[originally published on Straight Shooting]
Best Pictures ‘Argo’ is better than
The Broadway Melody, Cimarron, Cavalcade, The Great Ziegfeld, Gentleman’s Agreement, The Greatest Show on Earth, Around the World in 80 Days, The Sound of Music, The Sting, Rocky, Gandhi, Driving Miss Daisy, Braveheart, A Beautiful Mind, Chicago, Slumdog Millionaire
Best Pictures ‘Argo’ can orbit with
Wings, Grand Hotel, Mutiny on the Bounty, The Life of Emile Zola, Mrs. Miniver, All the King’s Men, An American in Paris, From Here to Eternity, Marty, Gigi, Ben-Hur, West Side Story, Tom Jones, My Fair Lady, A Man for All Seasons, In the Heat of the Night, Oliver!, Midnight Cowboy, Patton, Ordinary People, Chariots of Fire, Terms of Endearment, Out of Africa, Platoon, Rain Man, Dances With Wolves, Forrest Gump, The English Patient, Titanic, Shakespeare in Love, American Beauty, Gladiator, Crash, The King’s Speech
Best Pictures ‘Argo’ can’t touch
All Quiet on the Western Front, It Happened One Night, You Can’t Take It with You, Gone with the Wind, Rebecca, Going My Way, The Lost Weekend, Hamlet, All About Eve, On the Waterfront, Bridge on the River Kwai, The French Connection, The Godfather, One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Annie Hall, The Deer Hunter, Kramer vs. Kramer, Amadeus, The Last Emperor, The Silence of the Lambs, Schindler’s List, The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, The Departed, The Artist
Best Pictures ‘Argo’ can’t see with an astronomical telescope
How Green Was My Valley, Casablanca, The Best Years of Our Lives, The Apartment, Lawrence of Arabia, The Godfather Part Two, Unforgiven, Million Dollar Baby, No Country for Old Men, The Hurt Locker
Best Picture nominees that lost (top shelf)
Grand Illusion, Stagecoach, The Grapes of Wrath, The Maltese Falcon, The Magnificent Ambersons, It’s a Wonderful Life, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, Sunset Blvd., Shane, Anatomy of a Murder, Dr. Strangelove, Bonnie and Clyde, Chinatown, Nashville, All the President’s Men, E.T.—The Extra-Terrestrial, The Right Stuff, Goodfellas, Pulp Fiction, Saving Private Ryan, Brokeback Mountain, Winter’s Bone
Best Picture nominees 2012: a ranking
Zero Dark Thirty, Amour, Lincoln, Django Unchained, Silver Linings Playbook, Argo, Life of Pi, Beasts of the Southern Wild, Les Misérables
Copyright © 2013 by Richard T. Jameson