For Better, for Worse

It’s the highest honor a film can get, but how many of the Academy Award-winning best pictures made all those “greatest films of the millennium” lists at the end of last year?

That was my thought as I stared at a poster that had hung over my desk for the last 12 years, the academy’s special-edition poster composed of the original promo art for each best picture from “Wings” to “The Last Emperor.” I inspected the titles, compared them to my own “all-time greatest” list as well as the published ones and noted how few were even especially memorable.

Then, to satisfy my curiosity, I looked at the winners I’d never seen and refreshed my memory on the others. Every best picture has some significance; most of the titles in this curious, eclectic hall of fame are case studies in “greatness” as determined by attitudes and energies of a particular time and place. Oscar winners often tell us more about our own history than the history of motion pictures.

After viewing all 71 of the previous best picture winners, I’ve ranked them according to my aesthetic into categories with a brief comment on each. The categories are:

* The Pantheon consists of best pictures that are also indisputable masterworks.

* Good Enough is a category of very good to excellent Oscar pictures that are at or near the top of their genres, but not quite special enough for the time capsule.

* Worthy (but prepare to doze) are the “bests” that got proclaimed “important” in their times but haven’t worn quite as well over the years.

* The Dogs of Oscar, a final category for the handful of Oscar pictures that are barely watchable--and even laughable--now.

There are sure to be some raised eyebrows over my choices for the Dogs (and other categories as well). My retort is simply to ask any protesters to rent and screen them now without sentimental blinders on--all 71 of the winners are available on video. The Blockbuster and Hollywood chains even have special Oscar shelves.

Note: Each category is numbered chronologically, not by the relative worth of the film. Also, during Oscars early years, the awards covered a two-year period.

Here’s how it breaks down for me:

I: THE PANTHEON

1. “All Quiet on the Western Front,” 1929-30. From the great German World War I novel, this film used mobile cameras and multiple angles like no film to date. Its antiwar theme so moved actor Lew Ayres that he became a conscientious objector during World War II.

2. “Grand Hotel,” 1931-32. Made before the infamous Production Code, this was the first great “adult” talkie. Note especially Joan Crawford as the freelance “stenographer” selling her services to American robber baron Wallace Beery. Despite countless updated remakes and imitations, this is the archetypal “ ‘Grand Hotel’ kind of movie.”

3. “It Happened One Night,” 1934. Talk about great “adult” pictures. Yes, Clark Gable’s bare chest hurt the undershirt industry. Snappy, funny now as it was then. How come Frank Capra never did anything with this sexy actor again?

4. “Mutiny on the Bounty,” 1935. Everything a historical epic should be--factual, dramatic, exciting, forever relevant. Gable becomes the most dominant male screen icon of talkies, redefining heroism as mutineer leader Fletcher Christian.

5. “Gone With the Wind,” 1939. Was Gable a star or what? My least favorite in this Pantheon list, largely because Gable disappears for more than an hour of it. (Can you believe Vivien Leigh preferred Leslie Howard to him?) Is it just me that finds these British Southerners duller with every screening? (I almost moved it to the next category.)

6. “Rebecca,” 1940. Alfred Hitchcock, working from a great book, made a great picture. And who plays Rebecca? Nobody. She’s Laurence Olivier’s dead wife. Put this on file for Regis.

7. “Casablanca,” 1943. Warner Bros.’ hugely entertaining World War II propaganda flick, legitimized by its Oscar--it’s Hollywood’s best-loved masterpiece.

8. “The Best Years of Our Lives,” 1946. Some later critics dismiss this genuinely moving portrait of postwar America as “dated” No way! The saga of returning war veterans can still bring an audience to tears. Disabled vet Harold Russell--still a spokesman for veterans of all wars--deservedly won both a best supporting actor and special honorary Oscar for the role.

9. “All About Eve,” 1950. Still among the most entertaining best pictures. The bitchy, behind-the-scenes-of-Broadway drama oozes with wit and has not a hint of sentiment. Everybody dishes, and everybody gets what they deserve.

