2009

The actual field: Slumdog Millionare, Milk, The Reader, The Curious Case of Benjiman Button, Frost/Nixon
The expanded field: The Dark Knight, Wall-E, Doubt, The Wrestler, The Visitor

This past year was the year that caused the change, and it seems fairly obvious, seeing as how two major crowdpleasing films–The Dark Knight and Wall-E–would both be added to the mix. While I feel The Dark Knight was the closest to being nominated (it was even on my prediction sheet), I feel Wall-E would have the best chance to do some damage in the category. First off, it would be very hard to explain leaving Wall-E off a list of the ten best pictures of 2008. Second, it’s populist message could have given voters an uplifting choice in the category outside of Slumdog and made the race really, really interesting. This is a year that needed eight or nine nominees.

Who’s still outside looking in: There’s no way Iron Man or Tropic Thunder was going to get nominated here. However, The Visitor could easily be replaced by Gran Torino. Or Rachel Getting Married. Or Revolutionary Road. There’s also the possibility that Man on Wire or Waltz With Bashier could have snuck in here as well. This was a year with a ton of real nomination possibilities.

2008

The actual field: No Country for Old Men, There Will Be Blood, Juno, Atonement, Michael Clayton
The expanded field: The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, Away From Her, Ratatouille, Eastern Promises, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford

If there was ever a year that five was just the right number of nominees, this would be the year. While Ratatouille was the best reviewed film of the year, and the absence of The Diving Bell and the Butterfly is curious at best, from the moment the nominees were announced it was clear that it was a two horse race between No Country for Old Men and There Will Be Blood.

Who’s still outside looking in: The big one is The Bourne Ultimatium. It was hard to exclude it, but it is hard to imagine an academy voter listing it as the number one film of the year. I’m Not There or Before the Devil Knows Your Dead could replace Eastern Promises and The Assassination of Jesse James. There is also a slim chance that enough voters could have come together to get Once a nomination, but it seems unlikely.

2007

The actual field: The Departed, Babel, The Queen, Little Miss Sunshine, Letters from Iwo Jima
The expanded field: United 93, Dreamgirls, Pan’s Labyrinth, The Lives of Others, Children of Men

Another year where no mainstream box office smash gets in with the expansion. United 93 and Pan’s Labyrinth were shoe-ins, and the rest of the field was pretty obvious. This is another year, like 2009, where around eight films might have made for a more interesting race. Honestly, had United 93 or Pan’s Labyrinth been nominated (and Academy voters made to watch them) they would have been favorites to upset The Departed.

Who’s still outside looking in: Borat, Little Children, Blood Diamond, The Last King of Scotland and Flags of Our Fathers.

2006

The actual field: Crash, Good Night and Good Luck, Capote, Brokeback Mountain, Munich
The expanded field: Syriana, A History of Violence, The Constant Gardener, The Squid and the Whale, Pride and Prejudice

While all ten films deserved to be in the running, this seems to be a year where the opposite of what the Academy would have intended by the new voting rules would have happened–five more art films with no chance of mainstream interest. Quite frankly, the nominations were more popular and talked about than the films left out.

Who’s still outside looking in: King Kong and Walk the Line. Two good films that I couldn’t see racking up the weighted votes needed to get in.

2005

The actual field: Million Dollar Baby, Ray, The Aviator, Finding Neverland, Sideways
The expanded field: Vera Drake, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Hotel Rwanda, Before Sunset, The Incredibles

I almost didn’t include The Incredibles, but I was certain someone would put it as the best picture of the year and almost everyone would include it in the top ten. Eternal Sunshine is a youth film, but not exactly mainstream. And, while two stricktly art-house films were added, it seems 2005 would be a good year for 10 nominees.

Who’s still outside looking in: Closer, Kinsey, Kill Bill Vol. 2, Spider-Man 2.

2004

The actual field: Lord of the Rings: Return of the King, Master and Commander, Lost in Translation, Mystic River, Seabiscuit
The expanded field: City of God, Finding Nemo, Cold Mountain, In America, American Splendor

Nemo and City of God are obvious inclusions, and the support for Cold Mountain and In America went wide. American Splendor would get in via it’s massive support among writers and the more quarky film crowd in the academy that became more powerful in the following years.

