Now, just a few days after watching the final of 2021's ten best picture nominees, I'm announcing another way to systematically gobble through some of the best movies of all time -- according to the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences, anyway.
That's right, watching Nightmare Alley caused me to contemplate how rarely I ever let even a best picture nominee go unseen -- to say nothing, obviously, of the winners. So now I'm going to go back and clean up all the ones I haven't seen yet.
Starting with the most recent best picture nominee I haven't seen -- that would be Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close in 2011 (which is funny because I've actually read the book) -- I'm going to go back through history and watch all the others that slipped through the cracks, either because I didn't make time for them (a comparatively small number) or because I wasn't alive yet (a lot more).
And since this is a large number, there is going to be no set pattern of reoccurrence for these viewings. I'll just have a targeted list and work through it from now until I finish or until my death, whichever comes first.
Just how large a number?
I think I'll show you rather than tell you.
Here's that list in reverse chronological order:
Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (2011)
Ray (2004)
The Prince of Tides (1991)
My Left Foot (1989)
Hope and Glory (1987)
A Room With a View (1986)
Prizzi's Honor (1985)
A Soldier's Story (1984)
Places in the Heart (1984)
A Passage to India (1984)
Tender Mercies (1983)
The Right Stuff (1983)
The Dresser (1983)
Reds (1981)
Coal Miner's Daughter (1980)
Norma Rae (1979)
An Unmarried Woman (1978)
Coming Home (1978)
The Turning Point (1977)
Julia (1977)
Bound for Glory (1976)
Lenny (1974)
A Touch of Class (1973)
Sounder (1972)
The Emigrants (1972)
Nicholas and Alexandra (1971)
Fiddler on the Roof (1971)
Love Story (1970)
Hello Dolly! (1969)
Anne of the Thousand Days (1969)
Romeo and Juliet (1968)
Funny Girl (1968)
Rachel, Rachel (1968)
The Lion in Winter (1968)
Doctor Dolittle (1967)
The Sand Pebbles (1966)
The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming (1966)
A Thousand Clowns (1965)
Ship of Fools (1965)
Darling (1965)
Becket (1964)
How the West Was Won (1963)
America America (1963)
The Longest Day (1962)
Judgment at Nuremberg (1961)
The Hustler (1961)
The Guns of Navarone (1961)
Fanny (1961)
The Sundowners (1960)
Elmer Gantry (1960)
Sons and Lovers (1960)
The Alamo (1960)
Room at the Top (1959)
The Nun's Story (1959)
The Diary of Anne Frank (1959)
Anatomy of a Murder (1959)
Separate Tables (1958)
The Defiant Ones (1958)
Sayonara (1957)
Peyton Place (1957)
The Ten Commandments (1956)
The King and I (1956)
Giant (1956)
Friendly Persuasion (1956)
The Rose Tattoo (1955)
Picnic (1955)
Mister Roberts (1955)
Love is a Many-Splendored Thing (1955)
Three Coins in the Fountain (1954)
Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (1954)
The Country Girl (1954)
The Caine Mutiny (1954)
(At about this point I'm reconsidering the wisdom of typing these all out, but I'm already committed -- the fallacy of sunk costs I guess.)
The Robe (1953)
Julius Caesar (1953)
The Quiet Man (1952)
Moulin Rouge (1952)
Ivanhoe (1952)
Quo Vadis (1951)
A Place in the Sun (1951)
Decision Before Dawn (1951)
King Solomon's Mines (1950)
Father of the Bride (1950)
Born Yesterday (1950)
Twelve O'Clock High (1949)
A Letter to Three Wives (1949)
The Heiress (1949)
Battleground (1949)
The Snake Pit (1948)
Johnny Belinda (1948)
Great Expectations (1947)
Crossfire (1947)
The Bishop's Wife (1947)
The Yearling (1946)
The Razor's Edge (1946)
Spellbound (1945)
Mildred Pierce (1945)
The Bells of St. Mary's (1945)
Anchors Aweigh (1945)
Wilson (1944)
Since You Went Away (1944)
(And here, a hundred titles in, we expand the field to ten nominees per year. Oy.)
