CHESSNOID

They expanded the Oscars best movie selection up to 10 films.  I think that was more for an economic reason than having more movies being Oscar worthy.   That is my opinion and I can tell you because I have watched all 10 Oscar nominated best picture movies.

I am not sure what everyone bases their opinion on what an Oscar worthy film is?  For me, the film has to wow me in more ways than one.  This year only one of the movies blew me away and that was Avatar.  Incredibly enough, the movie lived up to its hype and surpassed my expectations.

Don’t get me wrong.  I did enjoy some of the other movies like District 9, The Blind Side, Up, and Up In the Air. They were all entertaining and fun to watch.  The other 5 movies, I can’t  even imagine why they received nominations.  I guess I watch so many movies that I have higher expectations from these Oscar nominated movies:  An Education, The Hurt Locker, Inglourious Basterds, Precious, and A Serious Man.  They all had good acting, but the overall movie plots/story lines were not original or well executed.  Another thing I am not clear about is why Up was put in this category and not in Best Animation like the entertaining movie Fantastic Mr Fox.

To put it in perspective, compare these nominations to the 10 previous Oscar winners:  Slumdog Millionaire, No Country for Old Men, The Departed, Crash, The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, Chicago, A Beautiful Mind, Gladiator, and American Beauty.  Those were all great movies and deserved the nominations.  I can’t honestly agree with this year’s 10 best movie picks.  There were actually many more movies than these last 5 picks to me.

I do hope Avatar wins best picture because anything less would be disappointing.