Best Picture 2000

I feel like I've been doing a lot better as of late with keeping up with this thing. I think now that I'm close to 2000 I'm rushing to finish it so I can catch up with 2012 and beyond which I've got all the films for and have a better understanding of the Oscar race from those years and feel I can maybe give a better review. I think I'm just really excited about getting out of the 2000s eventually. Almost there!

2000 Best Picture

Gladiator

Are you not entertained?! Well....no, kinda. Okay, so Maximus' famous line somewhat applies but, wow, this movie didn't age all that well! I mean, it's only 15 years later and there are times where this movie feels so dated and cheesy. Seriously, there are moments in this where the music is just that overly cinematic crap where it tells you how to feel or what's going to happen type of thing and it really hurts the movie here. The CGI was heavily criticized even back in 2000 and now it still looks terrible and severely outdated at times. It even won the Best Visual Effects Oscar, though it's competition was pretty poor. I guess I was hoping that Gladiator would stand up firmly as a Best Picture winner but that is certainly not the case. I'll admit I loved it back in 2000 and thought it was pretty cool and all that but watching it again is tough because for starters the story is actually quite boring. It's just overall lacking in anything interesting. It starts off with that really cool battle in Germania and you think you're going to get this really intense and interesting account of the Roman times but then it nosedives into something else. It loses steam and only picks up once Crowe becomes a gladiator because at least the action in this movie is something it can be proud of - from the opening battle to the gladiator fights. That's the best thing the movie has going for itself. It has a half hearted romantic plot that goes nowhere, gets mired in a political intrigue plot that's sleep inducing, supporting characters (besides Phoenix who does a great job) that are not fully fleshed out or even close to being anything more than window dressing, a revenge factor that's too quickly glossed over, and an ending that feels way too anti-climactic. I think maybe people just got caught up in the hype like I did way back when because if you really look at this movie with a magnifying glass you're not gonna find much to it. It doesn't help that Crowe doesn't do much acting, instead playing more of the action star/misunderstood brute role. Neither of which were deserving of the top prize. And I know it's easy to hate on the winners years after the fact and denigrate them to no end and say that something else should have won but I don't feel like that applies here. I don't think if Gladiator hadn't won, that anyone would be championing it to take home the Oscar. I do think it's easy to look through a list of Best Picture winners and skip over Gladiator as yeah that's a fine win without really thinking too much about it or looking into it and latching on to the usual winners that get called out for not being very good. I feel this win was very much of the time and would be different if done any other time.

Chocolat

Okay, so the reason Chocolat sticks out like a sore thumb is due to it being a Miramax film which means those dumb Weinsteins were involved. I know I sound like a broken record but I hate that they crammed their movies into the Oscar race because they had money and connections. It's great that they gave a voice to independent film at a time when it was needed but they blew that by then hammering home all these lackluster movies that ended up nominated for huge awards like Best Picture. Does Chocolat deserve to be here? Absolutely not! It's not that good of a movie that it should be honored with a place in history for being one of the top 5 for 2000 according to the Academy. It's entirely forgettable. I found it to be very boring. It's a movie about a woman who moves into a new town and opens up a chocolate shop but the town is very religious and the mayor doesn't like her corrupting the townspeople and tries to sabotage her. It's about as complex as a Hershey Kiss! It offers up nothing more than a sugary sweet, feel good, pap fest. It's message is too obvious and incredibly heavy handed. It's all about tolerance and acceptance which is a nice sentiment but this movie just clobbers you over the head with it. Not mention it deals with domestic violence in such a laissez faire way trying to get a few laughs along the way without really condemning it as portrayed in the movie. The ending is absurdly ridiculous. The mayor goes to trash Binoche's chocolate shop but while doing so gets some chocolate on his lips and then succumbs to temptation and cries himself to sleep in her display window and then once found, they strike up a mutual respect. Just completely absurd and stupid. I know this was a hit of sorts in theaters but this is nothing more than Midwesterners feeling proud of themselves for having seen a French film and culturing themselves. Everything about Chocolat is just so syrupy. It's like when you go to the movies and buy a box of Whoppers and a Diet Coke and eat it all while watching and then after it's over you realize your stomach hurts and there was nothing of substance to what you just ate. That's Chocolat. I don't think this will ever stick in the subconscious of the American collective. I'm glad the days of a wholly undeserving movie making the Best Picture field is over or at least we nominate a bunch more films to cancel out any possible stinkers like this. And anyway, no one ever buys any chocolate! She just makes a bunch and gives a lot of it away, makes no sense.

