My wife’s idea. Pick a year, watch all the films nominated for the Best Picture Academy Award and review them to see if I agreed with the Academy. So I started with 2001
Chocolat, Part of my Best Picture Nominations review for the year 2001
Erin Bockovich, Part of my Best Picture Nominations review for the year 2001
Gladiator 2000 Part of my reviews for the 2001 Academy Awards Best Picture Nominees
Traffic, Part of my reviews for the 2001 Academy Awards Best Picture Nominees
So after watching these 5 films, my conclusion is….
Although there were five films shortlisted, I feel only three should have had any shot of winning. Chocolat and Traffic just were not up to the same level as Erin Brockovich, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and Gladiator. In my opinion they were nominated because of the lack of strong choices for that year.
Erin Brockovic is a great movie but, as I said in my review, I thought it was essentially a one woman show and without the brilliance of Julia Roberts I don’t even think it would have been nominated. As for the other two: while Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon looked better, I thought Gladiator was a more complete film overall. From screenplay to acting it just had more to offer the viewer.
So for me, Gladiator deserved it’s Best Picture win, although it was only slightly ahead of Crouching Tiger in my opinion.
Youngy's Film Reviews 