Our “Film Odyssey” closes with the 2001 Best Picture winner, the rare biopic with a massive plot twist stuck in the middle.
Category Archives: Best Picture Winners
MY FAIR LADY (1964)
Its reputation is as the most intellectual of musicals, lacking big musical production numbers in favor of lines like “The Rain in Spain is Mostly on the Plain.”
FROM HERE TO ETERNITY (1953)
A big romantic melodrama among army guys and ladies on Hawaii, with the impending doom of Pearl Harbor hanging over everything.
AN AMERICAN IN PARIS (1951)
A well-produced musical extravaganza starring Gene Kelly, with the music of George Gershwin, it still left me surprisingly cold.
CHARIOTS OF FIRE (1981)
Maybe the most British sports movie ever made, it uses track & field in the 1920s to deal with complicated issues of personal conviction, racism, and classism, and also some guys run on a beach.
DANCES WITH WOLVES (1990)
Probably the best known movie about Native Americans, directed by and starring a very laconic white guy who I’m not sure can actually act. But I think it mostly works?
PLATOON (1986)
A very violent, dark Vietnam movie written and directed by an actual Vietnam veteran, so I would say it’s high quality but your mileage may vary.
WEST SIDE STORY (1961)
About three-quarters of my favorite movie all-time, but not quite. Still sort of elemental to where musicals have gone since then.
UNFORGIVEN (1992)
This most revisionist of revisionist westerns brought Clint Eastwood to the highest tier of modern directors.
THE LAST EMPEROR (1987)
Our Forgotten Best Pictures Film Festival closes with an interesting epic about the final emperor of China, who lived a fascinating life despite lacking any personal agency whatsoever.
Movie Valhalla 