Project One: A Definitive Ranking of Every Film Nominated for Best Picture (1991-2025) - Part Eight: 170-161
Happy Monday and welcome back to the Musings for another installment of Project One: A Definitive Ranking of Every Film Nominated for Best Picture (1991-2025)! My Nolan rewatch reached Insterstellar last night so the end is nigh and I’m finding myself positively addicted to Emily Wilson’s translation of The Odyssey. If you haven’t snagged a copy yet, it has my highest recommendation.
We’ve got another ten films on the docket and we’re inching ever closer to the midway point. Perhaps I should start brainstorming ideas for Project Two. Another thing to add to the to do list. Hmm.
Enjoy!
170. Lion (2016):
Directed by: Garth Davis
Starring: Nicole Kidman, Dev Patel, Rooney Mara, David Wenham, Abishek Bharate, Divian Ladwa, Priyanka Bose.
Nominations (wins in bold): Best Picture, Best Actor in a Supporting Role (Dev Patel), Best Actress in a Supporting Role (Nicole Kidman), Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Cinematography, Best Original Score.
Metacritic: 69% RT: 84% Letterboxd: 3.9/5 CinemaScore: N/A Ebert: N/A Mark: 3/5
For the life of me, I can’t remember a single thing about this movie. Evidently I liked it, lmao. Let’s talk about Dev Patel, then, shall we? What a babe. It’s a shame Hollywood can’t or won’t figure out how to make him one of our biggest movie stars. He should be! He has the looks, charisma, acting chops, and artistic intuit to do it. Since his tremendous turn as Gawain in The Green Knight (2021), we’ve only seen Dev in three films, one of which he had to direct himself (out of realization that Hollywood had no interest in casting him as an action star). Do better, Hollywood. I need more Dev in my life.
169. The Tree of Life (2011):
Directed by: Terrence Malick
Starring: Brad Pitt, Jessica Chastain, Hunter McCracken, Sean Penn, Fiona Shaw, Tye Sheridan, Laramie Eppler, Will Wallace, Nicolas Gonda, Jessica Fuselier.
Nominations (wins in bold): Best Picture, Best Director, Best Cinematography.
Metacritic: 85% RT: 86% Letterboxd: 3.8/5 CinemaScore: N/A Ebert: 4/4 Mark: 3/5
In Friday’s post, I shouted out The New World as a first-time watch of 2026. While I was excited by the subject matter, if there was cautiousness present it was it being directed by Terrence Malick. The Tree of Life and The Thin Red Line were the only prior films of his I’d seen and though I have a great many (good) things to say about the latter, the experimentalism and surrealism on display here was something that concerned me. There’s a sequence in this film that either moves you like nothing ever has or confuses you to the same degree. Put me in the latter camp. Yet, as with all Malick’s, The Tree of Life is full of good performances from its cast and positively stunning to look at. There are worse reasons to watch a movie.
A concluding aside - the last film Roger Ebert ever reviewed was Terrrence Malick’s To The Wonder, which was posthumously published on April 6, 2013. You can read it here.
168. The Prince of Tides (1991):
Directed by: Barbara Streisand
Starring: Barbara Streisand, Nick Nolte, Blythe Danner, Kate Nelligan, Jeroen Crabbe, Melinda Dillon, George Carlin, Jason Gould, Brad Sullivan.
Nominations (wins in bold): Best Picture, Best Actor in a Leading Role (Nick Nolte), Best Actress in a Supporting Role (Kate Nelligan), Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Cinematography, Best Art Direction, Best Original Score
Metacritic: 65% RT: 69% Letterboxd: 3.4/5 CinemaScore: A Ebert: 3.5/4 Mark: 3/5
That’s Director Babs to you. Surprisingly tender and sexy film about a man (Nick Nolte) who learns to be a better husband and father by sleeping and falling in love with his therapist (Barbara Streisand). Nolte and Streisand have electric chemistry from the start, making the ultimate conclusion of the film that much more emotionally affecting. A confident directorial debut from Babs here. She really can do it all.
167. La La Land (2016):
Directed by: Damien Chazelle
Starring: Ryan Gosling, Emma Stone, John Legend, Rosemarie DeWitt, Finn Wittrock, Callie Hernandez, Josh Pence, J.K. Simmons.