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon

Finally! After 15 years since it came out, I get to watch this film. I remember back when it did come out, that it was super hyped. It was a huge success and talked about non-stop for weeks and weeks. It was exotic and different and yet still highly entertaining for people. I think that's partially due to the American public just being ready for an Asian martial arts film to come out and entertain. And that's the big key, I think, that as long as a foreign film or really specific genre film is entertaining first and foremost, that's all that matters. If a wuxia martial arts film is worth watching, well, people will watch it. And then from there who knows where the hype train can take it. That train took Crouching Tiger all the way to almost winning a Best Picture Oscar. This film was very, very close to upsetting Gladiator and that would have been a truly amazing win and feat for foreign films and genre films at the Oscars. The plot of this film is pretty simple really, about a martial arts master that wants to gift a jade sword to some other guy but it gets stolen and some fighting happens. It's much simpler to follow while watching than me trying to describe it. I was fully expecting a lot more action and fighting and guide wire moves but the early part of the film is pretty tame and sets things up which isn't bad at all. The wuxia high wire stuff is pretty entertaining and like nothing the public had ever seen before so it's easy to see why it took the country by storm. But the impossible physics does kind of get annoying, it's very much like a video game. I guess it's all up to your tolerance of the wuxia stuff. It's fun for sure but I like a little more realistic quality to my martial arts. The cinematography is really fantastic, however, especially the caravan scenes. Crouching Tiger is just overall the most enjoyable film out of this whole group and it expertly mixes the martial arts with the love story and man, is just good. It's as simple as that.

Erin Brockovich

How crazy is it that Steven Soderbergh was nominated for BOTH of his films for Best Director and BOTH made the Best Picture list?? That's seriously impressive and I must say that I find Soderbergh to be one of my favorite directors simply because he is so diverse and so good at being diverse. It's not that he jumps around genres but he gives us really interesting films and makes them look really, really good. To go from Erin Brockovich to Traffic in one year is pretty mind boggingly crazy and awesome. Would you ever think they were directed by the same person? Probably not! And that's his genius. Erin Brockovich is the more simple of the two, relying on the strong performances of Julia Roberts and Albert Finney to carry the story. Soderbergh adds in some neat little things like closeups of court papers and documents that while not being revolutionary or even particularly amazing, stand out enough for me - something that can be hard to explain why exactly I like those little quirks. I will say that I don't think the film starts out very strong. It throws a bunch of the plot at you right away such as Erin losing her personal injury case and then getting a job at her lawyer's through bullying while also quickly hooking up with her motorcycle loving neighbor. I get that they wanted to focus on the big case but it all whizzes by and is shoved together making the beginning feels so rushed. Once it settles in, however, it finds it's groove and settles in. I think both Roberts and Finney get better as the film progresses and it's just overall more fun to watch. The film also avoids laying the sentimentality on thick. It could easily twist our arms to force tears because the case is about people getting sick with cancer and all kinds of diseases because they were lied to about their drinking water but it never sinks to that low. It lets Roberts shine as the highlight instead of melodrama. The instances where you do start to feel sad are few and measured, it's not done just for the sake of getting tears and that's something I can respect. I wish that we would have gotten to see some of the trial or more about that part of the story but I recognize that this film is about Erin and her fight and her life. This film is more about the performances than anything else and that's quite alright when they are both pretty fantastic.

Traffic

The second of the Steven Soderbergh films. This one obviously being the more complex and serious of the two. From looking back at the Best Picture groups, I think this is the first film (at least in awhile from what I can tell since I haven't seen a lot of them only read about them) that uses the interwoven storylines idea that we would see over and over again in the coming years. I've always liked the concept because it keeps things fresh and a director can do a lot more interesting things with the story and characters. Traffic follows the drug war/trade from many different angles including users, politicians, traffickers, and cops. It's kind of weird watching this and realizing that in 2000 this was the big issue in America at that time and a film like Traffic carried a lot of weight behind it. Of course after 9/11 the focus was shifted away from the war on drugs to the war on terror so this story seems almost minuscule and pointless in comparison. Drugs just aren't the big bad villain anymore especially now as the country begins to legalize marijuana. I'm sure other, smarter people could go on and on about the current state of the war on drugs but that would honestly bore me and probably you. That also is one of the things I like about Traffic is that it's not preachy at all. It almost takes a hands off approach and let's you see things from all sides which is much better than being force fed some agenda or ideology. Soderbergh also uses an interesting trick of color coding the different storylines which from what I read was to make it all easier for the audience to follow, which makes sense. I like the choice for the most part but there were moments where I would have liked some consistency with the look. The acting is all around good and it's just simply a well made film.


What's crazy is just how close Crouching Tiger came to winning. It was super hyped and much talked about and going into the ceremony it was mostly between it and Gladiator and Traffic to a lesser extent. Imagine if it won, though?! How awesome would that have been? Instead we got a boring, tired, obvious choice. I'd pick Crouching Tiger, easily. Traffic is a good second choice that's impact has been a little lessened because of what happened the next year and transformed the world. Erin Brockovich is a pretty good movie that has an even better main performance to buoy it. Then we get Gladiator that just doesn't hold up. Like at all, surprisingly. And then we have one of the worst, or at least most I really don't give a shit about it nominees so far. Chocolate. I mean Chocolat. Who cares.

Oscar Winner: Gladiator
My Winner:  Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
Traffic
Erin Brockovich
Gladiator
Chocolat