10. “From Here to Eternity,” 1953. One of Hollywood’s most amazing achievements was this cleaned-up version of the kind of book that movies in those days would normally never touch. Great ensemble of actors--including the reinvented Frank Sinatra and Ernest Borgnine, then a toiler in B-pictures, as the rotten sergeant who beats him to death.

11. “On the Waterfront,” 1954. The year after “Eternity” came another masterpiece about people on the edge. It’s interesting that the academy would choose such a stark, brutal and real (fact-based) movie over the standard Technicolor Eisenhower-era gloss. As for Budd Schulberg’s and Elia Kazan’s alleged “political” statement--their supposed justification for “naming names” during the blacklist--it will never occur to anyone riveted on Marlon Brando’s quest for redemption on the damp, mean streets of Hoboken. Great drama has its own universe.

12. “The Bridge on the River Kwai,” 1957. I can watch this David Lean film as often as any I’ve seen. Many of the big British-American co-productions of the ‘50s were stiffs. But this great jungle fighting action-adventure and a powerful antiwar tract is one of a kind. The only stain on its reputation was the elimination of writers Carl Foreman and Michael Wilson from the credits because they were blacklisted. (Since corrected.)

13. “Lawrence of Arabia,” 1962. Director Lean topped “Kwai” with this film about madness and heroism, ego and power, sunsets and sandstorms . . . I love it. But, ask your friends: What war are they fighting? (World War I.) Who’s fighting against whom? (English and Arabs against the Turks!) Who’s the guy Peter O’Toole played? (Virtually nothing like the real T.E. Lawrence.)

14. “Tom Jones,” 1963. Many of the same academy voters who honored Olivier’s “Hamlet” must have been a little shocked at this adaptation of an 18th century British novel, probably read by none of them. Raunchy, crude, outrageous, hilarious--the heir to “The Goon Show” and precursor of Monty Python.

15. “Midnight Cowboy,” 1969. Rated X under the original MPAA Code. The academy recognized this film as the culmination of the stylish European cinema of the ‘60s with its jump cuts, zooms, subliminal flashbacks and -forwards, mixing black-and-white and color. That dates it a little, but it’s still the best way to tell a sad little story about a couple of losers you might otherwise never give a damn about.

16. “The Godfather,” 1972. Oscar recognized the greatness of the most famous Italian American saga of all time but gave the directing award to Bob Fosse for “Cabaret” (a rare split). Can you imagine a studio picture of this material with a different director and cast? Because the family we know and love were far from the first choices. At the time it was hard to conceive any gangster film could be better, and then two years later came . . .

17. “The Godfather, Part II,” 1974. My choice for the top of Oscars’ “bests,” and although there is a linear “Godfather Saga” cut by Francis Ford Coppola for TV, this film should always be considered on its own.

18. “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” 1975. Ken Kesey’s popular ‘60s novel about the nobility of insanity “in a world gone mad” is pretty dated stuff. But Czech director Milos Forman turned the asylum into a fantastic actors workshop and cast it perfectly with Jack Nicholson as the original counterculture hero McMurphy. It’s one of the Oscars’ great acting movies.

19. “Annie Hall,” 1977. Woody Allen’s angst on screen and in real life annoy me so much that my appreciation of this truly romantic and sexy comedy had diminished over the years. Then I saw it again, and I can confirm it is the Valentine of the Oscars. Does anybody really believe Woody was (is) “‘unmoved” by the award? And bravo to the academy for acknowledging “best” in spite of his kvetching.

20. “The Silence of the Lambs,” 1991. Dr. Lecter’s gourmet cookbook, complete with the “fava beans and a little Chianti.” A scrumptiously macabre thriller. One question: Why doesn’t Jonathan Demme want to entertain us anymore?

21. “Schindler’s List,” 1993. Another way to categorize Oscars is by listing all of its Big Important Event choices. Most of those are even duller than ever now. Steven Spielberg’s character-driven Holocaust tale is in a class by itself. Artful. Passionate. Unforgettably depressing and uplifting at the same time. The filmmaker’s best, and proof he may get even better.

