Not Best Picture worthy at all

Rating: 6/10 (18 February 2019)

Every year I make a point of watching each of the Best Picture nominees for the Academy Awards before the ceremony airs. And every year I'm astonished at some of the films that are considered to be the "best" of the previous year. 'BlacKkKlansman' is a prime example of this. Is it a bad film? No. Is it a good film? Sure. But is it a great film and one of the eight best released in 2018? Not in this lifetime. Sadly I understand a lot of politics come into the Oscars and I think that is a large part of what is at play here. This is a heavily politically driven film that tugs at the heart-strings of just the right type of people that dominate Hollywood and the Academy. For that reason it gets a nomination. Not because it is a great film.
Adam Driver has been nominated for Best Supporting Actor at the Academy Awards as well. This was also a baffling one to me. His performance is good and highly watchable, but he never blew me away by any stretch of the imagination. I kept waiting for him to be given one big scene he could really shine through and knock the audiences socks off with, but it never came. A really bizarre nomination from the Academy I would find it extremely surprising if he got the win for this reason.
The film was actually very similar to the 2016 film 'Imperium' starring Daniel Radcliffe. Obviously it didn't have the twist of a black man being behind the infiltration, but a lot of the actual person to person undercover scenes were very similar in nature. I think I enjoyed that film more though because it was more interested in telling you a story, instead of ramming a view down your throat. I also thought the real-life footage shown at the end of 'BlacKkKlansman' was cheap and out of place. A very tacky decision by Spike Lee to throw that in there. I miss the days from the 90s when if a film was nominated for Best Picture you could be assured it was a truly brilliant film. This film doesn't even compare to those.