that you've seen. not "pretty good but not bp material," not even "ok,"...movies that you genuinely disliked.

o Tootsie - Columbia - Sydney Pollack and Dick Richards
o Field of Dreams - Universal - Lawrence Gordon, Charles Gordon
o The Sixth Sense - Hollywood Pictures - Frank Marshall, Kathleen Kennedy, Barry Mendel
* 2000 Gladiator - DreamWorks & Universal
* 2005 Crash - Lions Gate - Paul Haggis, Cathy Schulman
o Babel - Paramount Vantage - Alejandro González Iñárritu, Steve Golin, Jon Kilik
o The Reader - MGM, The Weinstein Company - Nominees to Be Determined

Crash

Does a C-grade equal dislike?

you know what's really odd. As movies have gotten better, in my estimation anyway, from the 80's to 90's to 00's, the Best Picture nominees have gotten progressively worse.

There's such a huge disconnect. You have truly amazing films like Before Sunset, Eternal Sunshine, Once, Children of Men, Kill Bill Volumes 1 and 2, and yet we get Best Picture nominees like Capote, Babel, Seabiscuit, The Reader, and Crash.

Odd.

I guess it depends. Dislike means dislike. For me, it's D grades. C is average.

2008 - Juno
2006 - Babel, Queen
2005 - Crash
2002 - Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers
1998 - La vita e bella

All of these were horrid. I haven't seen a lot of the older nominees. I suppose there are a lot of stinkers in the crop.

Juno
Crash
The Cider House Rules
Shine
Forrest Gump
Scent of a Woman
Awakenings
Ghost
Rain Man
Tootsie

thank you.

Babel
Benjamin Button

They're not bad movies, though. Undeserving, maybe. But not out-and-out bad.

How many films in just this decade were nominated based on a single performance

Juno
The Reader
The Queen
Capote
Ray
Lost in Translation
A Beautiful Mind
Erin Brockovich
Frost/Nixon

it's a bit insane.

Hmm...there a number of mediocre movies that have been nominated, but the Academy tends to not nominate flat-out bad movies as much as average ones that are so much weaker than the movies they ignore. Babel, which I give a C-/D+ to, is probably the lowest grade I've given a BP nom. But I liked it when I first saw it; it took a second viewing a year later to discover its really weak qualities.

Gladiator and Babel come to mind.

I haven't seen it but how in the world did The Towering Inferno get itself nominated? And Crossfire?

I'd take Lost in Translation, Juno and A Beautiful Mind off of there (but then wtf was A Beautiful Mind nominated for?)

I genuinely disliked Capote other than Philip Seymour Hoffman and Catherine Keener's performances. That's the only film I can think of from recent memory, though. I usually at least like/admire the Best Picture nominees on at least some level even if I'm not a huge fan (see: Frost/Nixon, The Queen, Finding Neverland, Gangs of New York).

Oh, just kidding, I thought The Thin Red Line was devastatingly dull. I guess that counts.

for the past four years, there has been one Oscar nominee that makes my worst 3 films of the year:

BP nominees I disliked from this decade:
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (C)
Michael Clayton (C-)
The Queen (C-)
Babel (C)
Brokeback Mountain (C)
Capote (C-)
A Beautiful Mind (D+)
Gosford Park (D)

I'm getting closer to putting ABM on my "bad" list. The more I think about Ron Howard turning schitzophrenia into "Adventures with my 3 imaginary friends" while vastly censoring the Nash story, the more angry I get. Crowe's brilliant performance aside.

Oh and the Thin Red Line is horrible

ABM was a baity biopic set in a AMPAS-friendly time period.

I don't think Juno or Lost in Translation would have been nominated without Murray or Page.

ABM was well done, I thought.

Maybe I was really taken by Crowe's performance (Denzel should've won in '00 instead of Crowe...and Crowe should've won in '01 instead of Denzel)...but I think schizophrenia is a rougher topic to portray...and for that movie to click worldwide, when it's really just about a loony mathematician? Even more impressive.

Not to mention, LOTR:FOTR couldn't win (imagine the backlash if The Two Towers was crap?), Moulin Rouge! was polarizing, and Gosford Park and In the Bedroom didn't deserve financing from the get-go.

Good point. Absolutely agree that movies have gotten better from the 80s to the 90s and then to the 00s yet some of the oscar choices have been baffling to say the least.

For example, imagine how great it would have been if the 2004 noms were;

Before Sunset
Sideways
Eternal Sunshine
The Aviator
Kill Bill Vol 2

Instead the Academy gave us;

Million Dollar Baby
Finding Neverland
Ray
The Aviator
Sideways



I guess its a product of the increasing influence of studio (yeah you Harvey) lobbying and campaigning.

^at first I thought you took out Sideways there. I was gonna cut you.