II. GOOD ENOUGH

1. “Wings,” 1927-28. The only silent film on the list and the very first best picture. Director William Wellman was a World War I Air Force veteran, and he understood the heroism and fear of those early pilot-warriors. The air-to-air footage is so good it established the technique for later films.

2. “The Great Ziegfeld,” 1936. I just discovered this MGM classic, a truly entertaining bio-pic about the legendary promoter-producer. He was also a genuine old-time Lothario who took pride in showcasing the most beautiful women in the world and couldn’t keep his hands off them. Believe it or not, that is a source of dramatic conflict. “Ziegfeld” is very long and actually loses a little not being in color. As watchable as any show-biz biography ever made.

3. “The Lost Weekend,” 1945. The strangest Oscar best. Billy Wilder’s choice of Charles Jackson’s unflinching novel about a drunk hitting bottom was very daring. This was the year World War II ended, and most of Hollywood’s output was, as you’d expect, either related directly to wartime America or entertainment to help forget it. Wilder and co-writer Charles Brackett also broke the studio mold and got to film it on location in New York. It’s an actor’s tour de force for Ray Milland, who had never shown such range before (or very much after), and he got an Oscar for it. Interestingly, in the novel the lead character drinks because he’s a repressed homosexual--not a part of the movie.

4. “Hamlet,” 1948. There was a great postwar embrace of all things British, and Oscar generally was in a highbrow phase. (That year, “The Red Shoes” was also nominated.) Olivier starred in and directed a good brooding “Hamlet,” in this version truly the “sweet prince of indecision.” It’s fairly cinematic, especially at the beginning with the voice of John Gielgud as the ghost of Hamlet’s father.

5. “All the King’s Men,” 1949. Robert Rossen’s stylish adaptation of the best-selling novel by Robert Penn Warren about a famous Southern demagogue named Willie Stark (really Huey Long). Rossen’s work is full of images from the great Soviet silent filmmakers Eisenstein and Pudovkin. I think that’s where the Russian influence on him ended, but a year after he won the Oscar he fled to Europe because of the blacklist, not to return until 1960 to make “The Hustler.”

6. “Ben-Hur,” 1959. The best movie from an awful book (written by an unimportant Civil War general, Lew Wallace) and a not-great silent movie. William Wyler gave it “spirit” with style, grace and lots of action. I could never understand why critics put down it or star Charlton Heston, who was perfect type for this kind of role--angry, bold and redeemable.

7. “The Apartment,” 1960. Wilder’s overpraised winner, considering its insidious theme and unsympathetic characters--a nerd and a pushover. But watch it now for the triumph of a great American screen actor, Fred MacMurray, as an utter “cad.” (MacMurray and Wilder made an even better team in “Double Indemnity.”) The Oscar for “The Apartment” feels like payback for “Sunset Boulevard” and “Some Like It Hot.”

8. “West Side Story,” 1961. Spectacular musical filming of the operatic “Romeo and Juliet” meets “Blackboard Jungle.” I love the Bernstein-Sondheim music, and I shed a tear for Natalie Wood every time I see it. It’s the ultimate guilty pleasure--but a great movie? Not quite.

9. “My Fair Lady,” 1964. Acknowledgment of technical excellence for not screwing up a great musical, based on an already filmed great play, George Bernard Shaw’s “Pygmalion.” For me, this is the best of the Oscar musicals, largely for that reason.

10. “In The Heat of the Night,” 1967. The first Oscar for what the Cannes crowd calls a “policier.” Not exactly an edgy film now, nor as shocking as the post-”French Connection” stuff. But in 1967 a cop thriller set in the Jim Crow South with a black hero was a big deal. Rod Steiger as the decent redneck cop won best actor, payback for his unrewarded performance of a lifetime two years before in “The Pawnbroker.”