Who’s still outside looking in: Big Fish was a big hit with moviegoers, but not with critics and didn’t have much Oscar buzz at all. Pirates of the Caribbean never had a shot, though The Fog of War might have snuck in.

2003

The actual field: Chicago, The Hours, The Pianist, Gangs of New York, Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers
The expanded field: Talk to Her, y tu mama tambien, Far From Heaven, Adaptation, Spirited Away

In a year the Academy couldn’t find one good film to nominate isn’t helped much, at least as far as public interest goes, by adding another five. Adaptation is the most known on that list, and your average movie patron probably thinks of it of that movie where Nicolas Cage wears a fat-suit.

Who’s still outside looking in: Minority Report, About Schmidt, Bloody Sunday.

2002

The actual field: A Beautiful Mind, Godsford Park, Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, Moulin Rouge, In The Bedroom
The expanded field: Memento, Mulholland Drive, Amelile, Black Hawk Down, Ali

For a serious filmgoer, the addition of Lynch’s Mulholland, Scott’s Black Hawk Down and Nolan’s Memento would have been awesome, but the average Oscar-watcher would rather see Shrek in the mix.

Who’s still outside looking in: Shrek, A.I., The Royal Tenenbaums.

2001

The actual field: Gladiator, Traffic, Chocolat, Erin Brockovich, Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon
The expanded field: Billy Elliott, Almost Famous, Wonder Boys, You Can Count on Me, Chicken Run

A bizarre year where the five films left out are more memorable that those that were nominated. I almost forgot about Chicken Run, which would have been on nearly everyone’s top ten list from that year, and certainly at least one voters top pick (though probably an animator).

Who’s still outside looking in: Thirteen Days, Pollack, Requiem For A Dream, High Fidelity, O Brother, Where Art Thou?

2000

The actual field: American Beauty, The Insider, The Green Mile, The Sixth Sense, The Cider House Rules
The expanded field: Being John Malkovich, Magnolia, Boys Don’t Cry, Girl Interrupted, The Talented Mr. Ripley

Perhaps the only year where the award isn’t slightly cheapened by 10 nominees (though eight would still be more ideal). It still doesn’t provide much of a chance for non-art house films to join the nominees, instead piling up good but largely unseen films in the nominations.

Who’s still outside looking in: Toy Story 2 and Three Kings were the next two films on my list. Hell, 12 nominees wouldn’t have been bad in 1999.

In conclusion, outside of 2009, a couple of serious but not too serious action films and a small ton of nominations for Pixar, expanding the film, as far as I see it, would not add too many major films to the mix. There’s always the possibility of a major crowd pleaser coming along to throw a wrench in the gears, but don’t expect lighthearted summer fare like Star Trek or Iron Man to be mixing it up with the Art films anytime in the not-too-distant future. And no, L.A. Times, The Hangover will not be getting a best picture nomination.

United 93

Their list included The Bourne Ultimatum, and, while a good film, it was not United 93. First, United 93 used the same camera work that Ultimatum used, but in a confined space. Greengrass, throwing out everything in the book about how to adapt real life events for film. Rather than make a movie that, in the hands of any other filmmaker would have turned into cheap populism (don’t believe me? watch this movie and World Trade Center) and instead made a gritty, intense thriller. He did not invent the shaky-cam, or the docudrama style of filmmaking. Hell, he didn’t even bring it to the mainstream. Peter Berg did with Friday Night Lights. However, I suspect that in the future ‘true story’ films will aspire to me more like this film, and, as such, more like reality.

The Iron Giant

As tempting as it was to put a Pixar film in this list, as far as actual storytelling The Iron Giant is the only choice. While a flop at the box office, the film was enough to convince Pixar to hire Brad Bird and reminded us all that animated films could tell complex stories to children. Without The Iron Giant, we may have never got Finding Nemo or Wall-E. While these stories may not be as successful as a Toy Story or a Shrek at the box office, they will likely be classics long after the Ice Age movies are a distant memory.

