Yesterday, we completed our Best Picture race and we went through what Oscar thought of 2000...now it's my turn. In what has become my favorite series on this blog, I conclude each season with my Oscar My Ballot article with a peak into what would've happened if I had picked all the nominees.
Obviously, unlike with Oscar (where there's a finite number of films), I can't see everything that was made in 2000 or was eligible-if there's a movie that Oscar & I both skipped entirely, sound off in the comments and challenge me to see it (or possibly I just didn't like it that much). But I do make a point of seeking out a number of major films from the year that Oscar skipped but have been considered to be important...I also just see a lot of movies, so it's probable I saw it either when it came out, during my recent catchup screenings, or just in the ensuing 23 years. I will note that one category that Oscar didn't have yet (Animated Feature Film) does show up on this list. I'm not entirely sure when I'll abandon that category (at some point the only player in the game was Disney), but I like the uniformity of it and there were some strong animated films in 2000, including one you'll see in a second in Best Picture, so I am keeping it for now. With that said-please enjoy! We will be kicking off a new season of the OVP when I get back from vacation next week!
American Psycho
Billy Elliot
Chicken Run
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
The Gleaners and I
Miss Congeniality
Traffic
The Virgin Suicides
What Lies Beneath
You Can Count on Me
Gold: Few films capture the magic of cinema quite like Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. A glorious blend of action sequences, love stories, & bold cinematography, it finds a way to be an old-school epic romance while updating with crisp, jaw-dropping special effects.
Silver: You Can Count on Me couldn't be a more divergent film from Crouching Tiger (hence why awards always feel silly-you're comparing such different things). But it is a tender look at the way that siblings speak their own language, something they can only understand, and how that can sustain years apart or life complications getting into the way.
Bronze: I am a harder sell for sentiment than you'd think if you know me in real life (where I'm something of a softie), but when it's done well, I can't deny myself, and Billy Elliot is a perfect, heartwarming look at pursuing your dreams, even when they feel alien to those around you.
Sofia Coppola, The Virgin Suicides
Mary Harron, American Psycho
Ang Lee, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
Steven Soderbergh, Traffic
Agnes Varda, The Gleaners and I
Gold: Ang Lee's singular vision in Crouching Tiger is impossible to ignore. Glorious use of color, light, interior/exterior settings...it all sings in the flickering lights. Better yet, he brings the story grandly to the screen, giving us distraction to keep us from thinking the inevitable with the plot in play.
Silver: Soderbergh's most visually arresting movie, it has a frenetic energy that feels like it starts to seap into each story, the "power of drugs" metaphor feeling intentional but never overbearing. I'll say this a lot, but the way that he moves between stories, finding ways to surprise the audience with their similarities & overlaps, is the best of its kind.
Bronze: We've gotta have at least one of these talented women (this is my first category, to date) that we've got a majority women lineup for Best Director), and it's going to be Sofia Coppola. Coppola's movie is deceptively framed, seeming as if it's a coming-of-age film about these young boys, and it transforms into an urban legend, a scary reminder of how we can't go back.
Christian Bale, American Psycho
Jamie Bell, Billy Elliot
Colin Farrell, Tigerland
Tom Hanks, Cast Away
Mark Ruffalo, You Can Count on Me
Gold: It's debatable whether or not Mark Ruffalo should be in lead or supporting here (I'm not going to pitch a category fraud debate, but I could see either), but what's undeniable is that he's giving some really splendid, gold medal work in You Can Count on Me. The way he handles the final scene, where he has to comfort his older sister & it feels so tender and authentic...gets me every time.
Silver: Jamie Bell would grow up to be one of our most reliable character actors, but Billy Elliot is proof he had the skills from the beginning. He elevates what is otherwise a pretty standard-issue coming-of-age story and makes it feel urgent, like it's life-or-death if this one boy can get out of this city and pursue his dreams. Pure star power.
Bronze: Tom Hanks is usually thought of as our "nicest movie star," which sometimes underplays what a tremendously-talented actor he is. That's apparent in Cast Away (maybe his best performance?) where he gives us a man literally at the end of the world, and the way he shows us his own journey & struggle (without any other actors onscreen) is a titanic achievement.
