(Part of the Misunderstood Blog-a-thon.) I did something I’ve never done before. I’ve been an avid (rabid?) movie fan since I was too young to remember. Even today it’s a rare day that I don’t watch at least two movies, more on weekends. But I have never, never (my inner drama queen insists I repeat this for emphasis) watched a movie and immediately turned around and watched it again from the beginning, all in one sitting.
Why does nobody take the frogs seriously? Why does nobody question them? In Paul Thomas Anderson’s Magnolia, the cataclysmic, apocalyptic rain of frogs seems casually accepted. Nobody says: “That’s some fucked-up shit, those frogs.”
When people talk about Oscar snubs, they’re usually speaking emotionally. But we can quantify snubs, at least when it comes to Best Picture. You’ll need to accept one major assumption: that critics in the aggregate are good arbiters of the quality of films. Here is a list of movies – the Best Picture nominees, other serious contenders, and a few never-weres – ranked by their combined scores from Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic.
