Best Picture Oscar 2019
 

Here are the eight nominees for the Academy's top prize for feature films released in 2018...


Black Panther
BlacKkKlansman
Bohemian Rhapsody
The Favourite
Green Book
Roma
A Star is Born
Vice

Re: Best Picture Oscar 2019
 

It's between Green Book and Roma. But don't count out A Star is Born which may surprise.

Re: Best Picture Oscar 2019
 

ROMA easily.

One of the best films of the decade.

@Holden Pike for this year, how about you post polls for all the technical and special effects awards too, including the Documentary categories too.

Roma will win Foreign Language for sure. It can make history and win Best Picture too. It's making history anyways being the first Netflix film to get all these award nominations.

And it only cost Netflix about $40m

Also, if Roma wins best picture - how can it NOT win best film in a language other than English?

Surely it wins it by default?

Re: Best Picture Oscar 2019
 

You can't really predict these Best Picture nominations anymore. Too tricky to figure out. So with only seeing 5/8 I predict Green Book. That's not my preferred winner though.

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Green Book's definitely the frontrunner since it won the PGA award. Not seen it but it looks quite mediocre.

It was really good, but not Best Picture worthy to be honest.

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Oh I get it. They're just gonna have a Comic movie in for Best picture every year now. I guess that's progress. Kinda.



I haven't seen a bunch of these. Do the two musicals maybe cancel each other out? Which 2 or 3 do I really need to watch if I don't have time to see them all?

Well it's about 15 years too late (Road to Perdition..sniff so good)

Best Picture is always last, so we'll know best foreign film first. And best foreign usually doesn't even get on the nominations list

Re: Best Picture Oscar 2019
 

Why is Vice on there? I'm not seeing that. I hope that's not one of the front runners. It probably is...

I think Star Is Born will ill win although I prefer Blackklansman slightly, both made my too ten. Only one I haven't seen is The Favourite, which I am expecting to love.

Re: Best Picture Oscar 2019
 

Roma's pretty much guaranteed to win Foreign Language film so it probably won't win Best Picture. Same thing happened with Amour in 2012.

It has been ten years since The Dark Knight was "snubbed" (for those who believe it was), and in all the billions of dollars the seemingly endless stream of super hero movies have made since then Black Panther is the first to finally crack through and get a Best Picture nomination.

I would absolutely not expect this to be a regular thing. At all. Any more than Lord of the Rings not only getting nominations but also a Best Picture win made it any more a regular a thing for fantasy epics to be nominated. Since Return of the King there have been zero nominations for the subgenre (while HBO's "Game of Thrones" has taken up the mantle for fantasy in media).

But Black Panther's nomination is a much better outcome than a new "Most Popular Movie" category, which the Academy wisely torpedoed soon after announcing the concept. Oy.


I would say Roma, A Star is Born, and Green Book, with maybe an extreme longshot chance of The Favourite as Best Picture. Don't really see the other four as having much of a realistic shot, and I would say Star is Born and Green Book both have legitimate shots even without their directors being nominated. Definitely see Roma, which of course is available on Netflix.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6BS27ngZtxg

Re: Best Picture Oscar 2019
 

I have only seen a small portion of these so far...need to get watching!

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I've changed my mind. I think A STAR IS BORN will win Best Picture. Bradley getting snubbed for Best Director and being a long shot in the Best Actor contest is an indication that the Academy will make it up to him by awarding his movie the top prize. I mean...he deserves top recognition for carrying the film (producing, directing, writing, acting, and singing on its damn soundtrack, too!).

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Out of what I've seen A Star is Born. Slightly preferred The Favourite but I'm not sure I can see it winning many never mind best picture.

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How do they decide whether to do eight nominees or nine? Flip a coin?

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Pretty sure its something to do with the percentage of votes a film gets.

Re: Best Picture Oscar 2019
 

A Star is Born won't win because that is my favorite so far. And my favorite never wins these damn things.

Each film has to hit a specific number on the ballots, but they need to have a minimum of 10% of said ballots

Re: Best Picture Oscar 2019
 

Good to know.

Re: Best Picture Oscar 2019
 

It’s been coming up short on a lot of awards.

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I’ve only seen two!!!! Eeeek.

Both of them have Black in the title.