Nominations (wins in bold): Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor in a Leading Role (Ryan Gosling), Best Actress in a Leading Role (Emma Stone), Best Original Screenplay, Best Cinematography, Best Editing, Best Sound Mixing, Best Sound Editing, Best Costume Design, Best Production Design, Best Original Score, Best Original Song (”City of Stars”); (”Audition (The Fools Who Dream)”)
Metacritic: 94% RT: 91% Letterboxd: 4.1/5 CinemaScore: N/A Ebert: N/A Mark: 3/5
West Side Story (2021) did it better. ‘It’ being ‘pay homage to mid-century Hollywood musicals.’ Actually, remove ‘musicals’ from that statement and Chazelle’s own Babylon also did it better. La La Land is a fine movie full of decent songs set to moderately entertaining choreography, but it did not set my world on fire like I wished it to (and like it did for a great many in 2016). Of course, it’s lasting legacy is as the movie that was incorrectly announced as the winner of Best Picture in one of the greatest live tv moments of the century.
166. Traffic (2000):
Directed by: Steven Soderbergh
Starring: Michael Douglas, Benencio del Toro, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Erika Christensen, Don Cheadle, Jacob Vargas, Miguel Ferrer, Luis Guzman, Topher Grace, Dennis Quaid, Albert Finney, Amy Iriving, Clifton Collins Jr.
Nominations (wins in bold): Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor in a Supporting Role (Benicio del Toro), Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Editing.
Metacritic: 86% RT: 93% Letterboxd: 3.7/5 CinemaScore: B Ebert: 4/4 Mark: 3.5/5
Stephen Daldry, Billy Elliot.
Ang Lee, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.
Ridley Scott, Gladiator
Steven Soderbergh, Erin Brockovitch
Steven Soderbergh, Traffic.
Those are the nominees for Best Director at the 73rd annual Academy Awards, honoring the films of the year 2000. There is no typo. Steven Soderbergh (Ocean’s Eleven) not only directed and released two films in the same year, but he received individual directing nominations for both. A feat not accomplished since Michael Curtiz in 1938! Historical, to be sure.
Here’s the thing. The Academy got it wrong. Steven Soderbergh should not have won Best Director for Traffic. Steven Soderbergh should have won Best Director for Erin Brockovitch. Time, I believe, has agreed with me. Traffic’s focus on the modern failings of the war on drugs and its debilitating reach illustrated in Michael Douglas and his falling apart family is the exact type of story the Academy and America would have seen as more important and worthy of recognition. In its own way, the Academy’s decision to award Soderbergh for Traffic over Erin Brockovitch is representative of America’s preference for throwing money at an endless failed drug war over devoting resources to white collar crime. But it wasn’t just them - even Ebert got it wrong!1 The story of a single mother of three who leads a crusade against corporate greed and malfeasance was never going to hit as hard, but has aged considerably better as a story of America in the two-and-a-half decades since (it also has Julia Roberts so, naturally).
165. I’m Still Here (‘Ainda Estou Aqui’) (2024):
Directed by: Walter Salles
Starring: Fernanda Torres, Fernanda Montenegro, Selton Mello, Valentina Herszage.
Nominations (wins in bold): Best Picture, Best Actress in a Leading Role (Fernanda Torres), Best International Feature.
Metacritic: 85% RT: 97% Letterboxd: 4.3/5 CinemaScore: N/A Ebert: N/A Mark: 3.5/5
The Brazilian contingent of the Academy announced themselves with fervor during the 2024 awards season, orchestrating one of the best campaigns in recent history to get this film and its star high-profile nominations. Deservedly so - I’m Still Here is an enraging film about how a woman manages to keep it all together when her husband, a former Brazilian politician, is kidnapped by the new authoritarian regime. Fernanda Torres is phenomenal throughout, but she secured her Oscar nomination with her reaction to (finally) receiving her husband’s death certificate. Gut-punching.
Fun fact - Fernanda Torres was only the second Brazilian actress to be nominated for Best Actress after her mother, Fernanda Montenegro, who is also in the movie!
164. The Trial of the Chicago 7 (2020):
Directed by: Aaron Sorkin
Starring: Eddie Redmayne, Sacha Baron Cohen, Mark Rylance, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Frank Langella, Jeremy Strong, John Carroll Lynch, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Michael Keaton.
Nominations (wins in bold): Best Picture, Best Actor in a Supporting Role (Sacha Baron Cohen), Best Original Screenplay, Best Cinematography, Best Editing, Best Original Song (”Hear My Voice”).
