I mean, I’m not a workplace productivity expert, but I can pretty much guarantee you that this is yet another an instance of them coming up with elaborate rationalizations to justify an aesthetic preference.

TIL Suspira and Blue Velvet were based on true stories.

Nice of a member of the Academy to weigh in.

If there were ever year that needed 10 nominees it was 1992. Non-nominated films in ‘92 included Malcolm X, Reservoir Dogs, Glengarry Glen Ross, A League of Their Own, The Player, and as mentioned above, Bram Stoker’s Dracula, which me would put squarely in middle of this list. (and of course, me have soft spot for Mup…

A: Clearly talking about the movie, not the book, same as the article.

You mean black people also enslaved white people for 250 years, then kept them under a system of apartheid for another 100 years? Wow, what assholes.

Two notes on Seven Samurai. Star Wars and Lord of the Rings are “descendants”, not ancestors. And it is at least thrice remade; Battle Beyond the Stars is a fairly overt Seven Samurai take...

I would have been much happier with a Boyhood, Grand Budapest, or Whiplash win.

A million times yes to Breaking the Waves. With the exception of Fargo, it could have handily beat all others in 1996.

‘86 Back to the Future. 

This is a pretty excellent list of films. Some Best Picture winners were questionable (Cimarron and Crash, for example) but the suggestions here are fun. I’m not entirely against Bram Stoker’s Dracula like many here are. It swept the visuals that year for a reason. It’s incredibly stylish and as an operatic quality…

You’re attacking a sci-fi film for having sci-fi elements. Ditto Shape of Water. A movie is not great because of what it is about but how it is about it.

True about how many great Hitchcock movies that could be on the list. I haven’t seen The Leopard Man so that’s on my To Watchlist now. But I would include Shadow of a Doubt (1943) to the nominee list. And both Joseph Cotton and Teresa Wright should have been nominated for acting awards.

It’s weird how I love or really appreciate almost every nominee during the 70s and early 80s, but I can’t say the same about subsequent decades. I wonder if that’s me/my personal tastes, or cinema in general.

Oops, I agree.

1999 could fill its own alternate all-timer list of rejects (though I would be sad to exclude The Insider from it):

Well, see, now I’m going to watch it. I’m intrigued enough by the sight of a teenage Mayor Clarence Royce.

Would love to see a sentence or two identifying what gets bumped from the actual nominees to make way for these (are we replacing cheap awards bait? a lesser effort from an established creator? something that’s good but doesn’t really rise to “Best Picture” quality?)

Nate last week on Legends of Tomorrow when describing Groundhog Day to a skeptical Zari was right: it is actually extremely well executed.

There are a lot of great films here that I would urge people to see, but I can make no higher recommendation than Cooley High, which is among the most entertaining film-viewing experiences I’ve ever had. The ending is really abrupt—bordering on a little over-the top—but if you want an underrated coming-of-age story in…