Best Picture of 2016: Moonlight

Chiron is a kid that grows up in rough neighborhood. He is quiet, doesn't really stand up for himself. The movie shows how he grows up and how he finds out who he is.

A24's Moonlight had very crazy night at the 89th Academy Awards. Mahershala Ali took home the Best Actor award that night, and this made history because he is the first Muslim to win an acting award at the Oscars. History was also made when La La Land was mistakenly announced as the Best Picture. The announcers were given the envelope for Best Actress by mistake thinking it was the Best Picture award. The Director for La La Land handled it really well when he came up and said how happy he was the Moonlight Actually won. The other nominations that night were: Paramount's Arrival and Fences; Summit Entertainment's Hacksaw Ridge and La La Land; CBS's Hell or High Water; 20th Century Fox's Hidden Figures; The Weinstein Company's Lion; and Amazon's Manchester by the Sea. 

I have to say I did not want to watch this film and I kind of wish I didn't. I didn't like it plain and simple. I was kind of board of it and it moved on the slow side. 

Best Picture of 2015: Spotlight

In the early 2000's a story broke on Boston the would change everything. It was reported that 70 Priests in the Boston area were reported for having sexually abused children. It's a story that has uncovered thousands of other cases across the world. This is the story about the investigative group Spotlight found the story and discovered the hidden secrets of the Catholic Church.

Open Road's Spotlight took home the top prize that night at the 88th Annual Academy Awards. The other movies nominated that night were: Paramount's The Big Short; DreamWorks Bridge of Spies; Fox Searchlight's Brooklyn; Warner Brothers' Mad Max: Fury Road; 20th Century Fox's The Martian and The Revenant; and A24's Room.

I have to say that when this film came out I was a little worried about it. Knowing how media can sometime depict religion I was a little nervous. I was nervous because New Media can take any religion and make it look like something very negative and ugly no matte what is happening. IN this situation where something ugly was happening in a religious system I was afraid they were going to try and destroy all religion in that of itself. I was very wrong. I am so glad that I was very wrong. The writers, actors, and directors did an excellent job of shining the light of the horrid truth that was happening in the system, without saying that "everyone who is religious is a horrible person". I don't even recall them opening a Bible, or any form of religious text, to help make support claims to either side of the story. The only time a book was opened was for a directory of where are the priests were living in that year. They did an excellent job of showing that certain people needed to be held responsible for their actions and the system needed to be changed. Not that everything in the system was wrong and ignorant and the people who followed that faith were stupid as well. They stuck to the facts and left an individual person's faith in God out of it. I can respect, and was true impressed, that they did that.  

Best Picture of 2014: Birdman or (The Unexpected Virture of Ignorance)

Riggen Thomson is an actor best known for he superhero role in Birdman. After some time of playing the character he decides he wants to known for more. He goes out and tried to make it in other movie, but never really have been as popular. He now has decided to make a Broadway Show of a story by Raymond Carver. This is where we meet him. Becoming obsessed with making the show perfect, and the stress of his daughter getting out of rehab, and this new actor he hired last minute that is diving him up with wall we watch as he is working to make the play a success while being haunted by his old friend Birdman.

Nominated for nine Academy Awards Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) took home the Best Picture. When it came up to the idea of shooting the whole movie in one continuous shot many people thought Director Alejandro G. Iñárritu was crazy! If the film was done in a single shot then you could not go back and rearrange the scene, you could not cut pieces from the same reshot scenes to make it the best. It was all or nothing at all for every single take. It surely did pay off because on of the four Award it won that night was for Best Cinematography. Fox Searchlight claimed the Best Picture Award over: Their own movie The Grand Budapest Hotel; Warner Brothers' American Sniper; IFC's Boyhood; The Weinstein Company's The Imitation Game; Paramount's Selma; Focus Features The Theory of Everything; Sony Pictures' Whiplash. 

Ok, I have been looking forward to watching this film since I started this list two years ago! This is the movie that made me start watching all of the Best Pictures in the first place. I wasn't really that interested in seeing this film until I saw Michael Keaton and Edwards Norton on my favorite late night show Conan. During both of the interview they talked about how the movie was filmed in one shot. I thought that was fascinating because the only other movie that I have known to attempt such a feat was Alfred Hitchcock's Rope. Since I just saw Rope for the first time a month of so before the interviews I needed to make the comparison. Then because of the time difference between the film I got to wondering how movies have changed over the years of Best Picture films. I have to say this movie was crazy, a little strange, dramatic, funny, and overall a fun story to watch! I would had this movie to a must see list any day!

Best Picture of 2013: 12 Years a Slave

Solomon Northup was a free African American living in the north in 1841. A talented violinist, Northup was out looking for his next gig to play at when he is introduced to two men. They are looking for a great talent and start talking to him about him joining their circus. They take him out to dinner and show him a great time. He starts to feel really sick and then is taken back to his hotel room to rest up. The next morning he wakes up in a brick room chained to the wall. He finds out the he has been kidnapped and sold as a slave. We follow Northup for the next 12 years of his life to see the story of the people he met and what his life was like 12 Years A Slave. 

