InnerBrat wrote: I'm quite frankly shocked that you rated the by-the-numbers jingoistic crapfest that was Saving Private Ryan over Shakespeare in Love, which remains one of my favourite films today, not least because of the excellent screenplay by Stoppard. However, I don't particularly want to get into an argument about the relative merits of these very different movies, because clearly there is something I should have 'got' about Ryan, which I missed.
The opening of SPR was excellent. After that the movie was kind of bleh, although some parts were visually cool, but then Speilberg has done that before. Empire of the Sun was boring as hell but from time to time there were some very nice visuals in it. (I liked the "cadilac of the sky" scene).
I haven't seen all of SIL but I've seen the nudie clips with Gweneth Paltrow and while I liked her in some past movies she gives me the "nails on chalkboard" feeling with what I've seen of this one.
The most recent award for best picture that I think was blown was FotR losing to A Beautiful Mind. It was a good movie but it wasn't close to as good as FotR. Plus I think FotR got passed over because people figured they couldn't make all three movies best picture so they didn't want to start with the first one even though it's still the best out of the three.
Isn't it interesting that Gwyneth Paltrow and Halle Berry both recieved Oscars ™ after getting neked
in "serious" movies?