Oscar Got It Wrong!: Best Picture 1996

The Contenders:

The English Patient (winner)
Fargo
Jerry Maguire
Secrets & Lies
Shine

Oscar Got It Wrong!: Best Original Screenplay 1996

The Contenders:

Fargo (winner)
Jerry Maguire
Lone Star
Secrets & Lies
Shine

Oscar Got It Wrong!: Best Actress 1996

The Contenders:
Emily Watson: Breaking the Waves
Kristin Scott Thomas: The English Patient
Frances McDormand: Fargo (winner)
Diane Keaton: Marvin’s Room
Brenda Blethyn: Secrets & Lies

Oscar Got It Wrong!: Best Director 1996

The Contenders:
Anthony Minghella: The English Patient (winner)
Joel Coen: Fargo
Milos Forman: The People vs. Larry Flynt
Mike Leigh: Secrets & Lies
Scott Hicks: Shine

Mommie (Kinda) Dearest

Film: Secrets & Lies
Format: Video from The Magic Flashdrive on laptop.

Mike Leigh’s Secrets & Lies is the second film in two days to completely blindside me. I knew virtually nothing about it going in, and now, having seen it, I’m not sure how it passed completely under my radar. I mean, this is a film that nabbed five Oscar nominations, and those nominations were in real categories. It has a remarkably simple premise and spins it through the lives of real people, producing something startling and beautiful.

The story is deceptively simple. A young black woman with the amazingly awesome name of Hortense Cumberbatch (Marianne Jean-Baptiste) has recently lost her mother. She was adopted as a child. With both of her parents dead, she decides it is time to look up her birth mother. See, pretty simple premise.