The Oscars everything. Sometimes, winning films are in fact the most productive films of their time; they rarely reflect a zeitgeist that becomes strange over the years; Sometimes they are simply absolutely inexplicable.
But let’s focus on the times when the Academy has awarded films that are pretty good, or at least reflect their era enough to be interesting. Here are some of the more sensible winners streaming lately on Netflix.
A new adaptation of Erich Maria Remarque’s 1929 pacifist novel, this new edition didn’t win Best Picture or Best Director like the original 1930 edition, but All Quiet ended up being the second most awarded film at the 2023 Oscars, Best Picture. Winner Everything Everywhere, All at Once. While it doesn’t have the strength of the previous adaptation, it’s still a tough film about the futility of war, set in the trenches of World War I.
Oscar for: Best International Film (Germany), Best Original Score (Volker Bertelmann), Best Production Design (Christian M. Goldbeck and Ernestine Hipper), Best Cinematography (James Friend)
Filmmaker Craig Foster spent a year building a relationship with a common wild octopus in a kelp forest in South Africa, transferring some of the lessons learned to his dates with his own son. If Foster could make a connection to such extraterrestrial intelligence, in In His Own Grassy (and Dangerous Grassy) Environment, is there hope for humanity?Maybe?
Academy Award for Best Documentary Film
One sweaty, blues-filled afternoon in the Chicago of 1927, the great Ma Rainey (Viola Davis) shows up at the studio to make a new album. She’s been contracted by white promoters, and she’s fully aware that their deference to her is entirely dependent on her bankability as a singer. Over the course of the session, tensions rise and conflicts erupt, particularly between Ma Rainey and Chadwick Boseman’s Levee Green. Davis earned a Best Actress nomination, and is so good that she’s practically channeling the take-no-shit blues legend, while Chadwick Boseman was seen as a near-lock for a posthumous Best Actor award. Unfortunately, the Academy’s notorious stinginess when it comes to Black acting seems to have won out (there’s been exactly one Black Actress winner in 95 years of awards, and only five acting winners).
Academy Awards for: Best Costume Design (Ann Roth), Best Makeup and Hair (Sergio Lopez-Rivera, Mia Neal and Jamika Wilson)
One of the Oscars’ favorite administrators (Paul Thomas Anderson) teamed up with one of his favorite actors (Daniel Day-Lewis) for this vintage drama set in 1950s London. Perhaps the only surprise is that it only won one award , was nominated for several. others, adding Best Picture.
Oscar for: Best Costume Design (Mark Bridges)
Though less talked-about than some of its 1970s contemporaries, The Deer Hunter remains a poignant look at the Vietnam War, with brilliant performances by Robert De Niro, Christopher Walken, and Meryl Streep. It also remains moot in its politics and sense of history, but even that proves to be a strength, reminiscent of a time when a blockbuster film could simply go to the hassle of pressuring the Yettons.
Academy Awards for: Best Picture, Best Director (Michael Cimino), Best Supporting Actor (Christopher Walken), Best Editing (Peter Zinner), Best Sound (Richard Portman, William McCaughey, Aaron Rochin and Darin Knight)
Like Brokeback Mountain, much of the press surrounding Jane Campion’s film has focused on its queer themes (gay cowboys? And then!?), but its strength lies in the planned staging and Campion’s leisurely pace (a rarity these days), and also in his cinematography. Benedict Cumberbatch plays one of two very different brothers, whose uneasy peace is shattered by the arrival of newcomers to their Montana ranch circa 1925.
Academy Award for Best Director (Jane Campion)
Denis Villeneuve (Prisoners, Sicario) has earned a reputation as one of our most thoughtful and trusted sci-fi directors with this slow-burning, first-contact story that combines cold intelligence with an emotional lead role from Amy Adams. 8 Oscar nominations, including Best Picture, there’s still one.
Academy Award for Best Sound Editing (Sylvain Bellemare)
BlacKkKlansman represented something of a comeback for Spike Lee, though it never went away: it’s by far his biggest publicity success in more than a decade. In tone, it has elements of satire while also being based on the true story of Ron Stallworth (played by John David Washington), a black police officer who infiltrates the KKK with the help of his Jewish colleague, Flip (Adam Driver). Opening precisely one year after the white supremacist Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, the moment did not go unnoticed by the public.
Oscar for: Best Adapted Screenplay (Charlie Wachtel & David Rabinowitz and Kevin Willmott & Spike Lee)
Was it the most productive film of 1999? Probably not, but in fact it’s the movie everyone was talking about. Kevin Spacey plays Lester Burnham, a guy trying to ruin his own life as part of a terrible midlife crisis.