Ellen Burstyn, Requiem for a Dream
Sandra Bullock, Miss Congeniality
Laura Linney, You Can Count on Me
Julia Roberts, Erin Brockovich
Michelle Yeoh, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
Gold: We're giving out matching brother-sister gold medals for our leading My Ballot actors, as Laura Linney also gets the top spot from You Can Count on Me. I think the way she handles this is so genius. She plays Sammy as someone who had to grow up too quickly, who had to be a parent when she wasn't ready, and that in turn makes it so that she's not ready for life when it expects her to be her, and not a surrogate for someone else. Fantastic chemistry with Ruffalo too.
Silver: Julia Roberts had been a star for a decade in 2000, but it still feels like Erin Brockovich required a new level of SPF she so shines in it. A recent rewatch of Erin reminded me of how well she handles the monologues, the many speeches of the movie. You get the sense that Erin has been held back by other people's expectations her whole life, and she knew these speeches by heart less because of the work and more because she was ready for the world to know what she was capable of...kind of like Roberts herself?
Bronze: The backbone of Crouching Tiger, Michelle Yeoh's evolution throughout the film is glorious. I loved the way that you only understand the depth of her love in the movie, and the secrets she's been keeping, only as the film continues-a film that requires proper attention to really see the woman on the screen at her fullest.
Michael Caine, Miss Congeniality
Billy Crudup, Almost Famous
Rory Culkin, You Can Count on Me
Benicio del Toro, Traffic
Michael Douglas, Traffic
Gold: Del Toro's work here is really special. He plays a sensitive figure, one that a decade earlier he probably would've been typecast in a different role (and this given to someone like Ethan Hawke), but he carries this with a real sensitivity and an appreciation for that dimension. His monologues about baseball tie the whole film together.
Silver: Michael Douglas is more famous today as a "one-time movie star and son of an iconic movie star" which is unfair because he was also at one point one of our greatest actors. Case in point is Traffic, playing a powerful white man who understands that his world is unraveling in front of him in ways that he cannot dismiss or pass on to a subordinate. Really tricky, terrific stuff.
Bronze: Dying is easy, comedy is hard. And playing a gay pageant host while stealing every scene, landing every single one of your zingy one-liners, and still feeling fresh with every repeat watching is a miracle. Hats off to Michael Caine, one of his better late-career pictures.
Marcia Gay Harden, Pollock
Kate Hudson, Almost Famous
Eartha Kitt, The Emperor's New Groove
Catherine Zeta-Jones, Traffic
Zhang Ziyi, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
Gold: The crux of Crouching Tiger resides on Zhang Ziyi's shoulders. Going toe-to-toe (both in acting and in stunt work) with an actress as celebrated as Michelle Yeoh is not easy, but Ziyi does it, all while keeping aspects of her character hidden from the audience (until that romantic finale).
Silver: I think people either over-nominate or under-nominate voice work. There are years it should be included, most years it shouldn't because it's not playing with the same toolkit. A good example of why you should nominate it is Eartha Kitt in Emperor's New Groove. She steals literally every scene, with ribald comic timing and endlessly quotable lines. The movie's longer-than-expected shelf life is entirely because of the way she makes Yzma one of the Disney canon's best villains.
Bronze: Marcia Gay Harden brings a depth that isn't in the script to her work in Pollock. As Lee Krasner, she must navigate the tricky world of being a wife (who loves her husband), a female painter (that, despite talent, is dismissed by her contemporaries as "just a wife"), and a businesswoman, someone who knows that they must profit off of her husband's genius before someone else does. Combined with that fantastic accent work, she brings a theatricality to this role that I appreciated.
American Psycho
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
The Emperor's New Groove
Traffic
The Virgin Suicides
Gold: I've talked about this a lot in our weeks of OVP, but Stephen Gaghan's work in Traffic is really something else. It spawned countless (inferior) copycats, but the way that he folds together these like-minded stories, all related to drugs but the very different effects, and eventually has them run together is really exceptional.
Silver: No one thinks of Crouching Tiger as necessarily a "writer's movie" because, well, it isn't. But that doesn't mean that (like Traffic) the way it brings together two love stories and an action-packed work of revenge together isn't impressive plot-devising, and filled with rich monologues (especially Zhang Ziyi's at the finale).
