With the recent announcement of the Academy Award nominees, it has been another disappointing year for movies. I was speaking with some friends the other day about Oscar's Best Picture category in the past when they only had five selections each year. During that time, the category was made up of at least three popular movies that most filmgoers had heard of with one or two artsy films thrown in for good measure. It always resulted in at least two or three other great movies being left off the list and people claiming those films had been shunned by the Academy.
When it was announced the Academy would be expanding that category to allow for up to 10 nominations, it seemed we'd be getting an average of eight or nine movies that were mostly known by the general population, again with two or three avant-garde pictures to appease the critics.
When I was a kid, the film that took home Best Picture was usually a fantastic watch that was enjoyable to the masses and would be remembered for years to come. Was it always the "best picture"? No, not always. But it was usually a great movie that had its fans. You could always make an argument that another great movie that year had been technically better or was better for other aspects. Yet, it was still a movie that had been digested and talked about by film lovers and casual filmgoers alike.
However, take the last decade of nominees and hardly any of the movies can be considered popular. Oppenheimer is definitely the most-liked and most-viewed of any Best Picture winner in the past two decades. But outside of the Christopher Nolan biopic, the other winners (and many of the nominees) have to be considered niche films. Heck, the winner from 2021, CODA, cannot even be viewed unless you have Apple TV, which I do not.
This has led me to wanting to embrace and celebrate the past films of greatness. I guess this won't be much different than the National Film Registry's list of movies, but I plan to induct 10 films initially and then each subsequent year after that I will add five movies to my list of greatness. These are my personal favorites and are a mix of critically acclaimed and nostalgically loved movies.
So without further ado, the initial inductees into the Matt's Pantheon of Greatness is:
The Godfather (1972)
Casablanca (1942)
From Russia with Love (1963)
Citizen Kane (1941)
Lawrence of Arabia (1962)
Back to the Future (1985)
King Kong (1933)
The Great Dictator (1940)
Jaws (1975)
Saving Private Ryan (1998)