"Best" Picture

I don’t like the Academy Awards show per se, but I do love movies, and I definitely like it when other people can pull out the “best” as ones I should watch, or, more likely, tell myself I need to watch.

Take last year’s nominees for Best Picture. I only saw the ones in bold, but every single other movie (still) sits on my to-watch list:

·         Avatar

·         The Blind Side

·         District 9

·         An Education

·         The Hurt Locker

·         Inglourious Basterds

·         Precious

·         A Serious Man

·         Up

·         Up in the Air

But there’s a huge difference between telling yourself you should see something and actually wanting to see it. A good illustration of this is the time I requested Schindler’s List on Netflix and it sat unwatched in my apartment for 8 WEEKS(!) before I finally just gave in and returned it, unopened. I just couldn’t get jazzed up about watching something that was bound to be depressing. This goes double for Precious, which seems like such a downer that 30 Rock created the parody movie title: Hard To Watch: Based off the book "Stone Cold Bummer" by Manipulate.

And now a year has passed, and I can ask myself if what I’ve been watching at the movie theater is of any quality. Below are this year’s nominations for Best Picture:

·         Black Swan

·         The Fighter

·         Inception

·         The Kids Are All Right

·         The King's Speech

·         127 Hours

·         The Social Network

·         Toy Story 3

·         True Grit

·         Winter's Bone

Hmm…it looks like I did exactly the same as last year (4/10). If it makes it any better, though, I actually am interested in watching all the nominees I haven’t seen this year (except 127 Hours—BARF!). And, to pull this off before the awards are announced, I think I’m going to attend one of AMC’s movie marathons. I feel like it would be so festive, but then I think about how long that would actually put me in a grubby movie theater seat—forever. UGH! Decisions!

How many of this year’s nominees have you seen? Better question: how many did you like?