Metacritic: 76% RT: 89% Letterboxd: 3.8/5 CinemaScore: N/A Ebert: N/A Mark: 3.5/5
All writers need an editor. Unfortunately, when you’re the man who wrote A Few Good Men, The American President, The West Wing, The Social Network, Moneyball and Steve Jobs, Hollywood kinda lets you do what you want. In the case of Aaron Sorkin, what he evidently wanted to do was direct. Since 2017’s Molly’s Game, every Sorkin-written film has also been Sorkin-directed. I don’t believe it to be the disastrous combination some see it as, but after three films, it’s not an entirely winning pairing. Far too often does Director Sorkin indulge the desires of Writer Sorkin, whose idealism, if left unchecked, can border into naivety and sanctimoniousness. The concluding moments of The Trial of the Chicago 7 are illustrative. Upon being granted a moment to plea for lenient sentencing, Eddie Redmayne’s Tom Hayden reads the names of every American soldier killed thus far in Vietnam. As he’s doing so, the courtroom audience rises in rapturous applause and remains standing as the credits roll. It’s a self-congratulatory move that rings false knowing such a moment did not occur in the real Trial of the Chicago 7. It’s Sorkin indulging his worst impulses and expecting a pat on the back for it. It sours the mood of an otherwise pretty good and timely film about people speaking truth to power and how power chooses to respond.
163. Silver Linings Playbook (2012):
Directed by: David O. Russell
Starring: Jennifer Lawrence, Bradley Cooper, Robert de Niro, Jacki Weaver, Anupam Kher, Chris Tucker, Julia Stiles, Shea Whigham.
Nominations (wins in bold): Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor in a Leading Role (Bradley Cooper), Best Actress in a Leading Role (Jennifer Lawrence), Best Actor in a Supporting Role (Robert De Niro), Best Actress in a Supporting Role (Jacki Weaver), Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Editing.
Metacritic: 81% RT: 92% Letterboxd: 3.7/5 CinemaScore: N/A Ebert: 3.5/4 Mark: 3.5/5
Jennifer Lawrence won her Oscar for this film, but I view it more as the moment Bradley Cooper came out as a Philadelphia Eagles fan announced himself as a serious actor. It’s not my favorite Cooper performance of the last 15 years (that’d be Jackson Maine, obviously), he leans a little too heavy into Sean Penn in I Am Sam territory, but any analysis of the last two decades in film cannot overlook the part-owner of Angelo’s cheesesteak and it starts here.
162. CODA (2021):
Directed by: Sian Heder
Starring: Emilia Jones, Marlee Matlin, Troy Kotsur, Eugenio Derbez, Ferdia Walsh-Peelo, Daniel Durant, Amy Forsyth, Keivn Chapman.
Nominations (wins in bold): Best Picture, Best Actor in a Supporting Role (Troy Kutser), Best Adapted Screenplay.
Metacritic: 72% RT: 94% Letterboxd: 3.9/5 CinemaScore: N/A Ebert: N/A Mark: 3.5/5
To date, CODA remains the only Best Picture winner to be produced and distributed by a streaming company. Apple’s win came six years after Netflix and Roma first set their sights on the top prize, so it must’ve stung like a bitch for Serandos and Co. to see TimApple steal the win out from them. Doubly so as their Power of the Dog spent most of the season in the front-runner position. CODA, a story about a family of deaf individuals and their one hearing daughter, is a very cute family film and the ending is guaranteed to make you cry, but its win remains an oddity in the history books. In addition to the aforementioned Dog, the other nominees include, among others, Dune: Part One and Spielberg’s West Side Story. By some combination of Netflix-fatigue, unwillingness to honor a first film in a trilogy, and inability to recognize greatness when it’s right in front of you, all were passed over.
161. Boyhood (2014):
Directed by: Richard Linklater
Starring: Ellar Coltrane, Patricia Arquette, Ethan Hawke, Lorelei Linklater, Libby Villari.
Nominations (wins in bold): Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor in a Supporting Role (Ethan Hawke), Best Actress in a Supporting Role (Patricia Arquette), Best Original Screenplay, Best Editing.
Metacritic: 100% RT: 97% Letterboxd: 3.8/5 CinemaScore: N/A Ebert: N/A Mark: 3.5/5
Filmed over a decade, Boyhood follows Mason through his adolescence through his high school graduation. There’s something to be said about watching an individual actually age throughout the film, not just young Ellar Coltrane, but Patricia Arquette and Ethan Hawke as well. I do wish the story was a bit more gripping. The simplicity of it is intended, but it doesn’t make me want to watch it again.
A Sad Note: Late last night it was announced that actor Sam Neill passed away. The Australian actor had a long, productive, and versatile career, deftly playing heroes and love interests as he did crooked cops and Russian military generals. But he will always be Dr. Alan Grant. The no-nonsense paleontologist from Jurassic Park is the heart and soul of the first film (still the best) and Neill handles the job with aplomb. We take for granted the skill needed to reasonably sell a reaction to CGI dinosaurs, yet, Sam Neill made us believe. Thank you Sam.
85 films down. 160 more to go. Thanks for reading! It’s all Odyssey and Nolan for the rest of the week. Hope you secured a ticket! Friday - the Pre-Odyssey Christopher Nolan Film Rankings. See you then.
He (incorrectly )rated Erin Brockovich 2 stars.