Re: Best Picture Oscar 2019
 

Why would Black Panther be there and not Infinity War? Black Panther was a dull affair, maybe 7/10 at best but Infinity War has received universal praise and is the culmination of 10 years of generally good work.

Re: Best Picture Oscar 2019
 

Because Black Panther is more Deep and Meaningful than the average superhero spectacle (at the very least, on a level the Academy respects) and can also be appreciated as a more or less stand-alone film compared to the glorified mid-season finale that is Infinity War.

Re: Best Picture Oscar 2019
 

Oh my god, is that the list?

:eek:

Quite a sad list isn't it.

Yeah, 5 of them have no business on a Best Picture list. In my opinion. :lol:

It's just another example of disparity between audience and critical opinion.

Black Panther was a dull predictable affair that looked like it had almost entirely been filmed on green screen.

According to Metacritic 40% of the audience gave BP mixed or negative reviews, scoring 6.6 overall yet 100% of the critics gave positive reviews. I mean what's going on here?

Meanwhile Infinty War gets 35% of critics giving it mixed and poor reviews, yet 90% of the public give it positive reviews, scoring 8.6 and returning +$2 billion.

It looks like yet again we have critics terrified to criticise something that might inflame the left, or result in them being labelled and their career suffering so they just bail out and take the safe road.

100% spot on ^

So is Bohemian Rhapsody.

And Infinity War is different...how exactly? Because all the characters are there and it ends on a big cliffhanger (which people criticised anyway because of how predictably it'll be resolved in the next film)? It's one thing to criticise Black Panther (and there are legitimate criticisms to be made), but if the issue is questioning its worth as an Oscar nominee (especially the first ever superhero movie to be nominated for Best Picture) then it has a better claim than Infinity War for reasons I outlined in my last post.

It's as if trying to determine a given film's worth by focusing on website percentages is missing the bigger picture.

So much for your earlier claim of "universal praise", then.

Or maybe they did just like it.

Re: Best Picture Oscar 2019
 

Green Book.

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I honestly surprised by the amount of praise Green Book is getting. It looks so boringly generic and preachy to me. Can someone convince me I'm missing out on something?

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Neither Black Panther or Infinity War belong on the list, as far as I am concerned.

Re: Best Picture Oscar 2019
 

Infinity War is miles better than Black Panther

And neither of them were as good as Logan or GOTG....but anyways.


I'm glad Marvel finally got a BP nomination as they've basically subsidized the film industry for the last 20 years.


I just it wasn't with a film where the main character ended up "fighting himself" in a cheap CGI battle.

It's almost as if these things are subjective and not objective. I have an idea. They should have 100's of people who work in the industry vote on the awards so something close to consensus reflects in the outcome.

That's what I thought. Geez the Oscars remind me of Sears or Kmart stores...out of date and a thing of the past.

Re: Best Picture Oscar 2019
 

Black Panther is good, but the basic story beats are pretty darn formulaic. Infinity War is a lot gutsier, and the fact that it isn't standalone is exactly what allows it to do something potentially surprising and daring. It's also operating on a much higher degree of difficulty given all the characters it has to service. It's definitely the better film.

Neither is deserving of a Best Picture nod, however, and I don't think it should be too controversial to say that Black Panther's nod is significantly influenced by its cultural impact. Not that that's anything new.

True but they also did a massive purge of the voter rolls taking out the elderly voters and replacing them with minorities.


I don't want to see the Awards devolve into quota pandering every year a Gay film, a Womans film, a Black Film, a Mexican film.

I didn't know that:( Sounds like who ever removed elderly voters had a case of elderphobia.

Re: Best Picture Oscar 2019
 

Loved The Favourite and Roma, so I hope one of those two win. Didn't dislike A Star Is Born either.

Not sure what an averagely rated superhero film is doing here, though. Seems like identity politics is once again corrupting the appreciation of art.

Not sure how Green Book fits into this line of thinking since critic consensus seems to be that it is reductive in its views on race. Also, Cuaron isn't a stranger here, so it doesn't seem like a quota nom. I would think The Favourite being nominated would thrill the cinephile world. Autuer film that isn't a crowd pleaser.

Even if the academy was filling the quotas you laid out it still has six other choices for the "truly" best movies.

