Oscar Got It Wrong!: Best Actor 2017

The Contenders:

Timothee Chalamet: Call Me by Your Name
Gary Oldman: Darkest Hour (winner)
Daniel Kaluuya: Get Out
Daniel Day-Lewis: Phantom Thread
Denzel Washington: Roman J. Israel, Esq.

Oscar Got It Wrong!: Best Picture 2017

The Contenders:

Call Me by Your Name
Darkest Hour
Dunkirk
Get Out
Lady Bird
Phantom Thread
The Post
The Shape of Water (winner)
Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri

The Prime Minister's Speech

Films: Darkest Hour
Format: Blu-ray from DeKalb Public Library on rockin’ flatscreen.

For the next 800-1200 words I’m going to talk about Darkest Hour, but I’m also going to address what I see as a significant problem with the Oscars and the nominations. The reason for that is that Darkest Hour is one of those movies that serves as an excellent example for what I see as a continuing and continual problem. Oh, there are plenty of other potential examples. Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close is perhaps the best example I can think of in the last 10 years. Because it’s how my mind is currently working, I think I’m going to address that first.

The problem is that Oscar, or Oscar voters perhaps, don’t seem to know the difference between a movie being good and a movie being important, or at least about an important topic. I fully understand why many people in the film industry seemed to think that Darkest Hour was an important film. Depending on your political persuasion, this could well be seen as an inspiring story of someone standing up to face off against fascism when it appeared that fascism was taking over the world. I get that some will call it rousing. I understand this more or less memoir taken from Churchill’s life is something that people thing demands to be seen. But did it really need to be nominated for Best Picture?