Repicking the 2004 Oscars -- What They Got Wrong, and What Should've Won Best Picture

Added: 2026-05-15

[00:00:00]Right, it's time to revisit the 2004 Oscars. I do my historical revisionism of it. I picked the the what I think is the best picture winner using the rules of the time. Here is the list of Oscar eligible movies from the site at OGT. I assume it's correct. This is the year 2003. So, movies released roughly in the year 2003 and those are Oscar eligible and then some are not. I'm going to put them on my list and give you great recommendations.

[00:00:28]And we'll just completely again blow this list up of the best picture winner, the nominees, and so on. And here's the original list, the best picture winner, and also the best director list, which is always very similar to the best picture list. We have Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King. We have the final installment in the trilogy, the best picture winner because it made I mean among other things, it made a ton of money. Sophia Copela, Lost in Translation, Master and Commander, uh, which is beloved by a number of people in my sphere, uh, social sphere, Mystic River, and Seab Biscuit. And then when you get to best director, I'm going to botch these names. I'm sorry. I did not look up the pronunciation. Cydia God, uh, directed by Fernando Mariah. No, I'm not going to try it. That was a slight though because it was actually co-directed by Katya Lond. I probably mispronounced her name, but at the time it was sort of controversy. It still should be a slight because here we have a female co-director and she never really did another feature film and I find that she is essential or probably her vision was essential to this movie which in my strong opinion should have been nominated over Seab Biscuit 100%.

[00:01:37]Anyway, this list is okay uh better than other previous years. is the best picture winner. You can hate it, you can love it, but you can kind of understand why they gave it to The Lord of the Rings. Here are my nominees, though. I I as always, I make a draft of nominees of what I might put in my top five or five best picture nominees, what I might pick a best picture from. And I try to stick to the rules of the time, the eligibility rules. I have a noteworthy list of movies I kind of like or most people really like. I put them there that just to read off this list.

[00:02:09]Anything else is a decent I think underrated Woody Allen movie. You probably have to like Woody Allen movies to like this movie, but I did. Elf favorite Christmas movie a number of people. Finding Nemo favorite Pixar movie and Old Boy is one of the highest rated movies uh on the internet. Now I did like Park Chenwick's Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance, which I I think I nominated uh from the previous year, the 2003 Oscars. Old Boy is not my favorite movie, so I'm putting it down here. Um, whatever. Open Range. Here you get to see Kevin Cost and Robert Duval in a western. That's kind of cool. Cool. Rock is, you know, a lot of people like it and I I kind of got some of it. Okay, whatever. Terminator 3, that's my pick.

[00:02:55]Uh, for a treadmill movie, I I do actually kind of like it. I know it's people think it's stupid. Whatever.

[00:03:01]Let's get to the draft and nominee list.

[00:03:03]It's more interesting. in here. I don't know what I This is This list is so vexing. I don't know what to do with what to do with this list. It's going to be hard to pick a best picture winner from this list for me because I don't find one is is a standout here. In fact, I separated these according to stylistic movies of of great interest and then storybased movies that I watch for the characterization and story. And they're quite good movies in each camp, but there's not a movie to me that really stands out as doing kind of both uh very well or like excellently above all the other ones. So, let's go over this real quickly. 21 Grahams, Alejandro Inato, who is a favorite of this channel. Uh a very interesting narrative, a mixed narrative. If you think Momento is weird or some of Nolan's stuff, you should check this movie out for how it I mean, the editing is amazing where it cuts up a story in like almost like randomly, but not definitely not, but it will feel like it. It's very interesting uh narrative chron chronology versus the actual story chronology of this movie.

[00:04:10]American Splendor. This is you should check this out. It's a very interesting graphic novel movie about Harvey Pecar mixed mode. It actually uses Mr. Pecar in some documentary footage, but then it has Paul Giamati and I think one of his first, if not his first, like major starring roles as sort of a bum down 1970s wannabe comic book artist and it's a perfect role for Giamati. And this movie mixes, I think, some animations in it, some documentary, and some fictional stuff. It is really of interest. I would go check this out if you like anything about what I just said. City of God is sitting there movie from Brazil that at the time was very popular it still is.

[00:04:50]Gets great ratings. Dying of Grace I'll talk about that in a moment. Fog of War great Errol Morris documentary. Really one of I think this is where I really 2003 found out about Mr. Morris as a documentarian uh where he interviews Robert S. McNamera the secretary of defense I think during the time of Vietnam War who's a slippery guy yet wants to be honest. This is unfortunately still a relevant movie uh and was during the time during this time of u 911 war on terror stuff. Goodbye Dragon. Talk about that in a minute.

