Best Picture #5: Grand Hotel (1932)

Grand Hotel, while not particularly to my taste and displayed a certain distinctive ennui typical of the between-World-Wars period, was certainly superior to Cimarron. It's easy to see how it won the Oscar, because it showcases a star-studded cast that includes Greta Garbo, Joan Crawford, and brothers Lionel and John Barrymore (Drew Barrymore's great-uncle and grandfather, respectively). As a result, the acting is top-notch. The characters' nuances and foibles and their interactions are luckily the showpiece rather than the plot or setting.
Watched: April 12, 2017

Best Picture #4:Cimarron (1931)

Um, wow. So Cimarron was...interesting. In the "so...there's that" kind of way. Basically we're following around this smarmy asshole cowboy-type who thinks he's better than everyone else because he likes classic literature and the Bible, yet continually leaves his wife and kids for up to a decade at a time for...reasons. Basically he can't stand to put down roots and how dare anybody expect him to stick around, dammit, and because he's a handsome white man he can do exactly as he pleases. He's also a really great shot because how can you be a real man of the West without that skill? (There are several scenes of him doing things like shooting off people's ears, but the bullet never hits anything behind them. One would almost think the bullets were magic.) The focus of the movie is equally on his belabored wife who has to run the newspaper he starts and raise his kids while he's gallivanting all over Oklahoma. She of course as a faithful, loving wife falls immediately back into his arms with delight whenever he deigns to reappear and all of her accomplishments (she eventually gets herself elected to Congress--yes really) and her reservations about him are pushed aside in favor of his smarmy self-righteousness. The movie's narrative structure seems to indicate we're supposed to sympathize with these people, but by the end we really couldn't bring ourselves to care about either of them.
Modern-day audiences will obviously be offended by the racist stereotypes and jokes this movie proudly trots out--for example, our intrepid main character goes out of his way to point out a wagon of watermelons to the token black character, who is of course also mentally deficient so we don't feel too bad about laughing at him.::sigh:: Oh, 1930s humor. Making fun of two marginalized groups simultaneously. Ha ha.
I would imagine the movie gained its Best Picture largely on the first five minutes, which is a grand series of shots showing the rush to claim territory in Oklahoma, during which several cameramen and a bunch of extras were probably nearly run down Ben-Hur style. It is really impressive, but the movie after that just sort of wanders around following these people we don't really like. While nowhere near as bad as Broadway Melody, All Quiet and especially Wings are definitely still far superior.
Next up is Grand Hotel, which as I understand it is one of those movies where a whole bunch of unrelated people are shown to have interconnecting stories. (The genre to which Crash and Love Actually belong) Here's hoping it's better than this one, which overall was decidedly 'meh.
Watched: April 8, 2017

Oscar Nominees Best Picture 2019 Reaction

Of the Best Picture nominees, other than The Favourite and Roma I have actually at least heard of all of them. Good job to the Academy for not just picking tiny indie films no one outside of NYC and LA saw. Roma is actually a Netflix release, though it got a tiny theater release in order to be eligible for the Academy Awards.
I have seen Black Panther, BlacKkKlansman, and Bohemian Rhapsody, and all are deserving. I've heard good things about A Star is Born, Green Book and Vice, and The Favourite at least looks entertaining. Roma is a semi-biographical pic by director Alfonso Cuarón, who has had an...interesting career between directing one of the Harry Potter movies, Gravity and Children of Men.

I will be staging my own mini-Oscars in the weeks leading up to the awards night of the movies I've watched this year. I did this on facebook last year and folks seemed to like it, so I'll be expanding the audience this year.

Best Picture #3: All Quiet on the Western Front (1930)

All Quiet on the Western Front, while it had its interesting moments, was overall a little hard to follow, especially at the beginning. Everything that it portrays (war=hell, the bitter irony of war, an entire generation permanently emotionally scarred, the mass deaths, people at home having no way of understanding unless they were there, the romantic nationalistic jingoism that sent so many young dreamers to cruel, pointless deaths), Wings does better. So if you're looking for a WWI movie, Wings is still the more compelling choice in my opinion. Even if the extras sometimes don't quite know how to fake-die.
I don't need to say that All Quiet was far superior to Broadway Melody, however, in nearly every way it is possible to be. We weren't longing for it to be over in the first five minutes.
Next up is Cimarron, the first Western to win Best Picture. Westerns are not my thing and this one is kinda lengthy, so we'll see how well I manage.
Watched: March 5, 2017

Addendum, looking back from 2019: If you're interested in some of the early inspiration for what eventually became Poppies and Roses, be sure to check out both Wings and All Quiet. You'll recognize a lot of small details that (I hope) gave Poppies the right World War I "feel." The germs of the idea came from watching these two movies practically back-to-back.

Best Picture #2: The Broadway Melody of 1929

So Oscar Best Picture winner #2, Broadway Melody of 1929, was a complete bust. Let's just say it has not aged well. The plot was inane and the characters insufferable. I'm not sure whether this is an issue with voice recording equipment back then or whether that's how "talkie" performances were done in 1929, but all the voices were shrill, nasal whines and just a little too fast to be understood well, and unfortunately there was a lot of shouting. I'm surprised I didn't have a headache by the end. Probably didn't only because we stopped paying close attention about 1/4 of the way through.
This set the precedent of Movies About Show Business winning Best Picture--this was the very first of those. It was also one of the first movies to have a sequence in Technicolor, though that segment only exists in black and white now, and one of the first movie musicals. For technical achievement alone I see why it won the Oscar. It certainly wasn't because it was a compelling movie like Wings.
Watched: March 1, 2017

Best Picture #1 Review: Wings (1927)

Note that the first thirty Oscar Best Picture reviews or so are back-posts. Date originally watched will be noted at the bottom of the post.

I'm not sure what I was expecting from a silent movie made in 1927 (which is officially now the oldest movie I've ever watched, the previous was Disney's Snow White made in 1937), but it exceeded my expectations. It's worth a watch if you can get your hands on it; it was remastered in 2012 and given a DVD release. We got it out of the local public library. We were surprised at how engaged we were.
Watched: February 26, 2017