10 Best Picture Winners Everyone Is Far Too Harsh On
4. American Beauty
American Beauty is a terrific movie. Sure, it's a little corny and thematically predictable at times, but why has it become cool to hate it? It feels like it's yet another example of hating something because it's popular.
The film is dramatically powerful, visually stunning and features fantastic performances from all involved. It has many valid and three-dimensional things to say about mankind and modern life. All of its characters have interesting (If occasionally predictable) narrative arcs and the ending is seriously shattering. The film also benefits from its wonderfully dark humor and clever visual metaphors.
American Beauty is a killer drama on the whole, and while it wasn't quite the best film of 1999, it was a thoroughly worthy Best Picture winner. As well as this, since the Academy excluded the many great films of 1999, the Academy was simply picking a good choice from the films they had actually selected.
The line-up that year is generally cited as one of the worst in history, with Magnolia, All About My Mother, Fight Club, The Matrix, Being John Malkovich, and the true best film of 1999, Toy Story 2, being left out, so American Beauty was a worthy selection out of the limited choice the Academy foolishly gave themselves.
This is one backlash that needs to die.