11. “The French Connection,” 1971. This is why I love the Oscar list. Here is a profane, slammed-together, cops-on-the-street, true-crime saga. This kind of film had been made before by Hollywood, but the genre was unmentionable around the academy.

12. “Rocky,” 1976. The movie, like its author-star, came out of nowhere and recycled itself so often it went from franchise to cliche. If “Yo, Adrienne!” once rivaled “Stella!” as the raised armpit love call, it has declined by now into parody. I looked at “Rocky” again, bemoaned what it had spawned, but still felt its tug.

13. “Kramer vs. Kramer,” 1979. One of the most technically perfect of Oscar movies. Writer-director Robert Benton used style extraordinaire (the end of a marriage as a series of dissolves dumping a bureau drawer of memories) over substance. The best movie ever about “sensitive new age guys.”

14. “Ordinary People,” 1980. Following “Kramer,” the next Movie of the Week to win best picture. Actually, Alvin Sargent’s script is better than Judith Guest’s novel; the scenes between Timothy Hutton and Judd Hirsch’s shrink and the unconsummated romance of Hutton and the teenage Elizabeth McGovern still stand out.

15. “Terms of Endearment,” 1983. And three years later . . . the next M.O.W. Oscar. Actually that’s not true, since a TV movie would have to tell you Debra Winger dies in the log-line. At the time, the shrewd promo selling the comedy and the star power made that part of the story a surprise. The best thing about seeing “Terms” again is the depth of the cast.

16. “Amadeus,” 1984. As close to the Pantheon as you can get on this list. Milos Forman very smartly cast only American actors with all their speech nuances as the 18th century artists and patrons. Peter Shaffer’s adaptation of his play about elite but dull composer Salieri and his fear of his primitive rival Mozart really works as a movie.

17. “Platoon,” 1986. Better when it was released, because then it was the brave little movie about the big, bad unpopular war. It’s diminished somewhat, partly because Oliver Stone and star Charlie Sheen carry too much personal baggage. But its images of the infantry war are still unrivaled.

18. “Unforgiven,” 1992. I love westerns, and this beautifully acted one really holds up. Ironically, this is not a big action picture, but a nuanced character movie. No “Magnificent Seven” overtures here.

19. “Shakespeare in Love,” 1998. An “Oscar-is-good-for-you” picture, and entertaining in spite of itself. Everything works in this sprightly picture, except that it is total fiction concerning Shakespeare’s works and life. But with that great Marc Norman-Tom Stoppard script, who cares?

III. WORTHY (BUT DULL)

1. “The Broadway Melody,” 1928-29. More entertaining than I imagined, this original MGM musical, which introduced the song “Singin’ in the Rain,” won its Oscar for making a movie people could hear with clarity. There are countless better early talkie musicals, but the likes of “The Gold Diggers of 1933” barely merited consideration by the academy.

2. “Cavalcade,” 1932-33. “Masterpiece Theatre” on the big screen. This British film based on the excellent play by Noel Coward is a prototype for great generational family dramas like “The Magnificent Ambersons.” For me it was a discovery, and unlike some other early Oscar winners, itslength (110 minutes) is just about right.

3. “The Life of Emile Zola,” 1937. Another first screening for me, and a slight disappointment. Much of it revolves around the notorious Dreyfus Affair. But since nobody in its American audience ever read a Zola novel, including, it appears, the screenwriters, the author comes across as a literary Clarence Darrow. Paul Muni, who plays Zola, was great in “I Was a Fugitive From a Chain Gang,” but here he’s all rolling eyebrows and fake accent.

4. “You Can’t Take It With You,” 1938. A very popular movie based on George S. Kaufman’s and Moss Hart’s equally successful Depression screwball comedy play. But I’ve always found Frank Capra’s movie annoying since he and writer Robert Riskin altered the play without making it funnier or more cinematic.

