Otts Special Achievement Awards

Before we name the top 10, let's hand out a few final awards.

MOST INFLUENTIAL:

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Brokeback Mountain

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon

Farenheit 9/11

Lord of the Rings

WINNER: Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon

Avatar’s exaggerated claims to influence have boiled down to a few cheap 3D tricks. Brokeback was probably the most politically impactful movie in a decade of muted political cinema, as Hollywood proved almost uniformly dumb, in both senses of the word, on 9/11 and what followed. I’ve spoken enough on the entrepreneurship of Farenheit and Lord of the Rings in remaking the business; I just can’t bring myself to award changes in the business that I don’t think were good things. So, rather subtly, we have Crouching Tiger. In technical terms, Crouching Tiger’s wire-aided choreography has, moreso even than The Matrix, taken over the storyboard. One could argue that the scripts get worst as the action gets better, but I imagine the scripts always hover about a similar mean, dictated as much by the literacy of the audience as that of the pool of potential authors. More importantly, Crouching Tiger was perhaps the first blockbuster breakthrough for the Eastern Hemisphere. What a remarkable discovery, shortly into the new millennium, that the majority of the world’s citizens had something to say to all of us in the form of moving pictures.

BEST SCENE:

8 Mile’s final rap battle

The Great Debaters – The time for justice is always, is always now

Inglourious Basterd – The pub scene

Intolerable Cruelty – Heinz the Baron Krauss von Espy

Spiderman 2: the train scene

Up!’s opening

WINNER: Up!’s opening

8 Mile speaks to a pre-9/11 world. The Great Debaters speaks to a pre-Civil Rights world. Inglourious Basterd’s best scene works well until you think about it and realize that it’s built on several implausible premises, such as a Nazi officer’s immediate familiarity with King Kong's literary subtext. Intolerable Cruelty probably has the best scene – the best acted and scripted – but I feel guilty rewarding something so silly. Spiderman 2’s gets right to the core of the decade, giving us a touching and courageous New York siding with its savior…which is then easily shunted aside by the bad guy, ruining an otherwise powerful scene. Upon reflection, leaving aside the politics and sentiments of the decade, the moment I think stands forever is the dialogue-less tribute to a life and love, a humble dream unmet, from Up!

MOST OVERRATED:

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Tropic Thunder

300

Pan’s Labyrinth

Big Fish

WINNER: Pan’s Labyrinth

I have two criteria in making this selection. One is the highness of the rating, in that Pan’s Labyrinth is universally feted as a work of genius and power, whereas the rest have their critics. The other is the lowness of the film. It undoubtedly pushes dread on its audience, not dreadful, but real literary dread. If one enjoys 2 hours of dread, I would recommend several more hours of such in the inevitable pall of doom that hangs over the majority of The Sopranos and the third season of The Wire. Other than that, Pan is a bit of cartoon of the horrors of Spanish fascism; the sad truth is that the fantasy world’s politics are as well realized as those of Pan’s real world. It would be more powerful if the fantasy world were black and white and the real world somewhat grey. Instead, the Spanish Communists, those same ones who served as Orwell’s inspiration for 1984, are the white knights and the irrepressibly sadistic fascists are the black knights and it’s all mad more tedious as a result. If there's any drama, it's to the few moments where it seems the villain is on the verge of a moment of compassion, only to be drawn into his wickedness through some impulse we will never know. 

MOST UNDERRATED:

Cinderella Man

The Count of Monte Christo

Grindhouse: Death Proof

Master & Commander

The Rundown

WINNER: Cinderella Man

You can physically see Russell Crow’s career disappearing here as the market shifted. He keeps trying to find a place as a man's man in another era, apparently lost as he is in this one.

MOST REPRESENTATIVE OF THE DECADE:

Cradle 2 the Grave

Freddy vs. Jason

Snakes on a Plane

Superbad

Syriana

WINNER: Superbad

The teen movie is almost always the definition of a decade. Each generation looks back on their teens as a permanent place in time; as we move on in age, it is the gateway to our adult emotions and experiences. Superbad, then, necessarily wins. Deservedly so, as Jonah Hill, Michael Cera, and McLovin' capture a mixture of nerdiness, irony, and irrational exuberance which this aging male sees as definingly millenial.