The Blair Witch Project

It seems odd that /film missed this one, as they seemed to focus on the most superficial aspects of movie making. Their justification for including The 40 Year Old Virgin and Rushmore highlight this. However, you’d think they’d note the change in the way movies, and, well, damn near everything is marketed by The Blair Witch Project. First off, the film was a story told in a way that was not usually seen (as has been copied sense– including Quarantine and Cloverfield in 2008 alone), but it also marketed itself in a way that made it a surprise hit. It is, and probably will always be the most successful cost to profit movie of all time.

Boys Don’t Cry

Over the last ten years the portrayal of gays on screen has gone from a rare and somewhat controversial exploration to something of commonplace, and this movie has to be one of the major reasons for that. While gay characters have always existed in cinema (watch The Maltese Falcon again), they were rarely main characters and almost never treated with the depth given to Brandon in this movie. Unlike In and Out and the Birdcage, this film was no joking matter, and unlike Philadelphia it didn’t have a straight character to balance out the leads. Would serious introspective looks at the gay lifestyle like Capote, Milk, Kinsey or Brokeback Mountain exist without Boys Don’t Cry?

Man on the Moon

I would be a fool to suggest Man on the Moon is the first bio-pic ever produced, and therefor it’s hard to make an absolute case that it started a trend–that began shortly after it was released–of bio-pics. You could easily go with 1998’s Gods and Monsters, 1996’s The People vs. Larry Flynt or even 1994’s Ed Wood as movies that allowed serious filmmakers to use modern figures as biopics. However, I suggest that Man on the Moon showed a shift from telling the story of a persons life to recreating that person onscreen. Jim Carrey went to such great lengths to convince us he was Andy Kaufman, all but transforming himself in the process. Yes, I am suggesting that Jim Carrey (along with Russell Crowe in The Insider) paved the way for Jamie Foxx in Ray and Philip Seymour Hoffman in Capote.

X2: X-Men United

Sure, superhero movies have been around since the late 1970s, but the second X-Men movie was probably the first superhero movie that functions better as an actual story than as a device for action set-pieces. Unlike the first movie in the series, and all the other superhero movies before it, this movie sets out to explore what makes us heroes and what makes us villains. The good guys aren’t squeaky clean and the bad guy is sympathetic. The actions of everyone in the movie are fully explained and logical, which is hard enough to do when don’t have to deal with superpowers. But this movie is at it’s best–it’s absolute best–when it is not an action movie, but when it is exploring the characters, such as Wolverine’s quest to find out his past or Bobby the “Iceman” must explain he’s a mutant to his family–or Pyro’s choice to join Magneto. In the end the film is about choices, not about shit blowing up. Without X2, it seems unlikely that we would have Batman Begins or The Dark Knight, and Iron Man would probably have been a bit cheekier.

The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring

First off, the movie was a cultural movement back to geekdom. It is not the amazing look of the film, the return to epic film making or the revitalization of fantasy that brings this movie onto the list. Many of those have never left and some were in place before the first in the series was released. However, the first installment of the series makes the final cut for two reasons: The way it was shot and special effects. The trilogy was shot all at once, with a huge upfront investment. While not unheard of (Back to the Future II and III were shot at the same time, and Superman I and II were planned to be), it was the first film in several years to do so, a move that was eventually repeated by the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise, and soon the Harry Potter franchise as well. Finally, the film was the first to convincingly have a major character played by CGI, though he was hidden for most of this film. But the cinematic breakthrough that is most likely to be used again is the technology that was developed by WETA for the massive battle scenes, which simulated entire battles without specific actions needed to be programmed.

28 Days Later

It would have been easy to put Saw, for the influx of torture porn that has taken over theaters, or The Sixth Sense for the trend of twist endings we saw in the early 2000s, but neither of those will have a long term impact on film making. Partially because producers haven’t learned the lessons from Saw (that people actually do want something to think about in horror movies, sometimes) and have all but abandoned the twist ending (because you can see better ones every week on ‘24′ and ‘LOST’). 28 Days Later, with it’s dark tone and lack of hope has been something that has dominated movies since September 11th. While perhaps not the first example of this in a Post-9/11 world, it is the one I would site as starting the trend full-on.

