The Snubby Awards: 1999 Oscars

It's that time again: The Snubby Awards!  For those of you who don't know, the Snubby Awards take a look at all of the Best Picture nominees from a given year and determine if the best film won or if another was snubbed.  If that's the case, they win the coveted Snubby Award!

This time we'll be taking a look at the 1999 Oscars, which was a fine selection of movies.  All of them were good to really good, with one being in my Top 10 movies of all time.  The nominees were: Elizabeth, Life is Beautiful, Saving Private Ryan, and The Thin Red Line with the winner being Shakespeare in Love.  Did Shakespeare in Love deserve to win or did another movie get snubbed?  Let's find out!

#5. Life is Beautiful

The story of a Jewish-Italian family that is sent to a concentration camp during World War II, this is a surprisingly funny movie that mostly focuses on the father of the family trying to shield his young son from the horrors of the camp by pretending the whole thing is a game.  Robert Benigni gives a fantastic performance in a movie that feels very old-school.  It's an interesting story and a tear-jerker ending, but I think the execution isn't as good as the premise.  The movie is similar to Jojo Rabbit in many ways, but I think JoJo Rabbit is a far superior film.  This is a good movie, but it could have done more with the premise.  It gets repetitive at times.

 7/10: Good 

#4. Elizabeth

This is a biopic about Elizabeth I as she takes the throne of England and defends herself from plots to take her down.  Biopics are typically my least-favorite genre and I'm also not huge on period films.  This just simply isn't the type of film that I'm interested in typically.  The movie is pretty much exactly what you would expect, for better or for worse, but it does get more interesting as it goes along.  The highlights of the film are the performances, which are excellent across the board, especially from Cate Blanchette, who absolutely kills it.

 7/10: Good 

#3. The Thin Red Line

This is a World War II movie that follows a large group of soldiers as they battle across the island of Guadalcanal.  Generally, I really enjoy war movies.  The Thin Red Line is a very good film that I wish had been directed by just about anybody else.  This movies has fantastic actors, playing interesting characters, in a brutal setting.  Whenever the movie focuses on a conversation between characters, or a battle sequence, or the toll on the characters in the aftermath, it shines.  Nick Nolte and Elias Koteas in particular do a fantastic job.  The problem comes from the director, Terrance Malick.  I've only seen one of his other movies, The Tree of Life, which I absolutely hated.  Malick likes to use philosophical voiceover as the camera floats around a character.  I find this style of filmmaking pretentious and annoying.  Every time a scene started to get some voiceover, I could feel myself checking out.  The film is nearly three hours long and all of the voiceover could have been cut.  Re-edit the movie a bit and you have a masterpiece.  Don't get me wrong, I really like the movie, but I would have liked it more if someone else had directed it.  Malick's style just isn't my cup of tea.  I do want to mention Hans Zimmer, who did the music.  To no one's surprise, he nails it and should have won Best Original Dramatic Score.

 8/10: Really Good 

And now for the Top 2 in no particular order.

Saving Private Ryan

Speaking of war movies, Saving Private Ryan follows a group of eight American soldiers in France during World War II.  They are given the mission of finding Private Ryan and getting him safely back home.  This is in my Top 10 movies of all time.  It's my favorite war movie and my favorite Spielberg film.  This movie is a goddamn masterpiece with some incredible filmmaking.  The action sequences are simply incredible with some amazing performances across the board.  This is a brutally visceral film and some of the death scenes are genuinely difficult to watch.  There's so much to say and analyze with this film that I can't even begin to get into.  This one is also nearly three hours, but the movie flies by thanks to some incredible pacing.  One of the all-time greats.

 10/10: Amazing 

Shakespeare in Love

This movie follows William Shakespeare as he struggles to write Romeo and Juliet while falling in love with a woman who wants to be an actress. Like I said earlier, movies that take place in this time period generally don't interest me much.  This movie won me over with it's fun energy.  This is a movie that is having fun just being itself and the love for Shakespeare is palpable.  It has a slow start, but really picks up to an excellent finale.  It also has some very clever writing and solid performances from the entire ensemble cast.  It's an enjoyable film, but not much more than that.

 8/10: Really Good 

  And the Snubby Award goes to...!

Saving Private Ryan!  This one should come as no surprise as this is widely considered one of the biggest snubs in Oscars history.  I liked Shakespeare in Love, but it winning over Saving Private Ryan is absolutely insane.  It's not even remotely close.  

Next time we'll be looking at the 2024 Oscars.  Did Oppenheimer deserve to win or did another movie get snubbed?  Stay tuned!