Bronze: Finishing us out is Sofia Coppola's tender work in The Virgin Suicides, where we get a twist on the coming-of-age film, told from the perspective of a group of teenage boys, but as the film goes, it becomes more about how their eyes don't catch the tragedy of this situation, and how we cannot understand all the mysteries of our youth.
Almost Famous
Chicken Run
Erin Brockovich
What Lies Beneath
You Can Count on Me
Gold: Kenneth Lonergan's magnum opus is a heartfelt look at the bonds that last between siblings, even if life and our own choices keep them apart. The trick with You Can Count on Me is not needing everything to be said. Lonergan's script smartly leaves us guidance, not spoon-feeding us what Ruffalo & Linney are already giving in their brilliant performances.
Silver: Cameron Crowe's coming-of-age epic Almost Famous has influenced so many filmmakers in the years since it came out for a reason. The way that it shows youth, freeing & filled with the troubled reality that you only get to do it once, is marvelous. Melancholy but so full of life.
Bronze: Tackling The Great Escape, Chicken Run is surely the funniest movie of 2000. A relatively simple plot, it unfolds with great looks at how your dreams need to sometimes come true in order for you to still have them, and is a weirdly good indicator as to why Aardman should have more traditional scripts rather than just silent comedy.
Chicken Run
The Emperor's New Groove
Fantasia 2000
Gold: I suppose I'm a tad predictable when one of these shows up in the Best Picture lineup and comes to this category armed with a bronze medal, but what can I say-I love me some claymation. Aardman's best film, Chicken Run is funny, using the masculine bravado of Mel Gibson's celebrity persona for strong comic effect, and a cast of British character actresses to land zinger-after-zinger-after-zinger. It's also visually really amazing (the visual effects are something else).
Silver: There's a lot to like in Emperor's New Groove, with a solid musical score and a nice spin on the longtime folktale The Emperor's New Clothes. But I'll be totally honest-this is a repeat silver medal for Eartha Kitt, who makes every second she's onscreen in this movie better than it has any right to be.
Bronze: Of course Fantasia 2000 isn't going to be as good as its first film-there are few movies that are. But I do think that it has a lot to lend itself, with some gorgeous animation, including "The Firebird," "Rhapsody in Blue," and "Symphony No. 5" being wordless wonders and a testament to how a simple cartoon can capture the beauty of cinema just as well as a cinematographer or costume designer can.
Cast Away
Chicken Run
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
O Brother, Where Art Thou?
What Lies Beneath
Gold: Really with sound mixing, I want something where I can hear the dialogue, the score fits in the film, and nothing reads as too bombastic. But when it comes to great sound mixing, I want to be transported into the picture. That's what happens with Crouching Tiger, where the quiet rings in the same way as the loud (think of the scenes where the score stops), and you feel like you're back in 17th Century China.
Silver: I am aware that George Clooney cannot sing. But watching O Brother, the sound mixing feels so rich & filled with layers (I love that the recording equipment makes it feel like we're listening to Depression Era radio) that you'll never convince my brain that he is not proclaiming "I am the man of constant sorrow." The best-constructed musical of 2000.
Bronze: Cast Away stands apart in many ways because it feels so attuned to using sound to building suspense. Think of the scene where Tom Hanks encounters a whale in the middle of the ocean, and the score drops & we are lifted into the movie by just the waves and the splash of the humpback. Or on the flip side, how we have score, water, & Hanks' shouting pleas as he must say goodbye to Wilson the Volleyball. This is a movie that knows it's being seen on the big screen, and uses that to give us a complete picture.
Cast Away
Chicken Run
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
Gladiator
U-571
Gold: The fight sequences in Crouching Tiger are mesmerizing in part because of the way they handle the sound, including actual on-set sounds, planted effects (a series of clangs and swishes), and the drums of the score in perfect synchronicity to achieve something unique and singular to this film. The Sound Editing team makes that possible.
Silver: Chicken Run spends much of its plot mining films like The Great Escape, and it does that with the sound work by making it actually mirror a prison yard. I love that in addition to the contraptions the chickens create (such as the giant plane they use to escape), they also find care in adding in creaky wagon wheels and the stomping of chicken feet against the dirt...it's a nice touch, and makes the allusion to The Great Escape feel even stronger.
