Issue date: 2/21/08 Section: The Weekly

Quick show of hands - how many of you have actually seen all five Oscar nominees for Best Picture?

One or two, sure. I bet a lot of you have seen Juno, that now-beloved and, crowd-pleasing teen pregnancy comedy (the most successful Best Picture nominee at the box office with $118 million). Maybe Atonement. But, come on, Michael Clayton? Having the dubious distinction of actually having seen all five Oscar nominees, I say No Country for Old Men is the only one of them worthy of being crowned Best Picture. Which means it probably won't win.

"The Oscars aren't about quality," Empire Magazine's Patrick Peters scoffs. "They're peer group nods of approval, and, as a result, there's been a surfeit of unworthy Best Pictures, and, rest assured, there will be many more to come."

How true. The Oscars are rife with problems - most notably an opaque, overly secretive voting process - but also a tendency to reward box office winners (Gladiator, Titanic), feel-good heartwarmers (Rocky, Forrest Gump), historical epics (Braveheart), self-important prestige pictures like literary adaptations (The English Patient, Shakespeare in Love) and, worst of all, the fake independent film that's really a studio film in disguise (Juno, Little Miss Sunshine).

Rocky might be the perfect case study of the kind of film the Academy loves. It's inspirational, simple (maybe simplistic), heartwarming, it doesn't challenge the mind, and made a lot of money at the box office. To think that Rocky beat out Taxi Driver and Network for Best Picture! It breaks a film lover's heart.

So many Best Picture winners have been just plain awful. Cecil B. DeMille's The Greatest Show on Earth (1952), an inconsistent, nonsensical portrait of life and intrigue at a circus, typically tops lists of the worst Best Picture winners. Mike Todd's Around the World in 80 Days (1956) won its Best Picture statue just on the virtue of its extensive location shooting, A-list cast, and intrusive celebrity cameos (Frank Sinatra playing the piano in 1890s San Francisco equals the death of cinema). Ponderous, formulaic biopics The Great Ziegfeld and The Life of Emile Zola won Best Picture in 1936 and 1937, respectively, and have no value for today's film fans other than use as cures for insomnia. Superficial social problem films like Gentleman's Agreement (1947) and In the Heat of the Night (1967) won the top slot through their timid attempts to address prejudice. 2001's winner A Beautiful Mind seems to suggest that only true love can cure mental illness. And who even remembers Cimarron (1931) or Cavalcade (1933)?

Continued...

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