for the last two, I’ll add the incredibly enduring “Seven” and the perpetually underrated “Dolores Clairborne.”
4 InfoMofo // Jun 30, 2009 at 10:18 am
THE AMERICAN PRESIDENT is like my fave movie ever!
Like it is the movie that when it comes on TBS, I will stop, mid-chew, and watch the rest of the movie, commercials and all, until that very last cheesy Dupont Circle line that I don’t understand because I don’t live in DC and I don’t drive, but it still gets me every time. Let’s face it, it’s basically liberal porn, but it is amazing!
5 ferretrick // Jun 30, 2009 at 9:34 pm
I agree with Clueless and Usual Suspects. Although in the case of the latter, I’m not sure if the film gets credit for overcoming the limited acting range of Stephen Baldwin and Kevin Spacey, or needs to apologize for temporarily convincing us they were top thespians.
Dolores Claiborne, quite possibly. Good storyline, marvelous performances by Kathy Bates, Judy Parfitt, and the always underappreciated David Strathairn. Certainly in the top five King adaptations.
Toy Story, most definitely. Not only a classic in its own right, but launched a whole sub genre of kids movies, and Pixar is still churning out great films almost 15 years later. Animation, story, script, voice acting, etc. were all superb.
Seven-the head in the box has become a classic moment of cinema; it deserves a spot. And, while it is certainly gruesome, it avoids the violence porn criticism lobbied at Braveheart; actually, a remarkable portion of the violence in Seven takes place off screen. Still, it also has to apologize for making us think Kevin Spacey is a better actor than he actually is.
6 Maggie // Jul 1, 2009 at 1:32 am
I absolutely agree with Dead Man Walking. I have seen that movie several times, and I walk away each time with a slightly different perspective. It’s so well made, and I never felt preached to. That’s hard to do, and is rarely even attempted anymore.
7 Darryl // Jul 13, 2009 at 5:03 pm
Nice to know that I’m not the only person to have seen and loved this adaptation of Richard III. One of filmdom’s most shocking moments when poor Downey Jr. gets offed. The image was stuck in my mind for weeks. Brrrr!
8 Dudley Sharp // Jul 24, 2009 at 2:28 pm
I liked DMW, too.
Some context and perspective.
Sister Helen Prejean & the death penalty: A Critical Review
Dudley Sharp, contact info below
” . . .makes you realize the Dead Man Walking truly belongs on the shelf in the library in the Fiction category.” “Being devout Catholics, ‘the norm’ would be to look to the church for support and healing. Again, this need for spiritual stability was stolen by Sister Prejean.” Victim Survivors, Dead Family Walking
From: I. Dead Family Walking: The Bourque Family Story of Dead Man Walking , by D. D. deVinci, Goldlamp Publishing, 2006
“On November 5, 1977, the Bourque’s teenage daughter, Loretta, was found murdered in a trash pile near the city of New Iberia, Louisiana lying side by side near her boyfriend–with three well-placed bullet holes behind each head. ”
http://www.deadfamilywalking.com/ contact: T.J. Edler, 337-967-0840
Sister Helen Prejean “Dead Man Walking” & the death penalty: A Review
Dudley Sharp, Justice Matters, contact info below
II. The Victims of Dead Man Walking
by Michael L. Varnado, Daniel P. Smith
comment — A very different story than that written by Sister Helen Prejean. Detective Varnado was the investigating officer in the murder of Faith Hathaway. 2003
III. Death Of Truth: Sister Prejean’s book The Death Of Innocents: An Eyewitness Account of Wrongful Executions.
Four articles
(a) “FOR GOOD REASON, JOE O’DELL IS ON DEATH ROW”
scholar(DOT)lib.vt.edu/VA-news/VA-Pilot/issues/1995/vp950728/07210224.htm
quote: “The DNA report commissioned by O’Dell and his lawyers actually corroborates O’Dell’s guilt. There is a three-probe DNA match indicating that the bloodstains on O’Dell’s clothing is indeed consistent with the victim Helen Schartner’s DNA as well as her blood type and enzyme factors.” “There is certainly no truth to O’Dell’s accusation that evidence was suppressed or witnesses intimidated by the prosecution.”
(b) “Sabine district attorney disputes author’s claims in book”
www(DOT)shreveporttimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050124/NEWS01/501240328/1060
quote: “I don’t know whether she is deliberately trying to mislead the public or if she’s being mislead by others. But she’s wrong,”
District Atty. Burkett, dburkett(AT)cp-tel.net
(c) Book Review: “Sister Prejean’s Lack of Credibility: Review of “The Death of Innocents”, by Thomas M. McKenna (New Oxford Review, 12/05). http://www.newoxfordreview.org/reviews.jsp?did=1205-mckenna
“The book is moreover riddled with factual errors and misrepresentations.”
“Williams had confessed to repeatedly stabbing his victim, Sonya Knippers.”
“This DNA test was performed by an independent lab in Dallas, which concluded that there was a one in nearly four billion chance that the blood could have been someone’s other than Williams’s.”
SNIP the rest at
Sister Helen Prejean & the death penalty: A Critical Review
http://homicidesurvivors.com/2009/05/04/sister-helen-prejean–the-death-penalty-a-critical-review.aspx
9 Volvagia // Apr 16, 2010 at 2:13 pm
(Scottish Accent) Where in the haggis is Heat?
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