Not saying academy voters are totally discounting their worldview when voting but I don't believe any of us truly do. Plus I get tired of people thinking their is this mass conspiracy every year when the sheer number of voters makes that impossible.

Yeah they've had issues with nationalism and regionalism before but the fear is the awards become more about tribalism.


East Coast artists had a notorious problem getting Award consideration to the Los Angeles circle.

Re: Best Picture Oscar 2019
 

All these comments are amusing since if you look back at similar threads from every year, they're all there with substituted titles.

Basically this, its very unfair though that the 3rd (Ant Man and wasp better received than BP amongst audiences) most well received Marvel movie of the year is sitting there with a best picture nod.


BEST picture should be exactly that, no extra points for any cultural or left leaning subject matter.

4 out of the last 5 director winners have been Latin...that's a little worrisome.

Originally Posted by seanc (Post 1984769)

Even if the academy was filling the quotas you laid out it still has six other choices for the "truly" best movies.

But you also have regional voting, a UK voting block an Australian, a European group.

I don't think it's conspiracy I thinks it's sociological issue

And the other thing you have too worry about is the money.

Black Panther - Disney
Black Klansman - Blumhouse
Bohemian Rhapsody -20 Century Fox
Favourite - Fox Searchlight
Green Book - Dreamworks/Universal
Roma - Netflix
A Star is Born - Warner Brothers
Vice - Annapurna

Re: Best Picture Oscar 2019
 

The director thing doesn't worry me, because the Mexican film industry has been up-and-coming for awhile, so you'd expect that after a decade or two there'd be a natural influx of really talented directors.

Not saying people aren't letting cultural influences in, but I think if you looked at the increase in young Latin directors a decade ago, "I'll bet we're going to start seeing a lot more nominations/wins for Latin directors" would've been a totally reasonable thing to conclude.

Re: Best Picture Oscar 2019
 

Like I said before, do you really want to keep putting your trust in these online aggregate numbers? The numbers on Black Panther alone are kinda useless because it was getting downvoted on IMDb from day one so now I have trouble trusting any kind of audience rating regardless of how many sincere downvotes there may be.

Also it's the Oscars, giving awards to "left-leaning subject matter" is kind of their deal.

Re: Best Picture Oscar 2019
 

Yeah, audience ratings are useless any time a film becomes a lightning rod, particularly for preexisting political issues. Which is usually the only time you'd really need to cite them as proof of anything, anyway.

Anyway, as Iro says, the Oscars has basically always done this. Doesn't mean it's good, or that it doesn't undermine the very idea of giving out awards (which should, ideally, work as much like professional criticism as possible). But it's not new. Whether or not it's becoming more pronounced is a reasonable question, though.

As a white, right leaning male who is getting more than a little tired of PC culture, allow me to say...Yikes!

Re: Best Picture Oscar 2019
 

If you don't like quotas, which I don't, I'm not sure the answer is just applying them in reverse. Judging the winners individually, they seem like a pretty talented, deserving bunch: Chazelle, del Toro, Cuarón, and Iñárritu are all really exceptional filmmakers. Or, at least, not such an obvious stretch that we need to assume they unfairly benefited from a political agenda.

I don't want to see any treads of any sub-sect.


When it started it was Ford vs Capra and we lost out on Wellles for Citizen Kane


We had the Director/Actor run in the 80's/90's where ET lost to Gandhi and Dances with Wolves beat Goodfellas.

Definitely not saying we shouldn't root for the films we love, I do. Oscars remind me a lot of post season sports around. Fun to kick around and gives you a good glimpse of what the season was like. Ultimately they don't mean a whole lot to us mere mortals.

But we did see more than a trend of THE sect. Isn't that kind of how all this talk started?

Even a perfectly fair, even-handed vote will produce trends. If there's a new influx from a country with a burgeoning film industry, it'll naturally bring new artistic sensibilities that will be interesting and fresh. So I'd say trends are normal, and that we'd actually have to engage in quotas in reverse ("oh no, we've had too many X winners!") to try to avoid its natural occurrence.

It's kinda like that thing where truly random numbers bunch together, whereas someone trying to appear random is more likely to space things out equidistantly. The problem, I'd think, is in entertaining these things as valid criteria at all.

