The Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences has named its picks for the best films of last year. This begs the question: How many of the Oscar-nominated movies have you actually seen?
To be clear here, I’m not asking which of these movies you think is the best, or which you believe will win the award. I only care about how many of them you’ve watched, for better or worse. I’ve included titles from the major categories: Best Picture, Best Director and acting. (There’s a lot of overlap among them.) Vote for as many as apply.
These nominations really expose how little I went out to the theater in 2012. I’m ashamed to admit that I haven’t seen a damn one of them yet. I have interest in catching ‘Zero Dark Thirty’, ‘Argo’ and ‘Django Unchained’, but I’ll likely wait for all on Blu-ray. I don’t mean to pass judgment on any of the others, and I’ll probably see most of them eventually, but right now they interest me significantly less.
HuskerGuy
Just one sadly. We’ve been really bad about getting out to movies in 2012 as well. I expect I’ll see one or two of these this coming Saturday though.
Luke Hickman
I’ve seen them all!
Shannon Nutt
I’ve seen Lincoln and Argo, and will be reviewing Flight shortly. I obviously need to get out more. 🙂
Drew
With the exception of ‘Amour’, I’ve seen every single one of them!
‘Zero Dark Thirty’, ‘Argo’, and ‘Silver Linings Playbook’ are the three best films of the year, in some order. ‘Lincoln’ isn’t far behind.
Barsoom Bob
Funny, I was offered the screener for Amour, I couldn’t bring myself to watch it. I’m older, feeling it, and also retiring this year. Decided to do with out that coming attraction to my hopefully not too near future.
Saw Argo, Lincoln, Life of Pi, Django and Silver Lining Playbook in the theater.
Saw The Master, Flight, Les Miz on screeners
and Beasts of the Southern Wilds on Blu.
All damn good movies and entertaining too, although The Master was more fascinating than entertaining.
Find the idea of a big Hollywood movie on the Osama takedown questionable and ill advised.
Katherine Bigelow should go back to movies like Near Dark, Point Break and Strange Days before she wins the title of the Lini Riefenstahl of American military propaganda.
My favorite four are Argo, Lincoln, Silver Lining and Life of Pi.
Pyronaut
For me, one of the reasons I go to the cinema is the whole spectacle aspect of it. For dramas and comedies I tend to wait until they come to home video, since seeing them on a big screen doesn’t add that much for me (and given the rising prices of cinema tickets, it’s harder to justify the cost).
Action/Adventure/Sci-Fi blockbusters however really benefit from the big screen to me, so I tend to go see them while they’re in the cinema.
Seeing as how most of this is dramas, I’m not surprised that I’ve only seen two. Once they’re out on Blu-Ray though, I will probably have seen most of them.
paramedic0112
I do have a hard time getting to the theater, but I’m glad I saw zero dark thirty on the big screen. I was blown away. I’ve seen a lot of these movies, but zero dark was the best in my opinion. Django and Argo were awesome too. Daniel Day Lewis was a must see also.
T.J. Kats
With three little kids it is hard to get out as much as I would like. I have only seen Argo which was excellent. Out of the rest I am very interested in seeing Django, Lincoln , Zero Dark Thirty, and Silver Linings Playbook.
William Henley
I’ve now seen Les Miserables twice. I have been wanting to get to see Lincoln, but at this point, I will probably wait for it to hit the dollar theater. Interesting to note that, at least from the names I recognize, they had all been released in the past couple of months. That being said, I don’t think I went to the theater much in 2012. I remember seeing Ice Age (free ticket), Woman in Black, Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter, Dark Shadows, MIB3, that Bourne movie, Skysuck – I mean Skyfall – yeah, none were Oscar worthy. Les Mis wasn’t great (it was good, just not great), but compared to the rest of the movies I have seen in the past year, it is clearly the diamond in the rough.
BWOzar
I think it’s been a remarkable movie going year in 2012 – easily one of the best in recent memory. I missed The Sessions and need to see Amour.