[00:05:25]Lord of the Rings, no idea what to do with this. I said that in the previous two videos where we had Fellowship of the Ring and Two Towers. They're all one giant movie to me. And then you had the extended editions which make the whole thing a 12-h hour movie. It's part of a part of a trilogy. It's not a standalone, but I I just don't know what to do with it. But it did win. Of course, we have Master and Commander by Peter Weir, Match Stickman by Ridley Scott. If you want two movies that be fun on the weekend, either one of those will work for sure. They are go-tos. I could watch them out every year and enjoy them. Memories of Murder, an early now early Bong Junho movie, which is not eligible sadly, just like Old Boy. I have no idea why these movies are not eligible. One of them the Korean should have put up for whatever. Station Agent.

[00:06:11]We'll get to that in a second. Triplets of Belleville is a fantastic stylistic animated movie from France. And The Whale Rider is now an unknown movie. I found it because Roger Eert praised it to the skies. It might be a New Zealand movie. It's certainly based in and around New Zealand. Um, it's about a Mayori girl who talks to whales. That's not exactly right, but it is. It watches as a TV movie for the first half. It's like really simple and like where is this going? Is this a high production value? And then by the end and it's really good and I would watch it with children. It still holds up in my opinion. Now I separated these into style and story movies. That's not quite great. In fact, the important for life movies. These are movies important for life. I I believe everybody should watch at some point in time. I mean literally everybody at least every American um for sure. But style versus story, you can take your pick. I mean, these style movies, they do mixed modes. They're really messed up chronology. They're fascinating animation, triplets of Belleville, uh, amazing, captivating stylistic sequences and that. I think that's what people say about Old Boy. I agree with them. And so, I I think these movies are very interesting to watch if you want to be wowed by what cinema can do. But the story movies, these are movies I would recommend to most anybody, if not everybody. And I think they're very fascinating in a number of ways. The station agent, for whatever reason, it's the number one video on my channel. I did a video on this a long time ago and all of a sudden, I think when Netflix got it and put it on the and then it was somehow the algorithms had given it to a lot of people, they've been interested in it. It's a really affecting movie with Peter Dinklage as a downand-out introvert who moves to middle of nowhere New Jersey, an old train hub and inadvertently and against his desires picks up a bunch of friends.

[00:08:07]Look at him and go that guy needs a friend. In fact, it's about people who need friends and think they don't. I love the the depiction of the introverted Peter Dinklage here. This is a wonderful movie. Everyone should watch it. Just the same with Matchstickman, which is a great Nick Cage movie who has OCD. I don't know what disorders he's got, but his daughter comes into his life. And this movie has Sam Rockwell in it. When I discovered Sam Rockwell, 2003. Yes, this is awesome. So, Nick Cage, Sam Rockwell, and Ridley Scott um does a movie that's part Heist caper, but part a really interesting character study. And it's sort of neither sort of neither kind of movie, but it's both. I I think this movie is completely underrated. I love it to death. So, if I had to pick five movies, and I'm just so confused by this list because no movie stands out. Here are my five roughly top five, but if I did this next year, I'd probably change it. It's hard for me not to put the Station Agent in here. I I probably should, but these are the movies. And I guess I went with Did I go with more? I don't know if I style or story here. Um, I already talked about 21 Grams, Dying at Graces, Alan King, Canadian filmmaker. You may never have heard of it. It is a what's called an actuality drama. That's what Criterion is labeling it. It is as close to realistic documentary as it possibly can be. No on camera interviews. It has some editing of course which makes the story, but it shows you five people dying in a cancer ward and they will die uh including one who dies on camera. One of the most remarkable shots in cinema history is at the end of this movie. It is a very affecting documentary showing you realistically how people cope with and handle knowing they're going to die.

[00:09:56]They're in the final days or weeks of dying on either on their deathbed or sort of walking around a a very to me ugly hospital. And I think that's part of the the movie is the aesthetics of dying is awful. This a hospital is awful. But anyway, it will show you realistic what it's like to die. And it is harrowing and will should make everybody in the world think about their mortality and the purpose of their life.

[00:10:21]In contrast to that, Goodbye Dragon End uh by Simon Leang uh from Taiwan is a very affecting movie about well maybe it's not in contrast to that movie at the death of cinema. Uh it's a movie about watching a movie dragging in the 1967 Wukia Chinese movie at a theater that is going to close. It's actually in its last night of showing a movie.