5. “How Green Was My Valley,” 1941. At Fox, the great John Ford was the top contract director. Studio boss Darryl Zanuck lassoed more great books for movies than any rival, and he supervised the script from Richard Llewellyn’s novel about the hard lives of Welsh coal miners. Ford, Irish to the bone, was an ironic choice for this British Isles saga. But Zanuck got his best picture, and Ford won a second consecutive Oscar (after “The Grapes of Wrath” in 1940). As for the picture, it’s a sentimental on-the-lot job, with a few memorable scenes.

6. “Mrs. Miniver,” 1942. One of the most popular wartime movies, and one of several early never-give-up films about heroines. Greer Garson won best actress, and in its time “Mrs. Miniver” was indeed a role model. William Wyler’s direction couldn’t hide the programmed sentiment. A noble effort in its time no doubt, but virtually no audience for it now.

7. “Going My Way,” 1944. A couple of priests, a lot of blarney, an ensemble of Hollywood brats, a cause (“Save the orphanage”), that great goofy song (“Swingin’ on a Star”) and, of course, Bing Crosby as choirmaster. A wartime feel-good show that audiences and Oscar loved. Now it’s tolerable entertainment.

8. “An American in Paris,” 1951. It was very innovative for the musical genre for the way it integrated George Gershwin’s concert score and upbeat pop songs into the film’s tiny plot, and more important its great choreography, including a ballet. Gene Kelly stylized it all, but the MGM studio “look”--the clunky French art direction--really appears dated. A year later came the great Kelly musical “Singin’ in the Rain,” but alas, no Oscar.

9. “Marty,” 1955. Marty was the film industry’s belated embrace of television. Hollywood had warned its talent to stay off the tube. This wasn’t a complementary medium like radio; this was “competition.” What a crock! The low-budget, starless “Marty,” which started off as a live TV drama, became the turning point. Suddenly TV became the breeding ground for movie talent for the next decade. “Marty” is just a so-so little slice of life; author Paddy Chayefsky would sharpen his pen and wit much later with big, noisy, angry stuff like “Network.”

10. “Gigi,” 1958. I could never figure what the big deal was about this MGM musical with its international cast. It won nine Oscars, but except for a couple of the Lerner & Loewe songs, it is completely unmemorable.

11. “The Sound of Music,” 1965. When veteran Robert Wise took over the filming of “West Side Story” from its stage director Jerome Robbins, he gave the movie a needed dose of “cinema.” But after “West Side” he became the big-budget musical guy. And, of course, “The Sound of Music” topped everyone’s expectations from the opening shot, a stunning aerial across the Alps that sweeps up the mellifluous Julie Andrews. No further aesthetic criticism from me or anyone else could spoil the experience for those who watch it repeatedly on TV or video. My favorite “Sound of Music” anecdote is that when the acerbic Pauline Kael panned it on the pages of Good Housekeeping, she got fired.

12. “A Man for All Seasons,” 1966. In the mid-’60s, the greatest surge of innovative cinema was coming out of England. The Brits were so hot that Italian director Michelangelo Antonioni defined the times in his portrait of mod London with “Blow-Up” in 1966, but that film didn’t get a best picture nomination. Instead, this history lesson about Sir Thomas More by Robert Bolt won best picture and a case full of other Oscars. Here was one of the instances when critics claiming the academy was “out of step” were right.

13. “Patton,” 1970. I saw “Patton” when it was new, and like everybody else I was blown away by George C. Scott’s performance. Then for years I could barely remember what went on over its three-hour running time, or for that matter anyone else who was in it. Seeing it again, I realized it was only about the controversial general’s tactics and leadership intercut with lots of battle scenes involving no one I cared about. What a curious war movie!

14. “The Sting,” 1973. The Paul Newman-Robert Redford combo had worked before in “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid,” and here in this scam comedy set among archetypal thieves and con men, they displayed the chemistry again. But seeing it recently, I couldn’t believe how ponderously it was paced--forget the ragtime score and the wipe dissolves. And, not only is there no leading lady, there aren’t even any pretty girls. It’s as if somebody made sure Bob and Paul were the best-looking things in the movie.