I rank the major nominees:
10/10:
Zero Dark Thirty
Lincoln
Argo
9/10:
Life of Pi
The Impossible
Silver Linings Playbook
The Master
8/10:
Django Unchained
Beasts of the Southern Wild
7/10:
Flight
Les Miserables
What a great year for the studio system as even the big mainstream hits (Avengers, Skyfall, Dark Knight Rises) turned out excellently.
William Henley
I forgot about Dark Knight Rises and The Avengers, but I wouldn’t consider them Oscar worthy. They were fun movies. Maybe win something for special effects, sound mixing, or set design, but that’s about it.
JM
‘Django Unchained’ I will buy on blu-ray and watch 55 times.
‘Amour’ and ‘The Impossible’ and ‘Les Miserables’ and ‘Silver Linings Playbook’ and ‘Beasts of the Southern Wild’ I will never watch.
The rest I’ll probably netflix once. I don’t see any other rewatchables.
aaron
you have to wit 7 years to see them on netilix and w’t be in blu-ray or hd.
Julian
Wow, I haven’t seen a single one. Now that’s disturbing. Justified with different release dates: ‘Django Unchained’ came out today and I will be seeing it this Friday, ‘Lincoln’ comes out next week (and I’ll be seeing that one as well) etcetera.
Drew
‘Life of Pi’ isn’t far behind the top 3. It’s a magnificent achievement.
Drew
‘Django Unchained’ fell off the rails after the big climactic shootout. It was a perfect film, up to that point.
The next 20 minutes felt like QT put them in, only to serve himself, and over-indulge. They were extremely wobbly. After those twenty minutes, the film found it’s footing again, and the real climax was outstanding. However, it should have happened immediately after the epic shootout, not after twenty minutes of stumbling around like a drunk, just so that Tarantino could be in it.
It pissed me off! What could have been a masterpiece was watered down with some inexcusable wandering. It’s as if QT thought he was Peter Jackson, for a while.
JM
I wonder if Tarantino is going to be a B-movie dude for the rest of his post-Sally Menke career?
Josh Terzino
I counted Les Mis even though I didn’t see all of it. Movie was so bad I couldn’t watch it without laughing at Hooper’s direction.
Here’s my top ten:
10. Sleepwalk With Me
9. Django Unchained
8. Arbitrage
7. Bernie
6. Your Sister’s Sister
5. Skyfall
4. Beasts Of The Southern Wild
3. Looper
2. The Master
1. Moonrise Kingdom
m gordo
Even though I’m a big fan of both Heneke and Ang Lee, I missed those two.
Those two aside, the best movies of the year were easily, for me, Argo, Zero Dark Thirty, and Django Unchained in no particular order.
The biggest disappointment was Les Miserables.
I find it a real head scratcher that the directors of my top three were not nominated while their movies were. Most perplexing being “Django Unchained.” How do you nominate a Tarantino picture BUT NOT Tarantino? If ever there was a director with a distinct voice and style it would be him. It’s laughable really.
Thulsadoom
I have to admit… Haven’t seen any of them. We’re possibly going to see Life of Pi if it’s still on any screens in the next couple of weeks. In all honesty, I haven’t seen much this last year at the cinema. It’s becoming less and less worth it, given the expense and often the hassle of annoying people and/or badly calibrated sound or projectors.
Apart from getting to see things early, there’s increasingly less point when the experience isn’t as good as you get at home.
Then you get examples like The Hobbit, which we did see, but you then think, was there any point since there’ll no-doubt be a blu ray with an extra 30-60 minutes that will become the ‘proper’ version? With more and more films that do that, you think at the cinema am I seeing a ‘shortened’ version of the full film?
Dennis Lafontaine
Will likely blind buy Blu Rays of Life of Pi and Beasts of Southern Wild – but I have not seen a single one on the list.
aaron
i will only watch them on blu-ray when they come ut and buy them on blu-rau becaus it is chiper for twoto watch and i can’t tall the difrent in pitcher or sound becaus hava 40″ samsg hd 180p 120 hrz tv and a n 7.1 sround sound strio and the blu-ray only cost me 12-15 dallers to buy because i buy them used about 1-2 or 5 days after they come out.