Bronze: Submarine films are Oscar's bread-and-butter for Sound categories, not mine, but even I can recognize when one is doing something special. U-571 uses the claustrophobia of a submarine with its sound design, not just in fight scenes, but with the impending doom of anything (like the rush of water) the audience can hear along with the actors.
Chicken Run
Chocolat
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
Malena
The Patriot
Gold: Tan Dun's work in Crouching Tiger is so beautiful. He smartly incorporates his "Love Before Time" theme throughout the film, which adds texture to the end credits when it starts to play, but the entire movie is really top-notch, particularly the way that his music matches the fight scenes.
Silver: John Williams is my favorite film composer of all-time, and as a result he shows up a lot in these write-ups. The Patriot was the first movie I remember watching and thinking "I love the music" in this to the point where I actually looked at the credits to find the composer's name when I watched the film. Williams captures an historical aura with the score, giving us an authentic revolutionary drum & pipes feel.
Bronze: I mentioned when we did the write-up for this year that this was one of Oscar's best categories, so we're finishing with another Oscar nominee, Rachel Portman's Chocolat. This has much sentimental appeal (one of my mom's favorite CD's when I was a teenager was this score, which played regularly in the background of our house), but it's also a really strong piece of music, giving us the whimsy (but always a rushing wind) of how these women will come in & out of people's lives.
"Independent Women Part 1," Charlie's Angels
"Love Before Time," Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
"One in a Million," Miss Congeniality
"Perfect World," The Emperor's New Groove
"Things Have Changed," Wonder Boys
Gold: "Love Before Time" is a beautiful melody, but it's one that comes from the film's score, and so it feels less like an end credits song and more like something we've been hearing as the anthem to these two love stories happening simultaneously throughout Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.
Silver: This is total cheese, and I love it. "One in a Million" is exactly the kind of song this should be honoring-not just a fun piece of bubble gum pop, but one that matches the tenor of its story, and gives us an iconic visual to match (don't tell me that you aren't picturing Sandra Bullock dressed as Lady Liberty the moment it starts to play).
Bronze: We'll finish off with Beyonce, who made enough gold off of her smash hit "Independent Women Part 1" that I don't feel too bad giving her the bronze for an end credits song, but hits all the right girl power notes the film before it has been trying to achieve.
Chocolat
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
Gladiator
The House of Mirth
Vatel
Gold: Yes, we have another gold medal for Crouching Tiger (get used to it-you're not done yet), but how do you say no here? The buildings, wonderful reconstructions of towns and fine location shooting add so much to the motif of the film, but the biggest thing is the way that it incorporates into the picture. It both looks great and serves as something the cast is interacting with during the many fight sequences.
Silver: Vatel is a movie it's easy to forget...except for the look. The film feels like a nice combination of 17th Century engineering and 20th century magic, the modern & the historic combined into a sumptuous bounty of bed chambers & drawing rooms.
Bronze: Speaking of bed chambers & drawing rooms, we have our other Merchant-Ivory-esque nominee in The House of Mirth. What I loved about the looks of this film is that it always feels a little bit plastic, which is kind of the point. Lily Bart is navigating a world where her only answer is to get married, one she resists (to her doom), and the perfect yachts & houses that feel so brittle are a good background to that superficiality.
All the Pretty Horses
Beau Travail
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
Traffic
The Virgin Suicides
Gold: Crouching Tiger probably could've gotten here on its own, the beautiful Chinese countryside and mountains a perfect complement to this category. But it's in the fight scenes that it earns its nomination-the movie looks splendid, whizzing at every corner to give us a frenetic, sometimes relentless series of clashes visually that always thrills.
Silver: Traffic started a trend in Cinematography that became intensely lazy-using color filters to signify different emotions and changes in location throughout the picture. Traffic is responsible for this trend, but it can't be blamed for it, as it's done so well here, giving us doors into each of the film's different chapters. Manic-but-distinctive, it's a signature look for a reason.
Bronze: Beau Travail is one of those slow-moving films that some people consider to be pure genius, other a time when you're staring at your watch the whole time. I normally go for that style, but I wasn't into it...except you can't really stare at your watch with camerawork this good. Insanely sexual (there are multiple shots of young, nearly naked men in various angles of repose), with the African sun beating down on the men whose lives we're being lured into, it all appears spectacular.