[00:10:42]There's only two or three people in the movie theater, but there also are ghosts. There's almost no dialogue in this movie. It's almost all shots of the hallway of the movie theater. It is slow cinema for people who want to be hypnotized by the very slow meditative nature of this movie. It is not for everybody. It is not for casual. Well, it could be for casual viewing, but not for a lot of people. But I think this movie is fantastic. I wrote about it, etc. on letter box. And then we have Memories of Murder, which is a very, very excellent um murder mystery detective cop sort of movie that's sort of based on prior American cop detective stories about two cops trying to find a serial killer. I love that. I think Zodiac from David Fincher picked up on this movie's vibes and and took off with it. It's based on a true story. It's one of the best to June home movies. I think this is great. Go get it. Um, all these movies are very, very good. I have three not eligible, so I'm almost cheating, but this is what I want to do. So, here you go. Now, of all the movies from this year, best picture, what should it be?

[00:11:52][applause] >> And the Oscar goes to >> I'm picking Dying at Grace. In fact, I've I usually spend about 30 seconds on on this, making the five and then picking the best picture winner. And it took me days for this. This is probably the only year where it takes me days, right, to think about it. I was going to pick Match Stickman and 21 Grams. And then I went back to Station Agent. I thought, well, Master and Commander is an probably an all-timer in its way. Um, maybe City of God, this great sort of movie. But in the end, I went with what captivated me when watching through all this again. I had not seen this movie. I am thinking about the final shot. I never want to see it again. And yet and it sits on my hard drive because I ripped the DVD to my hard drive and it haunts me that it's on my hard drive. I mean, I don't I don't want to go touch or open the file. I'm sort of shook shooken into a state of uncanny weirdness about this movie because five people, two two men, I think three women die in this movie and you watch them slowly die and it's as real as possible and it shows you how the nurses deal with this, how how their family deals with this. Everybody's a different relationship to death. Some of religious, some are not. Some say there's no afterlife. Some are are very Christian. Now, I want to read to you the Criterion Collection description of this. There's a a collection of Allen King documentaries, a package of five or six of them you can buy, and this one's in it. This description, I find a lot of Criterion descriptions to be pretty okay to to kind of selling the movie. Of course, this one, whoever wrote this had the same or a very similar experience to me. Here it is. An extraordinary transformative experience. Alan King's Diant Grace is quite simply unprecedented. Five terminally ill cancer patients allowed the director access to their final months and days inside the Toronto Grace Health Center.

[00:13:45]The result is an unflinching, enormously empathetic contemplation of death. I don't need to say anything more. Just go watch it and be rocked to your core if you can be. Um, you can't none of the people in this documentary you could simulate as actors. Maybe a couple of them, but how do you simulate someone who's near death? That's very hard to do for an actor. And I find a couple of these people to be un uh simulatable, let's say. So, it's very rare for me to break my rules. I picked a non-eligible movie here. And then I picked a documentary, which I don't think I've done in this this series, even though maybe Hoop Dreams was close to winning at some point, but um I decided to go with this one because this is the one that captured my mind, my heart, my soul, etc. Now, what do you think of this year? Let us know in the comments.

[00:14:35]And how do you deal with a Lord of the Rings movie? Do you think it's by itself and can win or is it part of a whole trilogy and then it's just hard to pick?

[00:14:43]The same, by the way, I didn't mention it with Kill Bill volume one, which I left out of this, but it's part of a two movie series. It's really one big movie.

[00:14:52]I don't know how to handle that one either. Uh, let us know in the comments what you think of this year, what you would pick, what movies you like, etc. Thank you very much for watching. Please subscribe, like, letter box, substack, etc. Have a great day. One historical note, I think it's a hypothesis on my part. I really didn't do a deep dive, but a lot of the movies that are more upbeat tend to be pre 911 movies. Those are movies pre-production or the script is written before 911. The Lord of the Rings, for example, was already in process at that point. Master and Commander I think had been floated around for a while in Hollywood. The Station Agent, American Splendor, and Seab Biscuit, which is a best picture nominee. Those are more upbeat movies.

[00:15:31]But this is when this point in time 2003 movies beginning to be made in roughly late 2001 2002 pre-production to post-prouction at that point have the effects of 911, the global war on terror. They get a little bit darker, a little bit more serious, a little bit more realistic. the handheld shaky cam style, the realism of of that particular way of techniques of shooting a movie become more and more entrenched and mixed narratives as well, mixed chronological narratives, also fatalistic stories. I think kind of like Mystic River uh come up in this period of time. So war has an effect is my hypothesis. It's definitely true of World War II and Vietnam, but I think also 911, Global War on Teran. We'll see that as a series goes along with movies from the mid probably also to late 2000s, the decade of the 2000s.