Wherefore Art Thou a Best Picture Winner?

Rating: 7/10 (21 June 2010)

An energetic and sprightly romance about Shakespeare and his muse.
This film is more known as the film that beat (and most people feel wrongly so) "Saving Private Ryan" for the Best Picture Oscar in 1998 than for any of its own merits. But I can see why it won. I don't think it's a great movie, but I didn't think "Private Ryan" was either, and "Shakespeare" certainly has more sheer storytelling chutzpah than Spielberg's film. "Private Ryan" is the kind of movie fanboys and techo-geeks would salivate over, but "Shakespeare" is the kind of movie storytellers would fall in love with.
For what it's worth, the criminally overlooked "The Thin Red Line" from the same year blows both of the other movies, and pretty much every other movie released that year, out of the water.
Grade: B+