The Snubby Awards: 1996 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 1996 Oscars, which was a mixed bag of movies.  I loved three of them and really didn't care for the other two, but I recognize I probably wasn't the target market for either of them.  The nominees were: Apollo 13, Babe, Il Postino: The Postman, & Sense and Sensibility with the winner being Braveheart.  Did Braveheart deserve to win or did another movie get snubbed?  Let's find out!

#5. Il Postino: The Postman

When I was preparing for this incarnation of the Snubby Awards, I looked ahead at the nominated movies to read a basic synopsis.  Once I read the one for Il Postino, I felt only dread for what was to come and I was mostly right.  The film follows a mail carrier who becomes friends with a famous poet and they discuss poetry.  That's pretty much it.  I really don't care for poetry and have never had much interest in it, so I had a feeling this movie would not be my cup of tea.  It's not all bad.  Both Massimo Troisi and Maria Grazia Cucinotta do a great job in their roles and I have a lot of respect for Troisi who still managed to deliver a good performance even with all of his health issues.  He literally died the day after they finished principal photography.  There was just nothing for me to get invested in.  Maybe it was the focus on poetry, maybe it was the language barrier (the movie is in Italian), or maybe a combination of both.  I don't really get what people see in this one.

 4/10: Bad 

#4. Sense and Sensibility

This is another one I was dreading.  I just don't enjoy Jane Austen's works.  I read Pride and Prejudice and I honestly hated it.  One of my least favorite books I've ever finished.  Nothing about them appeals to me, and that's okay.  Lots of people do like them and I'm glad so many of them like this movie.  Not every movie needs to be for everyone.  Sense and Sensibility follows the Dashwood sisters, as they go from very wealthy to very poor when their stepfather dies.  It's about their struggles, their relationship, and the suitors they encounter.  It's a well made and very well acted movie.  I really did enjoy both Alan Rickman and Hugh Laurie's performances.  It's just that so much of this movie is about gossiping and courtship, neither of which I enjoy watching.  I hated just about every character in the film.  It was a mildly interesting story, but it was interesting in the way getting blood drawn is interesting.  It's a painful interest and I'd just rather not.  Again, I get why people like this movie, it's just not for me.

 5/10: Meh 

#3. Apollo 13

Now we're getting into the good stuff.  Apollo 13 is a docudrama about the events of the cursed Apollo 13 mission to the moon.  It's a genuinely thrilling watch, even if you know how everything plays out.  The scenes in space and takeoff are so exciting and intense.  It's some really incredible filmmaking from Ron Howard.  If this isn't his best movie, it's close.  It has an amazing cast and even if I didn't understand most of the dialogue, they sold the emotion of the lines and the moments.  It definitely makes me feel validated in never, ever, wanting to go to space.

 9/10: Great 

And now for the Top 2 Movies in no particular order.

Babe

When I was really little, I'm talking like five or six, I watched Babe a bunch of times at my Grandma's house, but I hadn't seen it since then.  So twenty-five years later, I got to watch it again.  I remembered a lot of it, but was able to put the movie into proper context this time around.  I liked Babe as a kid, but I love it as an adult.  Babe follows the story of piglet named Babe who learns how to be a sheepdog.  It's a simple and sweet story, but has quite a few darker moments.  I'm a big animal lover, so just watching all these adorable animals in scenes together was a lot of fun.  The puppetry and the visual effects used to make the animals' mouths move still holds up incredibly well.  The movie is sweet and funny, but also very emotional.  Babe nearly gets killed multiple times and those scenes are effectively chilling.  The performances are also fantastic from all of the voice actors and James Cromwell kills it with hardly any dialogue.  He's a guy you understand and really like and root for by the end and the film didn't need much dialogue to pull that off.  This is a movie where I was smiling the whole time and that's my favorite kind of cinematic experience.

 10/10: Amazing 

Braveheart

This was the first time I had ever seen our Best Picture winner in its entirety.  I had seen the last twenty minutes or so on TV one time, so I knew how it ended.  Braveheart follows William Wallace, a Scottish commoner who leads the country in a war against England.  This is such an epic film with some amazing battle sequence.  The performances are a lot of fun across the board.  We get heroes and villains in exactly the way you want in a movie like this.  Wallace gives an epic speech to inspire his army before one particularly memorable battle, and it's second only to King Théoden's in The Return of the King in terms of inspirational battle speeches.  The movie is simply a blast, even if it takes a bit to get going.  I know it's extremely inaccurate, but I like to think of the movie as a tall tale.  An exaggerated legend, like all good legends.  That's a theme of the movie as well, so I think it works.  The only other downside is Mel Gibson.  He's great as both the lead and the director.  He handles both roles well.  Wallace is easy to root for because of Gibson's performance.  It's just a shame that the guy sucks so hard in real life.  It makes the film slightly less inspirational than it should be.  Fuck Mel Gibson, but this movie is great.

 9/10: Great 

  

And the Snubby Award goes to...!

  

Babe!  I was absolutely biased in this case, but it doesn't change how amazing Babe is.  It may even be a perfect movie.  I'd have to watch it again to be sure.  I loved it from beginning to end and have zero criticisms, which I can't say for Braveheart, great as it may be.  So yes, I do think Babe was snubbed from winning Best Picture. 

Next time we'll be looking at the 2025 Oscars.  Did Anora deserve to win or did another movie get snubbed?  Stay tuned!