Twenty Years of Oscar: Achievement in Directing

At some point in the late 1990s, probably around '97/'98, I began to realize that there was this job called film director and that it was these creative geniuses that drove the storytelling aspect of movies. Steven Spielberg was my first love. I wanted so much to see all of his movies. I began to learn about filmmaking through him and his love of it. I read about him constantly. "Saving Private Ryan" came to theaters. I went...twice. I was blown away by its power, its greatness.

I got into some Scorsese, "Goodfellas and "Casino." Then, I saw Paul Thomas Anderson's "Boogie Nights" and "Magnolia." I became obsessed with the camera. I began to see the differences in directors' various styles.

I began to understand what made a "Best Director" for the first time.

All of the movies mentioned below are Oscar choices that I just fully agree with. Most of these are for "groundbreaking," even controversial films. All of them are visually masterful pieces of cinema from truly visionary filmmakers.

Twenty Years of Oscar: Actor in a Leading Role

I want to go ahead and get something out of the way: I love Tom Hanks. Now, he didn't make this list because I'm in constant struggle about "Forrest Gump" and whether it's actually a great movie or not. I haven't seen it in years, and I fear it may not be as powerful as I once considered it to be. Also, while his win as Gump was deserved, I am still bitter about his loss in 1998 to that Italian Jumping Bean guy. If Hanks had won for "Saving Private Ryan," he would be on this list.

Anyway, we've reached Day Three in my "Twenty Years of Oscar" extravaganza. Best Actor...it's a biggie. And it is so often one of the tightest races each year. Some are runaways, including most of the picks you'll find below, but it always finds itself a hot topic this time a year. This year, especially. Can't wait 'til Sunday.

Twenty Years of Oscar: Screenplay

So, OK. Anyone who knows Oscar knows about "The Big Five," which are Writing, Directing, Actress, Actor, and Picture. Only a few films have won them all in the same year: "It Happened One Night" (1934), "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" (1975), and "The Silence of the Lambs" (1991). Most recently, "American Beauty" (1999) got close, winning four of the five. Annette Bening got beat out for Best Actress.

Anyway, this is the first in a series of posts that will contain "Top Five" lists on the "Big Five Academy Awards" categories. We start...with writing.

The Academy Award for Writing...there are two. One for an Original work, conceived for the screen alone. The second for an Adaptation, something not initially thought of as a movie.

Since 1994, there have been some absolutely groundbreaking scripts written, several of which have actually changed movies for the better forever. Those are the ones I tried to capture here. Surely, there are many more than ten great scripts in the past twenty years, but these are the ones that meant something to me, and, from my perspective, movies, in general.

Twenty Years of Oscar: If Speaks Picked Best Picture, Part II

I left the last post with a question: What does that say about me? The fact that I only agree with two of the ten Best Picture winners from 1994-2003. I think that's about like everybody else. The movie Oscar picks is not always the one that stands the test of time.

So, we continue...

Twenty Years of Oscar: If Speaks Picked Best Picture, Part I

Each year, we get a list of movies deemed by Hollywood to be the best of the year. For most of my life, this was a short list of five films.

A few years ago, Oscar decided to stop being so elitist and allow up to ten Best Picture nominees. I say do ten if you can do ten. Alas, we've gotten random numbers recently. Nine one year. Eight this year.

For the 1995 show, celebrating the year in movies 1994, I was ten years old. It was the first Oscar telecast I remember watching. It was also the first year I remember actually seeing a movie I loved in the theater win the Best Picture Oscar. I was hooked. The movie was Robert Zemeckis' "Forrest Gump."

I've decided to do a series of posts this week dedicated to the past twenty years of Oscar. There will be posts on what I would've picked, ranked lists of winners I liked in certain categories. General Oscar worship-type stuff. It must be done. The Academy Awards, especially the Best Picture award, is what got me into movies. And you'll find this post and the others to be quite autobiographical.