Stories like Northup's do not come around every day. It is also stories like Northup's that are rarely talked about in school. These are the types of stories that get people interest in history. The personal stories of people who have actually live through these time that we hardly hear about. Steve McQueen bringing Northup's story to life proved not only a great story about human spirit to tell, but a story that help people of today really relate and think about what situations like this really were in the past. With the assistance of Fox Searchlight, McQueen was able to being in a few Oscars that night. Other's nominated for Best Picture that night were: Columbia's American Hustle and Captain Phillips; Focus Features' Dallas Buyers Club; Warner Brothers' Gravity and Her; Paramount's Nebraska and The Wolf of Wall Street; and The Weinstein Company's Philomena.

This is a movie that is was very interested in seeing since it came out. However, when it comes to movies about slavery they tend to be very gruesome and overly shocking. I am not saying that slavery was not gruesome or overly shocking. I am saying that how Hollywood plays up those part it tends to overshadow the writing, acting, and other aspects that made that time period as bad as it was. The violence tends to be the focus point of the story rather the story itself. This film did not do any of that. It was violent and it was shocking... but it was appropriate and not excessive. It aided the film to give it meaning and suspense. It was the "money shot" that some of these movie give them just to sell the ticket. This movie had a story that wanted to be told and it was told in a beautiful, powerful, and meaningful way.

Best Picture of 2012: Argo

Argo is the story about how six Americans were saved during the Iran Hostage Crisis in 1979 through 1980.


Argo was one of only nine Best Picture Nominations at the 85th Academy Awards. Warner Brothers' took home the prize over: Sony Pictures' Amour; Fox Searchlight's Beasts of the Southern Wild; The Weinstein Company's Django Unchained and Silver Linings Playbook; Universal's Les Misérables; 20th Century Fox's Life of Pi; DreamWorks' Lincoln; and Columbia's Zero Dark Thirty.


I have to say that this was another film that I could not get into. I have a hard time relating to Ben Affleck as an actor. While I like him more and more as Batman I still have a hard time with his other stuff. The concept and the story of how they got them out is great but I feel is was better suited to be told in a documentary rather than a feature film.

Best Picture of 2011: The Artist

The roaring 20's is an idealistic time to be alive. The economy is thriving and the movies are busting out to great stuff. People love going to see their favorite stars on the big screen. However, everything starts to change when they start adding "talking" to pictures. It's an idea that many in Hollywood was going to fail. After the public falls in love with idea many movies quickly change their style of movie to include talking pictures. However, not a lot a actor have the chops in order to make in talking films. This film follows the story of silent movie actor trying create films in a time when actors realty start to find their voice, and the love story of a young up and come actress who learns that sometimes silence is golden.




The first 100% black and white movie since 1960 to win Best Picture is one of the best to ever come out. The Artist was nominated for 10 Academy Awards and won five of them, included Best Actor. It's a picture that is so unique the it hard to compare it to any other movie in this day and age. The Weinstein Company apparently knows how to make hit movie this day in age because this is second year in a row that they took home the Best Picture Award. They beat out: Fox Searchlight's The Decedents and The Tree of Life; Warner Brothers' Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close; DreamWorks' The Help and War Horse; Paramount's Hugo; Sony Pictures' Midnight in Paris; and Columbia's Moneyball.


I have loved this film since the first time I saw it on DVD. My only regret about the film is that I did not go and watch it while it was out on the big screen. I always find something new about the film every time I watch it. It's a new experience every time. I know that a lot of people were mad when Jean Dujardin won for Best Actor because he was not an America. I am sorry but that is stupid. If you did an amazing enough job to be nominated for the award, of a movie was the shown in America and was allowed to be apart of the Academy Awards, than if you win you deserved to win the award because of the job you did not because of the nationality. If they didn't want to run the risk of him winning than they shouldn't have allowed it be in the running. However, I digress. This film is one of my all time favorite movies and I am actually going to make my Best Friend Alaina watch this film so I can nerd out.

Best Picture of 2010: The King's Speech

Elegant, proper, well spoken, and confident are some of the way you would describe a royal. That you how they are portrayed in every movie, every book and basically every way you see them. However, when you meet Prince Albert, the Duke of York, you quickly learn that well spoken and confident do not seem to be his strong suites. Prince Albert has spoken with a stutter since he was a child. He has gotten a lot of help from several speech therapists but none to any avail. That is until he meets that man by the name of Lionel Logue. The non-medically trained therapist learns a little bit about Prince Albert and starts working with him that day. The Prince is very much over being humiliated and believes he will never be cured. After a surprising result Prince Albert decides to start working with him. He soon learns that it's a good thing because shortly after Prince Albert, King George V, dies and his older brother takes the throne. However, through a crazy scandal of the time, Albert's older brother is forced off the throne and the crown will now goes to Prince Albert.




Filmed in a total of 39 days, The King's Speech is one of the most beautiful pieces of works to ever come on the big screen. The Weinstein Company did a phenomenal job and took home a total of four Academy Awards. This film had a stiff competition of the Best Picture Award that year. They other films nominated were: Fox Searchlight's 127 Hours and Black Swan; Paramount's The Fighter and True Grit; Warner Brother's Inception; Focus Features' The Kids Are All Right; Columbia's The Social Network; Disney's Toy Story 3; and Roadside Attractions' Winter's Bone.


This was the first Academy Awards that I really was starting to pay attention to what was going one. I remember this being a really hard choice just from what I know of the movies. Now that it's been a few years I haven most of these films it's still a hard choice! I will say that this is one of the best films that I have ever seen. You can't ever go wrong with Colin Firth because he knows how to really understand and do justice to a character and he totally deserved the Academy Award for Best Actor that he won.