The Red Shoes
The Academy Awards are now less than a week away, and the Best Picture race really is hotting up.
Will it be 12 Years A Slave of Gravity that will triumph? Alternatively, will one of the other nominees spring an unexpected surprise?
And surprises are what we are looking at today, as we take a look some of the movies that SHOULD have won Best Picture, but missed out on the night.
- The Red Shoes
The Red Shoes hit the big screen back in 1948 and saw Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger in the director's chair.
The film follows a young ballet dancer - played fantastically by Moira Shearer - who must choose between her dancing career and the man that she loves.
The Red Shoes was met with critical acclaim, and is still widely regarded as the best ballet movie of all time.
This is a movie that mixes fantasy and romance with real life, with spectacular results.
The Red Shoes was nominated for the Best Picture Oscar, but lost out to Hamlet.
- Brokeback Mountain
There was no movie more talked about in 2005/6 than Ang Lee's Brokeback Mountain, as Annie Proulx's short story was brought to the big screen.
Starring Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal, the movie follows the secret and forbidden relationship between two cowboys over the years.
Brokeback Mountain really did take gay love on film into the mainstream, and for that reason alone, this is an incredibly important film.
It is a beautiful and touching movie that has two unwavering performances from Ledger and Gyllenhaal.
Brokeback Mountain won a series of awards that year, and was the favourite to scoop the Best Picture Oscar. However, it lost out to Crash.
Don't get me wrong, I am a big fan of Crash, but Brokeback Mountain was such a brave piece of filmmaking that it should have triumphed.
- The Dark Knight
The Dark Knight is widely regarded as one of the great superhero movies of all time, as Christopher Nolan returned to the director's chair.
It was the second film in Nolan’s Batman trilogy, and is the standout film from the series. The film followed Batman's battle with evil, where he comes face to face with the Joker.
From start to finish, The Dark Knight is a complex and dark movie that really did raise the bar in the superhero film genre.
Nolan has made a superhero movie for an adult audience, and it was a movie that went on to transcend the genre.
The movie was a massive box office and critical smash, and many believed that it deserved a spot in the Best Picture category at the Oscars.
Sadly, the Academy was a little narrow minded and the movie was overlooked in the Best Picture category. Heath Ledger did win the Best Supporting Actor award for his terrific performance as The Joker.
- Citizen Kane
Citizen Kane was released back in 1941 and saw Orson Welles direct as well as star in the film.
Following the death of a publishing tycoon, news reporters scramble to discover the meaning of his final utterance. Welles takes on the role of that newspaper publisher Charles Foster Kane.
Citizen Kane is widely regarded as one of the greatest movies of all time and really has become an enduring masterpiece.
What is hard to believe, is that this was the feature film directorial debut from Kane, having worked on a series of shorts throughout the thirties.
The movie was praised for its innovative cinematography, music, and narrative structure as Welles was not afraid to try something new.
It was nominated for nine Oscars, including Best Picture: however, it missed out on the Best Picture gong to How Green Was My Valley.
- Goodfellas
Martin Scorsese is one of the greatest directors of all time, and he was behind Goodfellas when it was released back in 1990.
The movie was based on the book by Nicholas Pileggi, and followed the story of Henry Hill as he made his way up through the mob.
Scorsese knows how to deliver a gangster film, as Goodfellas is another stylish, violent, and hard-hitting film: it really is one of the best movies in this genre.
Goodfellas is one of the most influential movies ever made and really saw Scorsese at the top of his game.
Goodfellas was nominated for six Oscar, but lost out on the Best Picture gong to Dances With Wolves.
There was no Best Director Oscar for Scorsese, but Joe Pesci did scoop the Best Supporting Actor Oscar.
- Saving Private Ryan
Saving Private Ryan is a movie that is now over fifteen years old and yet still remains one of the best war movies in recent years.
Steven Spielberg returned to the director's chair for this World War II drama, which starred Tom Hanks in the lead role.
The movie followed a group of U.S. soldiers who, after the Normandy landings, set off behind enemy lines in search of a single U.S. paratrooper whose brothers have been killed in action.
Spielberg really is a man who has spent a lot of time researching the Second World War, and that really shows in this film - the Normandy landings scenes last twenty seven minutes and are some of the film's most powerful and visceral moments.
While this may not be a true story, Spielberg still delivers the material with the upmost respect - all this is anchored with a monumental central performance from Hanks.
Saving Private Ryan should have coasted to the Best Picture Oscar, but it was amazingly beaten by Shakespeare in Love.
- The Defiant Ones
The Defiant Ones was released back in 1958 and saw Tony Curtis team up with Sidney Poitier for this crime drama.
Curtis and Poitier play two escaped chained together, who have to put their prejudices about each other aside and work together to avoid capture.
The Defiant Ones is an intelligent and powerful movie, which really had a very relevant social message to deliver: a message that is still as important today as it was back in 1958.
Curtis and Poitier deliver two great central performances - they were both nominated of the Best Actor Oscar.
The film was also nominated for Best Picture, but lost out the rather forgettable musical Gigi.
The Oscar winners will be announced 2nd March. 12 Years A Slave, Gravity, American Hustle, Captain Phillips, Dallas Buyers Club, Her, Nebraska, Philomena and The Wolf of Wall Street will battle it out for Best Picture.
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