15. “The Deer Hunter,” 1978. This is the one I’ll bet some of the voters would like to take back, not necessarily because it’s a terrible film; it isn’t. “Deer Hunter” alleges to be a realistic portrait of a couple of guys who go to Vietnam and suffer the worst kind of post-combat syndrome. Thousands of veterans screamed foul at this movie and its non-vet director, Michael Cimino. This is all too bad, because in spite of its irresponsible treatment of history (this is a movie, so what else is new?) and the director’s embarrassing baggage since, “Deer Hunter” is better than most of the pictures in this list category.

16. “Rain Man,” 1988. For a while in the ‘80s, Tom Cruise became the straight man/catalyst for older actors. First for Newman in the dreadful “The Color of Money” (1986), and then in 1988 in “Rain Man,” as the “normal” brother taking care of his autistic older brother, Dustin Hoffman. “Savant” roles are like drunks and addicts for actors who want to strut their stuff, but quite frankly, having just revisited this movie, I can find no other reason to see it except for Cruise. He may very well win his own Oscar this year for “Magnolia,” in part because of what he did for Newman and Hoffman in two movies in which his performances defined them.

17. “Forrest Gump,” 1994. When you look at the Oscars as a century’s worth of notable movies, you discover that the ones that endure tell the best stories. “Forrest Gump” has no story. Gump is a curious mixture of Candide and Gomer Pyle, with two elements used to pump up its thin narrative. The computer images mixing actors into history were state of the art a few years ago, though there are so many that after a while they just annoy. The other element that keeps you watching is, of course, Tom Hanks as Forrest. I think it’s ironic that of his two Oscars, his best screen work was on either side--the man-child in “Big” (1988) and the officer in “Saving Private Ryan” (1998).

18. “Braveheart,” 1995. Mel Gibson’s remarkably economical (Irish tax shelter) medieval battle epic is a nice relief from the fuzzy sweet likes of “Rain Man” and “Driving Miss Daisy.” But it’s too long, again for so little story, and it blatantly copies the much better “Spartacus.” Also, the script is downright homophobic in its portrayal of the cowardly prince. No “Lawrence of Arabia” this.

19. “The English Patient,” 1996. Like the Seinfeld characters who debated it, I’m of two minds on this one. Some sequences are as individually powerful as any in screen history. Its classical novelistic style is both seductive and a little boring.

20. “Titanic,” 1997. An event by Oscar standards, this movie justified a budget that could have sunk 100 Titanics by winning the hearts of the audience. James Cameron built the event around a love story, and everyone swooned into the great tragedy. I think the years will not be kind to this movie. The resonance of the too oft-told disaster, the young actors who were a little too ‘90s, the New Age theme music, and even the computer visual effects won’t be embraced by future filmgoers. This is exactly what dates a movie.

IV: THE DOGS OF OSCAR

1. “Cimmaron,” 1930-31. I designate “Cimmaron” the worst “best picture” ever. This western, from an Edna Ferber bestseller, seems like it would be a good old-fashioned family-on-the-frontier saga. For years, no one could see “Cimmaron” because of a deteriorating nitrate print. And then with one of those meticulous restorations, it was put together and finally viewed by a contemporary audience. I can still hear the groans--badly acted, full of “staged” interiors, almost without action except for the Oklahoma Land Rush opening, and a script that reeks with bad dialogue and stereotypes--a literal black Sambo and a cowardly Jewish peddler.

2. “Gentleman’s Agreement,” 1947. It’s fashionable to sneer at this very sincere but basically unwatchable adaptation of a best-selling novel by Laura Z. Hobson about anti-Semitism in American business and society. Even its director, Elia Kazan, who also won an Oscar, dismisses it as “dated and toothless.”

