Top Ten Favorite Best Picture Winners

Apparently it’s Oscar week on the bloggity blog…

In no particular order, my top ten favorite winners of the big prize, Best Picture.

1. Shakespeare in Love | While I don’t think it deserved to win that year when it was up against both Saving Private Ryan and Life Is Beautiful, but I really did like it; like a lot.
2. Titanic | One of the few movies I’ve ever seen multiple times in the theater (if not the only one); and every time I cried, weepy sad tears when the ship sank and you saw all the other people dying or preparing to die. So sad and that it was a true story, even sadder.
3. A Beautiful Mind | The amazingly told story based on the life of economics prodigy John Nash; it would have to be good if I used amazing and economics in the same sentence.
4. Lord of the Rings: Return of the King | Well-deserved for the astronomical feat of bringing the trilogy to life in such an excellent way. I feel bad for two other deserving nominees from that year – Mystic River and Lost in Translation.
5. The Fighter | oh wait, The King’s Speech was last years’ winner, not The Fighter (though it should have been, I feel like at least half of the other nominees should have won over The King’s Speech, for sure.) But I LOVED The Fighter, against my expectations, it was brilliantly acted and so well packaged.
6. The Silence of the Lambs | I have seen this movie so many times; back in middle school this was a fall-back movie with my BFF, which is quite surprising because it is not at all the type of movie I would normally like and now, when I’ve seen it, I find it totally creepy.
7. Schindler’s List | Just amazing and sad and beautiful and utterly depressing and yet hopeful to find someone so willing to risk everything for others.
8. Out of Africa | For the scenery alone, I like this movie (that and the hair-washing scene.)
9. Forrest Gump | Jheeeennnnyyy! Run Forrest, run! Life is like a box of chocolates… Bubba Gump Shrimp. How can you not love Forrest Gump, and it has a killer soundtrack.
10. Gladiator | The second Russell Crowe movie on my list, must be I like Australians; true but that has nothing to do with it, just another great movie. 😉

And just for fun, I’d like to note that I saw 9 out of ten winners in the 1990s and only 4 out of ten in the 2000s – pre-kids and post-kids, sad and true. And from this year’s ten nominees, I only saw The Help and Midnight in Paris (try as I may, I couldn’t get Simon to see The Descendants at date night this past weekend, instead we saw This Means War, which was hilarious and I highly recommend it for date night). Also, doesn’t ten nominees seem like a bit of overkill?

This post is linked to Oh Amanda’s Top Ten Tuesday.