Best Picture Nominees From Least to Most Favorite Pt. 1

The Oscars are coming up quick, and I have managed to see more of the nominated movies then ever. From my least favorite to most favorite, these are the ten movies nominated for best picture. This list isn’t a representation of which movies I think are the best, just how much I liked them. If I was to rank them from best to worst, this list would be much different.

10. Avatar

This movie is fun, and very pretty. I do like it, but it didn’t really give me much desire to ever see it again. It deserves all of the attention it’s getting, but I can’t really call it a great film as in my opinion story is most important. I’ve seen this story in countless movies, few worth remembering. I can’t really fault Avatar for not being everything it isn’t, as it’s intention is not to be anything more. But I’m not terribly interested in the same old plot in a pretty new package. No one will argue that it’s a technically beautiful movie, with groundbreaking visuals. Beyond that, it doesn’t have much going for it.

9. An Educationмаси и столове

I don’t have much of an opinion on this movie. I don’t love it, I don’t hate it. It’s a sweet little story, with decent acting. It just doesn’t have anything that stuck out and grabbed me. It’s just kinda bland. But, coming of age stories are not usually that interesting to me. The little twist is not what I had expected, although I probably should have. It is neat in a way to see this sorta movie end in a way you don’t necessarily expect. You can’t really say that it has a happy ending, or a sad ending… It is in a way both. That’s what this movie is, it’s the average movie, not one side or the other of anything. I feel like Crazy Heart probably should have taken An Education’s nomination. This is the only nomination in Best Picture that I don’t necessarily agree with.

8. The Hurt Locker

The general idea of this movie was that once you have committed yourself to the life of a soldier, you can’t really find your way back to any other life. They did a pretty decent job at it too, and delivered some of the most intense and engrossing scenes of 2009. The movie lacks the drive I was hoping for, and about half an hour of the movie I felt was unnecessary and took away from it all. I feel this movie is really pushing to something great but doesn’t quite reach it. There are scenes in the movie that grabbed me in such a way that the world around me disappeared. But there is a good chunk of the movie that just made me roll my eyes. Of all of the movies up for the nomination, this one disappointed me the most.

7. District 9

This is a neat movie. It’s a sifi movie filled with political and social commentary, with an examination of human nature. The first two thirds of the movie is something special. It builds itself a fascinating world, a dense story and a rich atmosphere. It’s just as much a political drama as it is an action sifi. The last bit of the movie turns into a real let down. It seems like they had no idea how to resolve the movie they built so well. It just kinda gives up and quickly deteriorates into the usual shoot out action. That’s all fine and good, if that’s what the movie was about from the beginning, but in this situation it just feels like they ran out of ideas and settled for less.

6. Precious

I watched this twice so far. I watched it once, read the book, and watched it again. The book was not very long for how much power is in it. This gave the filmmakers an opportunity to not be forced to neglect any of the content. The characters and atmosphere are perfectly imagined, and they managed to amplify the power of the story. They take some very interesting direction approaches that I did not necessarily expect from this sort of the movie, it reminded me a lot of something Darren Aronofsky, although that is a stretch.

Stay tuned as I rank my top five movies up for Best Picture from 2009.