Just for fun, an update on a topic I often raised in the 1990s
Worst five nominees:
Rank Film Year IMDb
1 Emilia Pérez 2024 5.3
2 Doctor Dolittle 1967 6.2
T-3 Three Coins in the Fountain 1954 6.3
T-3 Tom Jones 1963 6.3
T-5 The Greatest Show on Earth 1952 6.5
T-5 Maestro 2023 6.5
Worst five winners:
Rank Film Year IMDb
1 Tom Jones 1963 6.3
2 The Greatest Show on Earth 1952 6.5
3 Gigi 1958 6.6
4 Around the World in 80 Days 1956 6.7
T-5 Chariots of Fire 1981 7.1
T-5 Shakespeare in Love 1998 7.1
The one most salient item on those lists: Emilia Perez is not only the worst nominee, but is the worst by a mile. It wins the 100-yard dash by about 50 yards. If low scores were an event in the Aztec games, the high priest would now be cutting its heart out.
And that sumbitch had 13 nominations!
(For reference, the reviews were mediocre. It is scored 70 at Metacritic. That’s OK for a summer comedy or a thriller, but mighty weak for a Best Picture nominee. Maestro, the other recent addition to the lists, is scored 77.)
Oscar’s kind of drove themselves off a cliff in the past decade or so. Hard to take them seriously with stuff like Anora or One Battle or Everything Everywhere winning and then being forgotten almost instantly.
Looking over the past few years, I’d say Oppenheimer and Parasite were the only ones that actually deserved it in my opinion – everything else was flavor of the month or politically oriented or just not something that will hold up over the years.
Decade by decade, it seems to cycle between commercial pictures and those with artistic aspirations. I wish the current cycle would end, and popular films would reappear. I was OK with Oppenheimer and CODA for sure, but in most years my real choice doesn’t even get nominated.
Except for Oppenheimer, is there any film from 2016-2025 that will stand the test of time? Maybe Sinners and a couple of comic book adaptations, but it seems that the memorable, noteworthy efforts are coming to us in series form lately.
Even in the series world, it’s all serious stuff. Where are the great sitcoms? There hasn’t really been a great one in a while. I love Ted Lasso, a great series with a lot of heart, but it’s not really laugh-out-loud funny that often, and Hacks is more character-based dramedy rather than straight-up laughs like 30 Rock or Brooklyn 99.
Emilia Perez looks somewhat brigaded. A shit ton of “1s” as expected but weirdly a lot of “5’s”. One weird quirk is a lack of “10’s”. Normally I assume that a 10/10s are from your publicists, friends and family members. Its like they didn’t even want to put in the effort because the film isn’t worth it.
Tom Jones by comparison has a natural looking bell curve centred around a 6-7 with a healthy amount of 10s from your friends.
Emilia Perez would be even lower if IMDb did a straight arithmetic mean. The raw average is 4.7, but IMDb applies some secret sauce, presumably to alleviate the impact of shenanigans, to arrive at a weighted average of 5.3.
Even if you eliminate all of the 1s and calculate the raw average of the other 77% of the ballots, the result is still below the Dolittle line. (Dolittle is the movie Mendoza.)