Best Picture Academy Award Winners (5-Film Collection) [DVD]

The Best Picture Academy Awards Winners: Five Film Collection, is a really nice Blu-Ray set, even if what it captures are not some of the best movies to win the Oscar’s top prize. I find any movie that wins best picture kind of atomically gets a sort of unfair level scrutiny, especially by those whose favorite film didn’t win. Even if these may not be masterpieces, if one looks at these five movies as just something to watch, admire, and be entertained by, they’ll probably have a good time with most if not all of these films.From my least favorite to most favorite of the films is as follows.“Crash”. It would probably be my pick as the weakest film to win Best Picture in the last 25 years or so. That doesn’t make it bad, in fact it has some rather strong facets, particularly in regards to the performances with fine work done by Matt Dillon, Terrance Howard, Sandra Bullock & others. There are scenes and images of true power. Unfortunately, it overplays its hands, forcing coincidence on top coincidence in to attempt to tie all these stories together, and ultimately it comes off with a rather generic almost preachy kind of message. On tackling racial issues, it certainly can’t be put up there with the best of Spike Lee for instance. On the other hand, I suppose it makes some pretty good points. 7.5/10“Shakespeare in Love”. This movie I think is really a lot of fun. At its heart is a love story between William Shakespeare in a turmoil trying to create his next play, and a woman of nobility who is to be given in marriage to someone else. Though both Paltrow and Fiennes as the leads give strong performances, I think the film’s most impressive part is how it transforms us the viewers to the late 16th century theater scene in a fascinating and most entertaining way. It’s far from a perfect film (one flaw being Colin Firth, usually reliable, being put as a little too obvious of villain type character) but the good solidly outweighs the not so good. 8.5/10“Chicago”. This is proof the modern live-action musical film can still be relevant, on occasion, in the modern cinema. Its style might be better than its substance, but since its substance is quite strong that’s not necessarily a major problem. Every musical number, most incorporating fancy dance routines, is distinguished from the others, and all but maybe one or two of them are really very well done. The cast—four of whom were nominated for an Oscars in Renee Zellweger, John C. Reilly, Queen Latifah, and Catherine Zeta Jones who won for Supporting Actress—all do quite well in both their singing/dancing and their talking parts. Richard Gere however, though good as well, ends up dominating a little too much on the films second half. Still a very good movie musical. 8.5/10“No Country for Old Men.” For many movies lovers this will certainly be the cream of the crop of this collection, but I have to give it a very narrow runner’s-up position. It’s not my favorite Coen Brothers (I rank Fargo and Inside Llewyn Davis higher) but it’s still a very impressive achievement all round, with so many well-shot well-staged interesting scenes and a compelling story coming together with a very talented cast, among them Tommy Lee Jones, Josh Brolin, Kelly Macdonald, Woody Harrelson, and especially a most-impressive, and most-dark, Oscar winning turn for Javier Bardem. It truly is a work to admire, and one I enjoy watching for both its entertainment value and its style. 9/10“The English Patient”. Yes, it may be a little too long, and at time self-conscious, but I still loved so much of this beautiful, emotional, very well acted film of love, war, and tragedy. Staring such exceptional talents as Ralph Fiennes, Juliette Binoche, Kristen Scott Thomas, Willem Dafoe, and (once again, and in a richer, if smaller, role) Colin Firth, the performances deliver this epic along with its story sweeping from North Africa to Spain in the periods just before through the latter stages of World War 2. The cinematography is certainly some of the most gorgeous of its era, and add the terrific score and great stagecraft among other technical strengths, while you don’t have quite something worthy of 9 Academy Awards which it received, you still have a pretty outstanding film. 9/10Three of the five disks come with some quite nice special features (Crash has nothing other than some previews, and No Country for Old Men only has a few making-of featurettes). Commentaries, making-of features, deleted scenes and other things are found throughout the collection. For the price of the set (I bought it under $20) it is an absolute steal, and even if you have a strong dislike for one or two of these films it’s more than a worthy purchase. Five stars.

The 5-disc blu-ray clamshell case has the typical leaflet posts... And yes mine arrived damaged and would be useless if it were not for my practice of mating each of the new blu-ray discs with their DVD counterparts in cases I buy in bulk that are more resilient. All apart of my creating my own Blu-ray / DVD combo sets.Whoever decided that we needed a size change between blu-ray cases and standard DVD cases anyway? And what's with these blu-ray multi-disc leaflet style cases that exceed 22mm. It would be easier to have hub catch-posts that each held at least 2 discs stacked instead of merely one all packed inside a case not exceeding 12mm. Are you listening Amazon buyers? Your bulk buying leverage and dickering with the Studios could intercede to come up with a workable storage standard improving the current hoge-poge varied assortment of ticky-tacky blu-ray cases not circulating.

This is a fine set of movies, diverse and rewarding. If you missed any of them the first tie around, or just want to revisit a favorite, this is a good buy. We do movie nights, and these compilations are good buys, several movies at a reasonable price.

Nothing to add.

All the movies have been great. My husband even loved Shakespeare in Love, which he wouldn't have chosen if not in a collection because it looked like it would be a major chick flick (we didn't think so at all).

Imagine my dismay when the award-winning film was presented as a chopped-up, made-for-TV version. It would black out every five or ten minutes for commercials which (mercifully) were not shown. Nevertheless, the whole effect was of a badly-edited, broken-up story, not a top-rated film. Shame on the producers of this fraud.

Eh!

The movies are all great. The discs come in one case, but each has its own individual slot so they're not stacked. Good deal for sure.