The Oscars Review Board - 4) Best Picture
If these were the best pictures, how bad could the worst ones have been?
Tony Bill, Michael and Julia Phillips, The Sting (1974) - The Sting is a hugely entertaining picture, best known for reuniting the Butch & Sundance team of Paul Newman and Robert Redford and for showcasing the ragtime jazz of Scott Joplin. What it isn’t, however, is a better film than William Friedkin's The Exorcist, George Lucas's American Graffiti or Ingmar Bergman's Cries & Whispers. And when you note that the films that went un-nominated included The Last Detail, The Day Of The Jackal and Serpico, you have to wonder whether grifters like the ones played by Redford and Newman pulled some strings to ensure The Sting's Best Picture success.
Richard D and Lili Fini Zanuck, Driving Miss Daisy (1990) - It's an amiable enough movie is Driving Miss Daisy, even with its icky racial undertones. 1989, though, was a really good year for film, with movies as diverse as Oliver Stone's Born On The Fourth Of July, Jim Sheridan's My Left Foot, Peter Weir's Dead Poets Society and Phil Alden Robinson's Field Of Dreams all in the running for the 'big one'. Ask a friend which of these five movies they'd most like to see and you'll get very long odds on them selecting Bruce Beresford's gentle drama. That's unless they're an octogenarian southerner with a black chauffeur, of course.
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