"We've had too many Latin winners lately" is pretty much the exact same logic as "we haven't had enough Latin winners lately," unless it's accompanied by a compelling argument that they've been chosen for the wrong reasons.

Re: Best Picture Oscar 2019
 

BlacKkKlansman looks the best to me. I am actually genuinely excited to watch it and that's rare for a new film.

Re: Best Picture Oscar 2019
 

@Holden Pike Hey bucko... don't think I didn't notice you put snubbed in quotations there, pal. You know it was snubbed as do I. :yup:


I totally forgot about that popular movie category. That's what they're doing now. That's why there's some wackier choices from year to year now too. Weren't they also trying to have an animated film on the Best Picture list every year there for a minute as well? Been too busy the last few years and I've really lost touch I reckon. Thanks for the refresher.

Not making a point but just saying the three Latin directors who won the last 4/5 Best Director Oscars happen to be the Three Amigos! Del Toro, Cauron and Inarritu are super close friends and a trio basically.

That has nothing to do with anything except that directors being buddies is the coolest thing ever. :cool:

It's really not, because Cuaron, Inarritu and del Toro truly are some of the most talented (mainstream) directors who are working today. It's obviously not identity politics. They just happen to be making some of the greatest films during the last couple of years. That's not worrisome at all. It's great!

Black Panther's nomination is much more worrisome, because it's obviously just based on identity politics. Practically all the positive reviews of it talk exclusively about its importance as the first black mainstream big budget film. That's why people in the Hollywood environment feel obligated to honor the film, even though there are probably a ton of much better films (even in its own, for some reason, massively popular superhero genre) that don't get this kind of honor, simply because they're not seen as "culturally important". They're judging based on politics instead of the quality of the art, and that's what's really problematic. This is not the case with our three great Mexican directors getting honored.

Re: Best Picture Oscar 2019
 

I'm slightly surprised that Bohemian Rhapsody is on this list. It's a good lead performance in a moderately entertaining, sometimes amusing but not terribly inspiring film. The concert scene is very good, but not enough to make up for the clichés, poor writing and general middle of the road biopic nature of the film as a whole. I can't believe this and Black Panther really represent the best of filmmaking in 2018.

Re: Best Picture Oscar 2019
 

Is it just me, or are this year's nominations particularly more terrible than the usual. Oh well.

It certainly seems that way.

Maybe there just weren't any better films...

First Reformed, Eighth Grade and Annihilation were all good films that got snubbed pretty hard.

I'd say each year is equally filled with as many greats as the next one. I've always known that the Oscars don't even try to look for the "best" films of the year, but on this occasion, it feels more blatant than ever.

Lanthimos gets a nom, never thought I would see that day. Lee gets one, definitely more popular with cinephiles than the average movie goer. A arthouse black and white foreign language film gets a nom. I don't love everything here but definitely surprised at how everyone is reacting.

Re: Best Picture Oscar 2019
 

The only three worth mentioning , if you ask me.

And my mom was thrilled about Green Book and Star Is Born. Box Office tells me there will be more than a few happy Marvel fans that one of their films broke throigh.

I sound like a broken record, these aren't my eighf favorite films, but the goal of the academy has been to get more diverse and this is maybe the broadest selection of films I have seen. Feels like there is a range here.

Re: Best Picture Oscar 2019
 

I'm waiting for the moment where they announce Black Panther as the winner and all of our jaws drop. There's a reason the Academy decided to add a new category this year for most popular film, and then decided to go away with it. Maybe they will vote the popular film of the year (I personally believe it's an overrated film and not worthy of a nomination to begin with) as the winner just to get a kick out of it and make the Oscars look cool to draw a bigger audience. This is just a theory. What are your thoughts?

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I suppose it's always possible, but I don't think it's that likely. Maybe they'll deliberately avoid voting for it simply to avoid looking like they're overdoing their decision to acknowledge the genre.

No chance it will win, just on the list to score political points.

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I haven't seen Bohemian Rhapsody and Vice but I haven't heard many raving things about either. BlackKklansman is something that looks up my alley. The other five varied from good to meh with nothing great. Seems like the weakest year this decade perhaps.

You should really check out Green Book...of the nominees that I've seen, it's the strongest film IMO.

