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“A critic is someone who enters the battlefield after the war is over and shoots the wounded.”―
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I pretty much only follow movie and comic book type people on Twitter. Today Amy Smith(@filmswithamy) posted this:
I haven’t been posting very regularly lately but this question inspired me. I just had to know which was my favorite year of this cinematic decade. But I had to at least briefly review each film in consideration. But which films to consider? I thought an easy way to do it was to look back on all the Best Picture nominees. I’m no fan of the Academy or the Oscars but the films they nominate are usually somewhat decent or, failing that, in the zeitgeist.
There were 79 nominees total from 2011-2019 (movie years being one year prior, 2010-2018). I saw 64. These numbers could be wrong but it’s late and I’m an English major and I’m too lazy to triple check. I have nothing against the 15 movies I did not see and I’ve added a new quest to see them all and I will come back and update this post. Yes, I’m crazy.
I listed out each year’s nominees and applied my mini-review formula to them. I made my own formula because I like to pretend I am a data nerd and Rotten Tomatoes annoys me. I call it the Shark Wrighter score (SW score) because I am clearly vain and lazy. I then took the average SW score for each year and quite obviously listed them in descending order from highest average to lowest.
(the envelope please)
(drumroll)
So there you go, Amy Smith. 2015 (Oscars held January 2016) was, in my humble opinion, the best year for movies in this almost finished decade.
I don’t expect anyone to agree with my findings or find them sensible. But it was fun to do (my definition of fun is probably not what the word’s creators had in mind).
I do apologize for to the email subscribers of my blog. They’ve received over 60 post notifications this evening. I imagine I will have a lot fewer email subscribers tomorrow morning though I’m not sure numbers go that low. I’m blaming it on insanity and there is definitely nothing temporary about mine.
If you’re interested (and my god why would you be?), see below for the SW scores for each film I saw. I also linked to the mini-review itself if you’re pathologically loopy like me and actually want to see the breakdown for each film’s score.
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| 2011 Best Picture Nominees | SW Score | Octopuses |
| 127 hours | 42 | 4.5 |
| true grit | 38 | 4 |
| the social network | 38 | 4.2 |
| the fighter | (unseen) | (unseen) |
| winter’s bone | 36 | 3.8 |
| inception | 35 | 3.3 |
| black swan | 35 | 3.6 |
| the kids are all right | 32 | 3 |
| toy story 3 | 45 | 4.6 |
| the king’s speech | 36 | 3.7 |
| YEAR’S AVERAGES | 37.44 | 3.86 |
| 2012 Best Picture Nominees | SW Score | Octopuses |
| the descendants | 34 | 3.2 |
| the artist | 34 | 3.4 |
| extremely loud and incredibly close | 33 | 3 |
| moneyball | 36 | 3.6 |
| midnight in paris | 35 | 3.5 |
| war horse | 33 | 3.1 |
| the tree of life | (unseen) | (unseen) |
| hugo | 35 | 3 |
| the help | (unseen) | (unseen) |
| YEAR’S AVERAGES | 34.29 | 3.26 |
| 2013 Best Picture Nominees | SW Score | Octopuses |
| silver linings playbook | 37 | 3.9 |
| amour | (unseen) | (unseen) |
| django unchained | 41 | 4 |
| zero dark thirty | 37 | 3.7 |
| lincoln | 36 | 3.4 |
| life of pi | 36 | 3.5 |
| argo | 41 | 4 |
| les miserables | (unseen) | (unseen) |
| beasts of the southern wild | (unseen) | (unseen) |
| YEAR’S AVERAGES | 38.00 | 3.75 |
| 2014 Best Picture Nominees | SW Score | Octopuses |
| philomena | 34 | 3.5 |
| nebraska | 36 | 3.8 |
| captain phillips | 34 | 3.5 |
| the wolf of wall street | 35 | 3.7 |
| 12 years a slave | 39 | 3.9 |
| her | 39 | 3.9 |
| gravity | 41 | 4.1 |
| american hustle | 34 | 3.3 |
| dallas buyers club | 35 | 3.9 |
| YEAR’S AVERAGES | 36.33 | 3.73 |
| 2015 Best Picture Nominees | SW Score | Octopuses |
| whiplash | (unseen) | (unseen) |
| american sniper | 34 | 3.2 |
| birdman | 25 | 1.5 |
| the grand budapest hotel | 38 | 3.8 |
| the imitation game | 36 | 3.4 |
| selma | 35 | 3.5 |
| the theory of everything | 36 | 3.6 |
| boyhood | 38 | 3.8 |
| YEAR’S AVERAGES | 34.57 | 3.26 |
| 2016 Best Picture Nominees | SW Score | Octopuses |
| bridge of spies | 37 | 3.5 |
| mad max: fury road | 43 | 4.5 |
| the revenant | 39 | 3.9 |
| spotlight | 43 | 4.3 |
| the martian | 43 | 4.3 |
| the big short | 40 | 4 |
| room | (unseen) | (unseen) |
| brooklyn | (unseen) | (unseen) |
| YEAR’S AVERAGES | 40.83 | 4.08 |
| 2017 Best Picture Nominees | SW Score | Octopuses |
| la la land | (unseen) | (unseen) |
| arrival | 36 | 3.6 |
| lion | 37 | 3.7 |
| hell or high water | 35 | 3.5 |
| hidden figures | 37 | 3.7 |
| moonlight | 40 | 4 |
| hacksaw ridge | (unseen) | (unseen) |
| manchester by the sea | 37 | 3.5 |
| fences | (unseen) | (unseen) |
| YEAR’S AVERAGES | 37.00 | 3.67 |
| 2018 Best Picture Nominees | SW Score | Octopuses |
| the shape of water | 46 | 5 |
| darkest hour | 42 | 4 |
| dunkirk | 35 | 3.5 |
| phantom thread | 32 | 3 |
| three billboards outside ebbing, missouri | 39 | 4 |
| get out | 40 | 4 |
| the post | 35 | 3.3 |
| call me by your name | 28 | 1.5 |
| lady bird | 34 | 3.5 |
| YEAR’S AVERAGES | 36.78 | 3.53 |
| 2019 Best Picture Nominees | SW Score | Octopuses |
| bohemian rhapsody | (unseen) | (unseen) |
| the favourite | (unseen) | (unseen) |
| black panther | 40 | 4 |
| blakkklansman | 42 | 4.2 |
| green book | 35 | 3.5 |
| vice | 37 | 3.7 |
| a star is born | (unseen) | (unseen) |
| roma | 33 | 2 |
| YEAR’S AVERAGES | 37.40 | 3.48 |
****
This whole insane project took me 6 hours, 25 minutes, and 23 seconds. I’ll never get that time back.
