Our Team’s Favorite Oscar Winners + Pick this Year’s Winners with Us!
If you have been reading this blog for any length of time, you know I LOVE the Oscars. It’s silly, I know. The show is really long, often tedious, and the Academy gets it wrong A LOT. Certainly, they are not without their flaws. (Only 10 women ever nominated for Best Director and only 3 wins? OUT OF 96! And, let’s not forget the complete absence of people of color in pretty much EVERY category.) But, I do love the spectacle, the fashion, and the celebration of art.
Every year we try to commemorate the occasion in some way. This year we are hosting our first ever Oscars Pool! Compete against friends, neighbors, our team, and complete strangers from around the country to win a $100 gift card to one of our three stores. You get to choose which one – or combination of stores! Go to our Instagram accounts – Red Barn Mercantile, Penny Post, Pippin Toy Co. – follow one or all of them, and comment “Best Picture” on the Oscar post to get a link to the pool. Fill out your pool – it’s FREE to play – then watch the show (and leaderboard) to see if you got it right!
To kick off the Oscars fun, I thought it would be nice to share a list of our team’s favorite Best Picture winners. Rotten Tomatoes has a listing of all 96 Best Picture winners listed based on their Rotten Tomatoes score. Using that, our team put together this list in their own words just for you:
Cecilia: My favorite movie is Titanic. Its groundbreaking and timeless cinematography, beautiful costume design, and unforgettable characters hardly break the surface of why it's my favorite. I often quote the film, "I HAVE A CHILD!," or relate present experiences to the movie; I am the musicians playing til’ the end (as an immigration attorney in this political climate.) I love that it perfectly combines romance, thriller, drama, and mystery into one perfect package.
Rena: The Sting is a great movie for many reasons. A thrilling heist whose twists actually aid the story instead of cheapening it as the film goes on, a ragtime soundtrack that revitalized the career of the late Scott Joplin, and proved that the magic of Newman and Redford could be recaptured. Sure, it’s got its faults, with very few minority characters, and the existing female characters reduced to plot gimmicks, but I’m willing to ignore the social implications for a grift a million miles better than Ocean’s 11.
Jen VG: My favorite Academy Award Winning film is Terms of Endearment (1983). This movie has everyone! Shirley MacLaine, Jack Nicholson, Debra Winger, Jeff Daniels, John Lithgow. It’s a family dramedy film focused on the relationship of a mother and daughter over 30 years. I remember asking my mom to take me to see it when I was around 12 years old. Afterward, my mom said it made her sad—the many dysfunctional aspects of their relationship and wondered why I wanted to see the film. I told her I liked it because it was so crazy and nothing like my life. Now watching it through the lens of a mother myself, I can see her perspective. It remains nothing like my life, but I still love it! Definitely keep the tissues close by.
Caiti: Pick a BEST Best Picture winner? This is an obviously impossible question. I have selected one best picture winner by decade—with special nods to the decades where I believe film making reached new heights (90s and 2000s). I’ll nod to the 70s as a good decade for film, too. Every winner in the 70s is fan-frickin-tastic. (Patton, The French Connection, The Godfather, The Sting, The Godfather Part II, One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Rocky, Annie Hall, The Deer Hunter, Kramer vs Kramer).
Between these, if I absolutely had to choose a single film; like my feet were to a fire - I'd pick The Godfather Part II. It is un-eclipsed in every category: story, acting, direction, cinematography, score.
Leann: Too many ones to choose from!!! I think my favorite is Chicago. I am a huge musical/theatre fan and I listen to that album often. I love everything about it, from the music, singing, to the actors. I find the movie fun and funny without it being a comedy.
I would have submitted Goodfellas, but it lost to Dances with Wolves :’(
Jessica O: My favorite Oscar Best Picture Winner is Parasite.
For about a decade, I went to theaters every February to watch all the best picture nominees with a group of friends. Parasite was the winner the last year before the world shut down, and I was on the edge of my seat the whole time!
Nancy: I would say my favorite hobby is watching movies and seeing the characters come alive and admiring the cinematography of a director’s vision.
I am going to say: Out of Africa
Two immense stars of the screen— Meryl Streep and Robert Redford and the sweeping beauty of Africa; the land, wildlife and the people. Great music, costume design, cinematography and acting make this one of my favorite movies. A bit of a tear-jerker at the end but who doesn’t love a good cry?
Top it off that it’s a true story as well: a memoir by Isak Dinesen. Meryl, of course, nails the Danish Accent in her leading role.
Me: Spotlight is my favorite Oscar winner. It is pitch perfect. Considering it was a true story, at any point it could have sensationalized the horrors of the subject matter the journalists were reporting, but it didn’t. It could have made outsized heroes of the journalists, but it didn’t. Instead, it was a true depiction of how regular humans go about doing the extremely important work of telling a heart-breaking story. There were no cheap emotional tricks. It treated the audience with respect, and I appreciated that. Also, my husband is a former journalist, so I have a soft spot in my heart for them. And, we saw it with friends who are former journalists, so there’s that influence too. ; )