Re: Best Picture Oscar 2019
 

Green Book's the only one I haven't seen yet (it only just came out here) but, like others have noted, most of what I've heard about it doesn't inspire much confidence.

As for which nominee I consider the strongest, probably Roma, and even then I have enough reservations about it that I don't think it's overly great.

If it wins, it will be the most talked about Oscar winning movie for years and years to come, both favorably and unfavorably. In my case, definitely unfavorably. Speaking of scoring political points, all the movies that have won or were nominated for Best Picture for the most part were for gaining political points and/or pushing Hollywood's liberal agenda.

On the flip side though we did have three monster hits nominated which is a good thing.

Re: Best Picture Oscar 2019
 

Not when one of them is Bohemian Rhapsody. I'll concede that one to the "Academy nominates librul movies instead of good movies" crowd.

I would like to hear some thoughts on what people would like to have seen nominated.

For me Old Man And The Gun was my favorite of the year so I would love to have seen it here. My Chazelle crush continues with First Man as well. Both these got pretty lukewarm receptions so I wasn't expecting them to pop up. Annihilation would be a other choice for me but that was probably too strange from the word go to crack this group.

First Reformed, Eighth Grade

Liked both of those a good bit. I thought First Reformed would get more love honestly. Surprised Hawke didn't get nominated.

BTW, I will mention it here since we don't have a doc thread. I was shocked Won't You Be My Neighbor didn't get a nom. That movie destroyed me.

BlackKklansman
Blindspotting
Cold War
Eighth Grade
Green Book
Hereditary
The Favorite
Roma
A Star is Born
Won't You Be My Neighbor?

Hearts Beat Loud
Leave No Trace
Eighth Grade
First Man
The Sisters Brothers
First Reformed

I like all of them a lot. All Best Picture nomination worthy in my book, anyway.

Also liked Can You Ever Forgive Me?, Isle of Dogs, Private Life, The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, and Sorry to Bother You. Of the actual nominees, The Favourite, A Star is Born, and Roma are all excellent choices and among my favorites of the year, too.

*I have not yet seen If Beale Street Could Talk, The Rider, Shoplifters, Stan & Ollie, Let the Sunshine In, Blindspotting, or Paddington 2.

@Holden Pike I need to see Hearts Best Loud. Hadn't even heard of it till a week ago. On Hulu so I will check it out. Sisters Brothers and First Man are in my top ten as well. Leave No Trace gave me nothing and I was so looking forward to it because of both Winter's Bone and word of mouth.

@Siddon I also loved Won't You Be My Neighbor, think I had it #3 in my top ten. You have 5 of the nominated films in your ten. You should be loving the noms this year. Hereditary was fine for me but horror usually isn't in my top tier stuff.

Re: Best Picture Oscar 2019
 

I want Black Panther to win, I think Bohemian Rhapsody should win, but I think The Favorite has the highest chance of winning.

Haven't seen several of them yet (Roma, Green Book, Cold War) but from what I've seen they "deserve" BP nominations

Ah, I see

Re: Best Picture Oscar 2019
 

I watched Beautiful Boy last night. Great movie with captivating performances by Steve Carrell, Timothee Chalamet, and Maura Tierney. How the movie did not get a single nomination, let alone a Best Picture nod, is beyond me.

Re: Best Picture Oscar 2019
 

Because it's not that good. I gave it a and even then I think I was being generous.

I disagree. I gave it a
It's a character actor's movie. The actors deliver and strongly so.

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For me, it's a matter of it not really doing anything too special as either a vehicle for its actors or as an actual film. It's weird how Chalamet is the one getting a bunch of nominations when Carell's the one I remember.

Does it help that it's named after a John Lennon song?

I thought Beautiful Boy was fine. I did love Chalamet in it. Does seem like the type of thing that would get some recognition. I think the critic wave probably wasn't strong enough either way to shine enough light on it.

Despite the movie being named after it, Mr. Holland's Opus will always be the movie I think of when I hear the song. That movie destroys me emotionally.

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Watched The Favourite last night.

What the **** was up with that awful fisheye lens?

I completely agree. Best movie this year.

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Seeing as Holden reminded me of it earlier, I'm going to say that Hearts Beat Loud is the superior "Hollywood indie about a music-loving father and his child" film.