3. “The Greatest Show on Earth,” 1952. I have some memory of seeing Cecil B. DeMille’s circus epic as a child and loving it. But here’s a movie that got by on the big-top authenticity and the congeniality of most of the cast. The script is ludicrous, with Betty Hutton as a trapeze Annie Oakley trying to one-up “The Great Sebastian” Cornel Wilde until he falls and breaks his legs. Jimmy Stewart plays a clown called Buttons who never takes off his 15 pounds of makeup because he’s a wanted criminal! Oscar’s face today would be redder than Stewart’s nose if anybody took another look.

4. “Around the World in 80 Days,” 1956. Producer Mike Todd was a former carnival barker and semi-successful Broadway impresario, mostly of big, plotless musicals in the style of Flo Ziegfeld. He dusted off “80 Days,” which was one of Jules Verne’s lesser novels, and worked the film markets to come up with this internationally produced, cameo star-studded picture. This was a real coup in its time, because he made it without a studio and hyped it into huge profits and best picture. But seen now, it really shows Todd’s greatest achievement was selling the moviegoing public. This is a big empty vessel; nobody in it really acts, because they have nothing to play, unless making the train, or balloon, on time is dramatic or funny.

5. “Oliver!,” 1968. A ‘60s musical from a hit West End and Broadway show, this misreading of “Oliver Twist” for me is the second-worst best picture. A musical of this grim, socially critical Dickens novel was always a bad idea, but Broadway gets away with such adaptations--Columbia saw it as the next “Sound of Music.” Filmmakers among the U.K.’s best gave the studio its wish. They created a syrupy moppet show, with two sweet little boys as Oliver and the Artful Dodger, a rubber-legged dancing Fagin and those standard wide-screen production numbers, including a thousand choreographed workhouse urchins. It’s not hard to see why this movie had appeal; 1968 was a painful year of assassinations, radical politics and Vietnam. “Oliver!,” lame as it was, gave people a tune or two to hum.

6. “Chariots of Fire,” 1981. I remember being caught up in the accolades for this British film about a couple of obscure runners in the equally obscure 1924 Olympics. Everybody with even vague memories of its greatness might look again. The race between a deeply religious Christian and a Jew, who are on the same team, is almost utterly without conflict. It’s a movie of lasting insignificance.

7. “Gandhi,” 1982. Director Richard Attenborough’s bio-pic of Mahatma Gandhi is one of those Oscar-Is-Good-for-You choices. There are a few stunning scenes early in the film in apartheid South Africa and colonial India, and actor Ben Kingsley really did give an Oscar performance. But Attenborough directed too many scenes with exclamation points--it bashes its nobility over our heads.

8. “Out of Africa,” 1985. “What’s a great actress like you doing out here in the bush talking in that funny accent?” That was my reaction to Meryl Streep in 1985, and the same question I would ask her now after seeing the film again. Isak Dinesen must have had an interesting life in Central Africa, but I think she wrote better books about more exciting people.

9. “The Last Emperor,” 1987. Bernardo Bertolucci’s great films such as “The Conformist” were ignored by the academy. Then came “The Last Emperor.” Exotic, lavishly produced, authentic--shot in China’s Forbidden City--and among the best-looking movies of all time. It is also almost impossible to see again all the way through. Pauline Kael once coined the phrase “coffee-table movie.” She was referring to Stanley Kubrick’s “Barry Lyndon,” which is “The French Connection” compared to “The Last Emperor.”

10. “Driving Miss Daisy,” 1989. Why has everyone forgotten it won an Oscar? Because it’s an utterly insignificant movie: an episodic, stodgy adaptation of a two-character play about an old Southern woman whose only interesting character beat is that she’s also Jewish, and her almost-as-old longtime black (well, “Negro”) chauffeur. Well-acted, genteel . . . but an embarrassment for a Best Anything list.

11. “Dances With Wolves,” 1990. I confess a certain giddy satisfaction placing Kevin Costner’s noble-savage nature film at the bottom of the Oscar list. I never liked it. Its tiny story and bloated length are indicative of an undisciplined director wishing to dazzle by showing everything that looks good. The academy nodded with approval and seemed to have forgotten that “A Man Called Horse” and the great “Little Big Man” covered everything in this movie better.