In 96 years, the Academy Awards have gone from a 15-minute ceremony with about 200 people to the foremost award for the best of the year in film. The Oscars are always in flux, changing awards, rules, voting bodies, etc., to stay up with the times. But in looking at the films themselves, cinephiles can see the shifting of film history.
The Broadway Melody exists in this weird in-between state, where films were still figuring out how to utilize this new technology while also shaking off the way of doing things in the silent era, and boy, does it feel like it. The songs are bland, the story is cringy, and the performances are over-the-top. In 1929, The Broadway Melody must’ve been a sight to behold, but nearly a century later, even its innovations don’t warrant giving this one a watch.
The ever-reliable Sandra Bullock decides not to be so judgmental when her housekeeper helps her after she falls down, like, four steps. Matt Dillon apparently isn’t such a garbage person because he doesn’t let the woman he felt up earlier in the film blow up in a car crash. Ludacris is a hero because he doesn’t let a van full of immigrants get sold. BUT all that being said, Crash is at least an interesting mess, and the way these stories weave into each other is at least occasionally well-done.
Yet while an uncomfortable watch at times full of pacing issues, the scale that Cimarron attempts in adapting Edna Ferber’s story of the Oklahoma land rush and spanning several decades is still spectacular for the time. Five-time nominee Dunne, who never won an Academy Award, also gives a strong performance despite the film’s many problems.
This story of the man behind the Ziegfeld Follies proves that the Academy has always loved their bloated biopics, even though William Powell does his best as the title character. It’s understandable how it would’ve been a marvel at the time of its release, but today, The Great Ziegfeld is merely a showcase for how far cinema has come since the mid-1930s.
One of the most puzzling Best Picture winners, Tom Jones is a wild, horny comedy where the titular character basically screws his way around England. The film’s narration begins with the statement that Tom was a bastard “born to be hanged,” and Richardson’s film never dissuades viewers that that’s exactly how this story will—and probably should—end. Tom Jones is a strange social satire that became oddly popular in the U.S.
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