The Snubby Awards: 2007 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 one was snubbed. If that's the case, they win the coveted Snubby Award!
This time we'll be taking a look at the 2007 Oscars, which was a field of movies that were a bit all over the place. Most I liked, but not all, and it wasn't exactly a tight race in the end. The nominees were: Babel, Letter from Iwo Jima, Little Miss Sunshine, and The Queen with the winner being The Departed. Did The Departed deserve to win or did another movie get snubbed? Let's find out!
#5. The Queen
This is the story of how the British government reacted to the death of Princess Diana. I really did not care for The Queen. I can appreciate the performances across the board, especially from Helen Mirren and James Cromwell and the music is excellent, but mostly I found this film a dull slog to sit through. There really isn't anything at stake to get me invested in the story. The worst thing that could happen is the British people get rid of the royal family. I'm an American living in a post-Meghan Markle world. Ask me if I care about the the royal family being abolished at all. Another problem is I was three years old when Princess Diana died, so I have no idea why people were so devastated by her death and what she meant to people. I really can't wrap my head around it. Clearly, I am not the target market for this movie, and that's ok, I don't always need to be the target market. However, I am the one writing this completely subjective list and that means The Queen takes a distant last place.
5/10: Meh
This is a muli-narrative film with characters across the world somehow connected to a tragedy in Morocco. To prepare for Babel, I watched the first two movies in director Alejandro González Iñárritu's Death Trilogy, which probably lessened my enjoyment of this film as I liked both Amores perros and 21 Grams more. That said, I still really enjoyed Babel. I really like the multi-narrative story structure and trying to figure out how it all pieces together. It's just that that connections aren't as interesting as they were in the previous films in the Death Trilogy and I didn't feel the same emotional catharsis.
8/10: Really Good
#3. Little Miss Sunshine
A wild road-trip movie with spectacular performances across the board. This is one hell of a cast, especially Alan Arkin, Paul Dano, and Steve Carell. I loved this movie and how dark the comedy was all the way up until the 3rd act, which is where we get one of the most uncomfortable finales to a movie I have ever seen. I'm sure that was the point and it's fine, if insane, but I think there was definitely a stronger direction to take the ending in. Ultimately, the way the characters see the events of the 3rd act had a major disconnect from the way I saw it, which lessened my enjoyment, but I still really liked the film overall.
8/10: Really Good
And now for the Top 2 in no particular order.
The Departed.
Our Best Picture winner follows a group of police officers trying to take down crime boss, Frank Costello (Jack Nicholson). One cop (Leonardo DiCaprio) goes undercover in Costello's organization, but Costello has a man on the inside of the police force (Matt Damon). The Departed is an awesome thriller with incredible performances from everyone I've mentioned as well as Mark Wahlberg. We get some really intense sequences in this game of cat-and-mouse and the movie does an excellent job of making you feel like no one is safe. I just feel that it lacks the big emotional punch that the truly fantastic movies should have.
9/10: Great
Letters from Iwo Jima
This is a World War II movie that focuses on the Japanese soldiers and the toll taken on them during the Battle of Iwo Jima. I'm not really used to seeing American soldiers as the antagonists of a movie. It's rare that we get any development from the enemy forces, so I really appreciate this film for showing me the other side of the battlefield. It's a powerful reminder that most of the people who fight on the frontlines are just average joe's, who don't necessarily want to be there either. It's a really interesting war film that also shows us differences in Japanese culture at the time. This is a companion film to Flags of Our Fathers, which showed the American side of the battle. Both were directed by Clint Eastwood and were both released in 2006. This movie is far stronger than Flags because it has such a focused and emotional story with an amazing performance from Ken Watanabe.
10/10: Amazing
And the Snubby Award goes too...!
Letters from Iwo Jima! I do think this movie was snubbed from winning Best Picture. Both Letters from Iwo Jima and The Departed were great, but Letters definitely had the emotional punch I was looking for and is ultimately one of the best war movies I have ever seen.
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