During Oscar season, it’s always fun (at least for me) to go back and look through history, at Best Picture Oscar winners of year’s gone by. Some of these movies age like fine wine, others curdle and wilt from our collective consciousness over time.
So here’s a little reindeer game for you: ranking the Best Picture Oscar winners in different decades. Let’s start with what is probably the most difficult of all the decades, the 1970s. Difficult because this was the turning point in American cinema. Difficult because all of these films, deserving of the Best Picture statue or not, are truly wonderful and important – at least, in the sense that movies can be important. Here goes nothing…
2. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975)
Milos Forman’s psyche ward drama, based on Ken Kesey’s novel, is a sharp indictment of society fighting against the system. Who’s really crazy? It doesn’t seem R.P. McMurtry (Jack Nicholson) is really the one who’s insane here. One of only three films to win the Big Five (Picture, Actor, Actress, Director, Screenplay), Cuckoo’s Nest is often times hilarious, fun, sometimes maddening, occasionally infuriating, and forever an unforgettable allegory for the way society functions.
