The 5 Most Ridiculous Golden Globe Best Picture Winners. Ever.
The Golden Globes honor film comedies and dramas, and sometimes that's unfortunate. Brilliant comedies don't necessary come out every year, and every so often the dramas lag too. 1977 was very comedy/musical-heavy (Annie Hall, The Goodbye Girl, Saturday Night Fever) and 1990 was drama-heavy (Dances With Wolves, Goodfellas), and for that reason we'll give the Hollywood Foreign Press some credit for picking these five weird winners. But not too much -- the #1 entry on our list is laughably unforgivable.
5. Atonement
2007 was a great year for film, as decade-topping totems like No Country for Old Men and There Will Be Blood peppered award season. That's why it was weird -- nay, perplexing -- that Atonement, an attractive period romance with a good sex scene, beat out the Coens, Paul Thomas Anderson, and even Michael Clayton for the night's biggest trophy. It's not a bad film; it's just not building a legend the way its competitors still are. Also in 2007 (the ceremony that was canceled thanks to the WGA strike): Juno lost the comedy award to Sweeney Todd.
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Home Alone is still the best film of those last five. Pretty Woman is practically unwatchable, but maybe that's just me blaming it for every intolerable Julia Roberts film that followed.
I haven't seen Pretty Woman in some time, but I think I'd still put Dick Tracy above Home Alone. Breathless Mahoney's squawking outclasses the Wet Bandits' yelps by mere decibels.
Home Alone is perhaps cleverer, but I know plenty of other...uh, 'guys who listen to Vanity' that appreciate Dick Tracy more than is perhaps warranted (or who appreciate the potential), me being one of them.
I never forgot how much pain I felt watching Green Card.
I have to admit, I've seen Pretty Woman dozens of times. I just think it's well-written and irresistible.
Why do I find myself always the Atonement apologist? I really enjoyed it, and thought it was an intelligent adaptation of a very fine novel. Is the point of the post to question the winner as opposed to its competition, or just question the winner period? Because I submit that the following winners are all much worse than Atonement: Ben Hur, Midnight Express, Auntie Mame, The Secret of Santa Vittoria, Scent of a Woman, Doctor Zhivago, Guys and Dolls, A Star is Born (1976), Anne of the Thousand Days, Born on the 4th of July, The Longest Yard. Weirdest winner for its category: Come Back, Little Sheba for BEST COMEDY/MUSICAL.
I remember watching "Love Story" during an emotional block. Basically, I couldn't cry, and I heard this movie was what the kids/olds call a "tearjerker." Well, not only did I not cry when Ali MacGraw died, I was glad she died. She annoyed me to no end. It took Tim Russert dying to get me to finally cry.
I need to watch "Home Alone" again. It's been forever and ever.
you diss Alec for playing Japanese in favor of a movie that had Mickey Rooney putting in a pretty much totally racist version of the same thing.
Thank you! I'm a baby boomer and I saw Love Story in the theater when it was first released. The best part of the movie for me was when that irritating bad acting young woman FINALLY died. I thought it was one of the most annoying movies I'd ever seen and I still do.
Colander, you can't just spring it on me last minute that we're soulmates.
Apparently 1962 was the year of casting liberties
Re: The Greatest Show on Earth...I have to ask whether you've ever seen Around the World in 80 Days, because in my mind that films absolutely owns the title "Oscar's Worst Best Picture".
Also, can we please return to the days when a Golden Globe was a nothing award, y'know, akin to a Grammy? Although it's worse because they're voted on by such a tiny group of people? I hate the razzle dazzle stupidity of the Oscars, but at least there's a large group voting for any given award there.