If I Picked the Winners: Best Picture 2003

     When I look at the slate of Best Picture nominees from 2003, it appears to have been a true high-water mark, or a crescendo if you rather, for the industries' "epic" films. While we still suffer from the aftershocks of Hollywood's obsession with "the epicness of epicdom" (two made up words, I know, but that's just how self-consciously epic these films are, ordinary words from the English language do not adequately describe them), in 2003, the tone still felt new and fresh, which not only allowed for successful box office receipts, but high critical praise as well (thus the Oscar nominations). In the years following, while the box office receipts may have remained consistent, Tim Burton's dreadful version of "Alice in Wonderland" is a prime example of this ongoing monetary success (thank you world for continuing to encourage this sort of garbage), the grades from critics and enthusiasts have slowly fallen away as the genre has become increasingly stale. In 2003 though, we had mostly good films from the genre in our rearview mirror ("Gladiator",  the first two "Lord of the Rings" films, and to a lesser extent, "The Patriot"), so the potential for the genre was promising and people were ready to bite on anything that had the slightest whiff of saga. This is why you see two films ("The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King" and "Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World") among the nominees with a colon in their title (a surefire sign of how epic a film is), and while "Mystic River" and "Lost and Translation" exist well outside the boundaries of the "epic" genre, I am tempted to throw in "Seabiscuit" into the "epic" mix as well.

     There may be no swords, bow and arrows, or large battle scenes in "Seabiscuit", but tonally it carries a lot of similarities to these films. The heavy use of cliches and conventionalities without the slightest sense of acknowledgment or self-deprecation, blatant ploys to smother the audience in sentimentalities, and exaggerated finales where everything comes down to "this one moment", plague all three of these films. This should really come as no surprise, seeing as how the "sports" genre and the "epic" genre are really parallels of one another (is a "game" not just a low stakes version of a "battle"?), and the tone of the modern day sports film has seen the same shift to overwrought drama that the epic has experienced in the last few years, which is why I include "Seabiscuit" in the group of epic films.

     Were there any superior alternatives to these epic films though? For any one year (including 2003), there is always a growing list of films from that year that I still wish to see, so while I haven't become the expert of "films in 2003" that I would like to be, I still feel I am able to answer this question with a definitive, "Yes"! As you may have ascertained from the opening paragraph, I am a tough critic of Tim Burton's recent films, but in a decade of average to sub-par work, the one shining exception to his recently abysmal output is 2003's "Big Fish", a delightful return to form about a son and his dying father's "tall tales", and a film superior to almost all of the Academy's nominations. Another film that I would have preferred to see as a Best Picture nominee over most of the actual nominees, is my favorite auteur's film, Quentin Tarantino, "Kill Bill Vol. 1". Other possible substitutes that I would have preferred over some of the nominees include the Harvey Pekar biopic, "American Splendor", the Jack Black rock comedy, "School of Rock", the small little dramedy about the life of a dwarf (pun absolutely intended), "The Station Agent", and the true story of the journalistically fraudulent life of Stephen Glass, "Shattered Glass". As always though, we must come back to reality, so let's get down to ranking the nominees.