Watch on the Rhine (1943)
The Song of Bernadette (1943)
The More the Merrier (1943)
Madame Curie (1943)
In Which We Serve (1943)
The Human Comedy (1943)
Heaven Can Wait (1943)
For Whom the Bell Tolls (1943)
Wake Island (1942)
The Talk of the Town (1942)
Random Harvest (1942)
The Pied Piper (1942)
Kings Row (1942)
49th Parallel (1942)
Blossoms in the Dust (1941)
Here Comes Mr. Jordan (1941)
Hold Back the Dawn (1941)
The Little Foxes (1941)
One Foot in Heaven (1941)
Sergeant York (1941)
All This, and Heaven Too (1940)
Foreign Correspondent (1940)
Kitty Foyle (1940)
The Letter (1940)
The Long Voyage Home (1940)
Our Town (1940)
Goodbye, Mr. Chips (1939)
Love Affair (1939)
Of Mice and Men (1939)
Alexander's Rag Time Band (1938)
Boys Town (1938)
The Citadel (1938)
Four Daughters (1938)
Pygmalion (1938)
Test Pilot (1938)
(Only about ten years left to go ... I'm dying at this point)
The Awful Truth (1937)
Captain Courageous (1937)
Dead End (1937)
The Good Earth (1937)
In Old Chicago (1937)
Lost Horizon (1937)
One Hundred Men and a Girl (1937)
Stage Door (1936)
Anthony Adverse (1936)
Dodsworth (1936)
Libeled Lady (1936)
Romeo and Juliet (1936)
San Francisco (1936)
The Story of Louis Pasteur (1936)
A Tale of Two Cities (1936)
Three Smart Girls (1936)
Alice Adams (1935)
Broadway Melody of 1936 (1935)
Captain Blood (1935)
David Copperfield (1935)
The Informer (1935)
The Lives of a Bengal Lancer (1935)
A Midsummer Night's Dream (1935)
Les Miserables (1935)
Naughty Marietta (1935)
Ruggles of Red Gap (1935)
Top Hat (1935)
The Barretts of Wimpole Street (1934)
Cleopatra (1934)
Flirtation Walk (1934)
The Gay Divorcee (1934)
Here Comes the Navy (1934)
The House of Rothschild (1934)
Imitation of Life (1934)
One Night of Love (1934)
Viva Villa! (1934)
The White Parade (1934)
42nd Street (1933)
Lady for a Day (1933)
Little Women (1933)
The Private Life of Henry VIII (1933)
She Done Him Wrong (1933)
State Fair (1933)
A Farewell to Arms (1932)
I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang (1932)
Smilin' Through (1932)
One Hour With You (1932)
Shanghai Express (1932)
(Go away, I'm dead)
Arrowsmith (1931)
Bad Girl (1931)
The Champ (1931)
Five-Star Final (1931)
The Smiling Lieutenant (1931)
East Lynne (1931)
Skippy (1931)
Trader Horn (1931)
The Big House (1930)
The Divorcee (1930)
Disraeli (1929)
The Love Parade (1929)
Alibi (1929)
Hollywood Revue (1929)
The Patriot (1928)
In Old Arizona (1928)
The Racket (1928)
7th Heaven (1927)
That's 201 goddamn movies. (At the very least, I shouldn't have bothered to go back through and italicize them.)
So yeah I'm not close.
I can't tell you what percentage of these films I had literally never heard of before, but it might have been as high as half of them. Then there are others I know pretty well by reputation, but had absolutely no idea they were thought of well enough to have been nominated for best picture.
Obviously there's a big difference between the time I was alive and a cinephile and the years before I was born. I've only missed two 21st century nominees, and you have to go back to 1984, when I was 11 (at the time the Oscars were announced anyway), to find a year where there's more than one nominee I haven't subsequently seen. Only 16 years earlier in 1968, though, 80 percent of the nominees have eluded me to this point.
Now, it's possible I will get to some of these for other reasons before I get to them as part of this series. That's okay. I'm thinking of doing a monthly series on classic musicals, maybe even as soon as next year, and if I do that, I will almost certainly watch some of these. Plus I've already said I should watch The Hustler before I watch The Color of Money for my Scorsese series. And to be honest, it's just as well, because I actually would like to finish this project before I die.
Quite a few of these, I bet, are so obscure that I won't even be able to figure out how to watch them. I'll cross that bridge when I come to it.
I can't tell you how soon I'll get to Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, and to be honest, writing out this whole list, and reckoning with its gargantuan size, has dampened my enthusiasm for the whole thing. But since I generally like to strike while the iron's hot, I'll probably get started pretty soon. It's better when you announce something and then don't just let it die on the vine.
Unlike other series, I don't actually know if I'll write about each one of these, though I will probably try. I guess it depends on how much else I have going on on the blog at the time, and how tedious it all starts to feel.
Taking early bets on when I will finish this series ... the over/under is currently the year 2046.
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