Being John Malkovich

The /film article cited Rushmore as starting a wave of Wes Anderson like movies, but I haven’t seen any. I have, however, slowly seen a trend of Spike Jonze/Charlie Kaufman-esque movies coming along.The difference between Wes Anderson and Spike Jonze is mostly in style. Both are non-traditional storytellers who deal with bizarre and quirky characters. However, Anderson’s unique brand of storytelling is hard to imitate and perhaps impossible to get right. I’m not sure anyone fully understands an Anderson film except Anderson. While this is fun for some, I understand it can be a turn off. Jonze, meanwhile, focuses more on the Id than Anderson’s Ego focused movies. Jonze wants to explore what it is to be human, and combines that with stunning visuals. Also, Jonze was one of the first directors to make the leap from music videos to motion pictures, a trend which has only increased following his success.

Forgetting Sarah Marshall

This is a personal one for me, and I figured there was no better way to close the list. No, it’s not on here for reintroducing the penis as a punchline. There have been plenty of other movies to do that of late. Sarah Marshall in on here for one reason and one reason alone: It saved the Muppets. Among comedy film makers today, I doubt many, if any, can honestly say that the Muppets had nothing to do with their path to Hollywood. Before this movie was made, the Muppets were close to death. The last three movies had been awful, and more importantly lacking the magic that the original movies had. Thanks to Forgetting Sarah Marshall’s puppet subplot, and a chance meeting with the heads of Jim Henson’s Workshop, talented people (Jason Segal and Nick Stoller) are behind the Muppets once again. If anyone can save the series, it’s them.

Coming up with recent movies that have had major influence is not an easy task, so maybe we should cut /film a little slack. As you’ll note, more than half the films listed came out in or around 1999. I think that a little more time making a case for some of the films might have helped. Hopefully this was a worthwhile compliment and a decent second take at the topic.

So, what did I miss? What did /film get right? Will Jason Segal and Nick Stoller save the Muppets? Sound off below.

BEST PICTURE
-Slumdog Millionaire
-Frost/Nixon
-The Dark Knight
-Milk
-The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

BEST ACTOR
-Mickey Rourke (The Wrestler)
-Frank Langella (Frost/Nixon)
-Clint Eastwood (Gran Torino)
-Sean Penn (Milk)
-Richard Jenkins (The Visitor)

BEST ACTRESS
-Kate Winslet (Revolutionary Road)
-Meryl Streep (Doubt)
-Sally Hawkings (Happy-Go-Lucky)
-Anne Hathaway (Rachel Getting Married)
-Angelina Jolie (Changling)

BEST DIRECTOR
-Danny Boyle (Slumdog Millionaire)
-David Fincher (The Curious Case of Benjamin Button)
-Christopher Nolan (The Dark Knight)
-Gus Van Sant (Milk)
-Ron Howard (Frost/Nixon)

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR
-Heath Ledger (The Dark Knight)
-Philip Seymour Hoffman (Doubt)
-Josh Brolin (Milk)
-Robert Downey Jr. (Tropic Thunder)
-Michael Shannon (Revolutionary Road)

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS
-Penélope Cruz (Vicky Cristina Barcelona)
-Viola Davis (Doubt)
-Kate Winslet (The Reader)
-Amy Adams (Doubt)
-Marisa Tomei (The Wrestler)

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY
-Vicky Cristina Barcelona
-Happy-Go-Lucky
-Wall-E
-Rachel Getting Married
-Milk

BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY
-Slumdog Millionaire
-Frost/Nixon
-Doubt
-The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
-The Dark Knight

BEST SCORE
-WALL-E
-The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
-Defiance
-Slumdog Millionaire
-Revolutionary Road

BEST ANIMATED FILM
-Wall-E
-Kung Fu Panda
-Horton Hears a Who!