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
Erin Brockovich
The House of Mirth
Malena
Miss Congeniality
Gold: Tim Yip's costumes in Crouching Tiger are extraordinary, with gorgeous designs, especially those worn by Zhang Ziyi, populating the entire picture. I love to see the white robes that are signature to the battle scenes, flowing but not upstaging the tricky stunt work. I also admire how much florals & nature seem to emanate from Ziyi's costumes throughout the film.
Silver: Finding new takes on the drawing room set is difficult, but in The House of Mirth, it does feel like we're getting more character-building through costuming. I love the way that Gillian Anderson's Lily Bart reads so relaxed in her demeanor, but her clothes (buttoned-up, flawless, meant to cede to the male gaze) tell a different tale.
Bronze: The looks of Malena also are about finding the woman behind the male gaze. The titular character, played by Monica Bellucci, is meant to be her own person as the film unfolds, but also to capture the look of the men who spend their days writing fantasies about her. That's a tricky balance, and it's achieved through the sultry-but-personal details in the costuming.
American Psycho
Billy Elliot
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
Traffic
The Virgin Suicides
Gold: It is not the fault of Traffic that in the years that followed no one was able to achieve the perfect balance in multi-character stories (where they all meet in the end in some capacity). The initial film works perfectly, sewing together (through color, mood, & theme) a story of the ways that drugs can infiltrate every aspect of our lives.
Silver: Crouching Tiger has a similar task of balancing two different love stories, without tipping too much to the audience how they are similar tales (and not until the end whether they are on similar paths). Combined with the tricky stunt work & the ways that the editors make all of the effects feel invisible, this (like Traffic) is a pretty showy example of what good editing can do for your picture.
Bronze: American Psycho's plot is so legend now, particularly the way that it ends, that you'll be forgiven for taking it for granted. But the editors, piecing together a movie that reads at once as dystopian comedy, horror, and (as it sneaks up on you) a true mystery, are very much at work, making the film crackle.
Almost Famous
Charlie's Angels
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
Gladiator
X-Men
Gold: We take for granted a lot of the looks we have from superheroes now, in many ways they feel almost interchangeable. That wasn't always the case. The fascinating ways they design Beast, Wolverine, and of course Mystique in the first X-Men are building blocks for pretty much every comic book movie that came after...but somehow this one was the best of what was to come?
Silver: The biggest difference between Oscar's take on this category and mine is that I'm not afraid of beauty. While the Academy seems to largely want to focus on just making gorgeous movie stars look different, I'm intrigued by something like Crouching Tiger, which gives us flawless creation after creation, particularly with the hairstyles and immaculate, iconic makeup of Zhang Ziyi in this picture.
Bronze: The other thing is-I'm starting hairstyling in this category from the beginning, and that's definitely on-display with Almost Famous. From Kate Hudson's infinite soft-blonde curls to Billy Crudup's sexy Keith Carradine blowout & mustache, we get thrown into the 1970's in a way that reads as pulled from a time machine.
Chicken Run
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
Gladiator
Hollow Man
The Perfect Storm
Gold: Crouching Tiger doesn't have the single most technical effects in this lineup (that'd probably be the big wave in Perfect Storm or the ape in Hollow Man), but this category isn't about technical difficulty. Instead, it's about the best use of visual effects, and this film is hard-to-top. Combining wires suspended over a bamboo forest, we see glorious stunt work and, just a few years before Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, and Spider-Man changed the game, a loving final ode to practical effects.
Silver: Catch the wave. The Perfect Storm is one of those movies that is meant to be seen on the big-screen, which thankfully a teenage John was able to do many moons ago. Gorgeous CGI, really defining of the time frame, and hyper realistic blending of practical & computer graphics (and for the first time in film history on a major scale, real & pretend water).
Bronze: Chicken Run was the first time that Aardman brought their creative talents to a feature-length animated film, but you'd hardly be able to tell. Seven years after the revolutionary Nightmare Before Christmas, this style of animation, meticulously pulled together, was still in its infancy, but it looks seamless & wonderful onscreen, and dare I say it-beautiful?
Also in 2000: Picture, Director, Actress, Actor, Supporting Actress, Supporting Actor, Adapted Screenplay, Original Screenplay, Foreign Film, Sound Mixing, Sound Editing, Original Score, Original Song, Art Direction, Cinematography, Costume, Film Editing, Visual Effects, Makeup, Previously in 2000
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