Academy Awards for: Best Picture, Best Director (Sam Mendes), Best Actor (Kevin Spacey)
Sofia Coppola resolutely steps out of the shadow of her famous father with this melancholy comedy-drama. The film might have done better at the Oscars if it hadn’t had the misfortune of being released in the same years as The Return of the King. It’s a great counter-programming to this action success.
Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay (Sofia Coppola)
Aardman Animations, the Chicken Run/Wallace team
Academy Award for Best Animated Feature
The Academy electorate immediately identified Jaws as little more than a simple summer thrill, awarding it a Best Picture nomination, which it lost, along with three others, all of which it won. A user that the Academy has notoriously neglected? Steven Spielberg – apparently, It was made the film with the highest nomination and highest grossing. Two years later he was nominated for Close Encounters of the Third Kind, but had to wait until Schindler’s List to win a directing award.
Academy Awards for: Best Film Editing (Verna Fields), Best Original Dramatic Score (John Williams) and Best Sound (Robert Hoyt, Roger Heman, Earl Madery and John Carter)
Fast forward a bit in Steven Spielberg’s career, and we come to Saving Private Ryan. Though the film notoriously lost out in the Best Picture race to Shakespeare in Love (an upset that seems fair to me), the World War II drama still won five Oscars on the night of the Awards, which ain’t too shabby.
Academy Awards for: Best Director (Steven Spielberg), Best Sound Effects Editing (Gary Rydstrom and Richard Hymns), Best Sound (Gary Rydstrom, Gary Summers, Andy Nelson and Ron Judkins), Best Cinematography (Janusz Kamiński), Best Film Editing (Michael Kahn)
The short (around 25 minutes) film follows a group of women in the Indian village of Kathikera, about 50 miles from Delhi, who work to overcome centuries of shame associated with menstruation. Learning that sanitary pads can be made with local materials, local women start a factory to manufacture and sell their own pads, starting a quiet but needed revolution in menstrual health.
Oscar for: Best Documentary Short Subject
In the last year of World War II and the Holocaust, the Nazis in occupied Hungary accelerated their program of deportation and extermination, even at the cost of war strategy. This documentary follows five survivors—and naturalized American citizens—traveling back to the camps they narrowly escaped.
Academy Award for Best Documentary Film
If Jordan Peele’s first film had to lose the race for best film of the year, it’s no shame to lose it to Guillermo del Toro’s The Shape of Water. Still, Peele’s film is rarely simply a masterpiece of modern horror; It’s a film that says a lot of things that needed to be said and that we still communicate about. But Peele didn’t just direct the film, he wrote it, and that night he won an Oscar for his screenplay.
Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay (Jordan Peele)
We still make wonderful old epics (Ridley Scott’s The Last Duel, for example, or Ridley Scott’s Napoleon, or Ridley Scott’s Gladiator 2), but they don’t dominate the box office like they used to. Gladiator is Scott’s story about a high-ranking Roman worker forced into the gladiatorial arena after clashing with the new emperor, Commodus; The film is a box office champion and an awards-season favorite. It garnered a total of 12 Academy Award nominations, winning five of them.
Oscars for: Best Picture, Best Actor (Russell Crowe), Best Costume Design (Janty Yates), Best Sound (Bob Beemer, Scott Millan, and Ken Weston), and Best Visual Effects (Tim Burke, Neil Corbould, Rob Harvey, and John Nelson)
Another August Wilson play on that list (along with Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom), the Denzel Washington-directed adaptation uncovers Washington gambler Troy Maxson, a physical care clerk in the 1950s whose bitterness over his own missed opportunities threatens to tear his circle of family members apart. Viola Davis won a well-deserved Oscar for her portrayal of Rose, who wants to keep her family together, but who has also just been given it. Honestly, give him all the rewards for everything.
Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress (Viola Davis)
Aside from the troubled lead actor, director Luca Guadagnino’s coming-of-age story is a rather captivating and heartwarming story about first love in a sunny summer in northern Italy in the 80s. Timothée Chalamet’s functionality is clever and poignant.
Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay (James Ivory)
David Fincher’s film about screenwriter Herman J. Mankiewicz (Gary Oldman) and the progression of Citizen Kane is incredibly dramatic and, at times, even heartbreaking. It also did better at the Oscars than the film he dramatized: Kane earned nine nominations and one win, while Mank earned 10 nominations and won two.
Oscar for: Best Cinematography (Erik Messerschmidt), Best Production Design (Donald Graham Burt and Jan Pascale)
The film, very short (less than 15 minutes), with an undeniable animation style, manages to generate more excitement than many films with a duration several times longer. The film follows two parents, who mourn their daughter’s death in a school shooting, as they stand in place. separated afterwards.
Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film
Former child star turned dog owner.