We've been asking you all week to vote for your
Oscar picks from the year 2000, eleven years on as we retrospectively take a look back at all the Academy Award ceremonies in the 1990's to see if time has been kind to the winners and losers.
37 of you voted, including a handful of OWF writers, who have collectively awarded the Best Picture statue to a cult film that wasn't even nominated for the top prize, or many prizes at all by the Academy over a decade ago. The number in brackets is the amount of points that film/actor/director gained (that system is
explained here) and it's clear from the five movies you have chosen for Best Picture (and in some ways, those that missed out) that 1999 was a particularly strong year for film...
2000 OWF Awards
BEST PICTURE - FIGHT CLUB (89)
Hated by the studio when brash filmmaker
David Fincher first screened an early cut, deemed unmarketable by 20th Century Fox, ignored by audiences at the box office, and mostly loathed by critics upon it's initial release - satirical thriller
Fight Club was one of the more controversial films of 1999. Excessively violent, anti-establishment, nihilistic, fascist and for the inattentive viewer, celebrating all those things with glee - Fight Club made national headlines when critics were concerned it would usher in copycat behaviour among the general public, similar to that of Stanley Kubrick's
A Clockwork Orange in 1970's Britain. After the film's U.S. box office failure, David Fincher put out an elaborate 2-Disc Special Edition DVD (cited as being one of the first major hits for the medium in it's quest to replace VHS), Fight Club began to establish a cult following, hitting a raw nerve with the young male zeitgeist as the modern man ushered into the new millennium. Fight Club was an innovative film pushing all the tools of the cinematic medium, eclipsing previous boundaries of filmmaking technology and our attitude towards narrative and storytelling. It was original, thrilling and one of the more thought-provoking films of the decade and has held up over time. Whether it's a better film than actual Oscar winner
American Beauty is debatable (I think both films suffer in the third act) but Fight Club is probably the more important release, and no-one should begrudge it's win here.
NOMINATED
American Beauty (61) had won the Oscar ten years ago but despite finding place on most people's lists, it didn't hit the 5 or 4 pointers often enough.
The Insider (53) and
Being John Malkovich (47) were also nominated.
Magnolia (45) was ignored by the Academy ten years ago but has gained a strong following. Omissions: Oscar nominated
The Sixth Sense (43),
The Cider House Rules (3),
The Green Mile (2) and just missing out
The Matrix (40) and
Eyes Wide Shut (28)
BEST DIRECTOR -
David Fincher for Fight Club (18)
David Fincher was not one of the four original directors that producer
Ross Bell first offered
Chuck Palahniuk's Fight Club novel to, but he was a huge fan of the text and had a clear idea of how to tackle it having previously attempted to buy the rights for himself. Neither Fox nor Fincher were initially comfortable working together after their strained relationship on
Alien 3 but they both had a passion for what was dubbed an 'unfilmable story'. Fight Club was David Fincher testing himself further as a filmmaker and delving into deeper themes than his previous genre pieces
The Game and
Se7en.
NOMINATED
Sam Mendes (5) had won the Oscar for American Beauty. Magnolia director
Paul Thomas Anderson (8) had not been nominated a decade ago, and neither had Being John Malkovich's
Spike Jonze (2). There were no nominations for Oscar nominated directors
Lasse Hallstrom (The Cider House Rules) or
Michael Mann (The Insider, despite the film being nominated by many).
BEST ACTOR -
Kevin Spacey for American Beauty (82)
In
American Beauty, versatile actor
Kevin Spacey gave his career defining screen performance as Lester Burnham, a tragic victim of suburban life who hits a mid-life crisis resulting in him quitting his job at an advertising firm and his pathetic attempts to seduce a teenage friend of his daughter. Spacey's facial talents to draw you into his sunken and desperate characters, his sardonic wit and line-delivery and the intelligence behind his eyes make you sympathise with his plight and you strangely find yourself wishing for him to find some joy in the movie and enjoy that momentarily rush of freedom he so craves from the trapped world he finds himself in. Spacey won the Best Actor Award in 2000, and he has again here.
Nominated
Russell Crowe for The Insider (63) and The Hurricane actor
Denzel Washington (43) had been nominated ten years ago. Fight Club's
Edward Norton (45) and Man on the Moon's
Jim Carrey (43) whose performances were overlooked by the Academy have been chosen by you, replacing Sweet and Lowdown's
Sean Penn (38) and
Richard Farnsworth from David Lynch's The Straight Story (27) in the nominated pool.
Matt Damon in The Talented Mr. Ripley (37) just missed out._
BEST ACTRESS -
Annette Bening for American Beauty (102)
Annette Bening plays the immensely unlikable wife of Kevin Spacey's Lester Burnham who is cheating on her husband with her real-estate rival and who strives to paint a portrait of the perfect family to outsiders. She values 'status' over any kind of emotional truth. Bening's screen charisma and her fearlessness to push her possibly under-written character to scary realms, makes her performance memorable and stand-out in what was, outside of the top voted for on this list, a poor year for female lead performances. Bening was nominated but did not win the Oscar.
Nominated
2000 Academy Award winner
Hilary Swank (92) just missed out this time for Boy's Don't Cry in what was only really a two horse race. The End of The Affair actress
Julianne Moore (52) had been nominated ten years ago and is again here.
Nicole Kidman (52) for Eyes Wide Shut and
Reese Witherspoon for Election (38) replace Music of the Heart's
Meryl Steep (28) and Tumbleweeds actress
Janet McTeer (4) in the nominated category. Two actors in foreign films surprisingly gained significant votes,
Cecilia Roth (22) in All About My Mother and
Penelope Cruz in Abros Los Ojos (21).
BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR -
Tom Cruise for Magnolia (83)
Easily the greatest screen performance of
Tom Cruise's career, his seduction guru Frank MacKey allows the actor to showcase his two biggest strengths - his screen charisma (the 'seduce and destroy' moments) and his emotional intensity (the two dramatic scenes where the movie feels like it stops to admire his talent). Cruise's bright, electric and multi-layered moments are the best segments of the film and not unsurprisingly, Cruise's on screen co-star for some of his best scenes,
Phillip Seymour Hoffman, also finds himself nominated by the OWF readers. Cruise missed out on the Oscar in 2000, one of the Academy's biggest mistakes of that year.
Nominated
Oscar winner
Michael Caine (44) fell way short this time for his turn in
The Cider House Rules. Fight Club's
Brad Pitt (48), Fight Club's
Phillip Seymour Hoffman (47) and American Beauty's
Chris Cooper (39) replaced Jude Law from
The Talented Mr. Ripley (33),
Haley Joel Osment from The Sixth Sense (26) and The Green Mile's
Michael Clarke Duncan (19).
John Malkovich (33) just missed out for playing himself in Being John Malkovich in what this year was a highly-competitive category.
BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS
Angelina Jolie (79) - Girl, Interrupted
Completely annihilating the competition in her category,
Angelina Jolie's performance as disturbed mental hospital patient in
Girl, Interrupted is one of the few stand-outs from another weak female category. Her performance was free-spirited, wild and eclipsed the film and performances she shared the film with.