Ranking the 2013 Best Picture Nominees
Tags: Oscars, Film Reviews, Academy Awards, Movies, 12 Years A Slave

Ranking the 2013 Best Picture Nominees

Did ’12 Years a Slave’ make up for ‘Gone With the Wind’?

From left, Matthew McConaughey (“Dallas Buyers Club”), Cate Blanchett (“Blue Jasmine”), Lupita Nyong’o (“12 Years a Slave”) and Jared Leto (“Dallas Buyers Club”) pose with their acting Oscars at the 86th Academy Awards in Hollywood on March 2, 2014. Photo courtesy of Reuters

By Todd Hill

There’s no statute of limitations when it comes to cinematic mea culpas, but should there be?

One of the most popular and important motion pictures in Academy Awards and Hollywood history — 1939’s “Gone With the Wind,” winner of eight Oscars on 13 nominations — hasn’t aged particularly well. Like the novel from which it was derived, it completely ignores the unpleasant realities of slavery in America’s antebellum South.

This article isn’t the place to get into whether “Gone With the Wind” should fall victim to today’s cancel culture; I’ll save that for my piece on 1939’s Best Picture nominees. But the topic has to at least be acknowledged given the film that won the top Oscar at the 86th Academy Awards.

In many ways, “12 Years a Slave” feels like a wholesale corrective to “GWTW.” While life may have been challenging for anyone living in the South during the years leading up to the Civil War, there’s simply no comparison between what confronted a privileged character like Scarlett O’Hara and the fate that befell Solomon Northup, the real-life free black man who was captured and sold into slavery.

When “12 Years a Slave,” which tells Northup’s story, won the top Oscar, Steve McQueen became the first black person to direct a Best Picture winner (Best Director that year went to a Mexican, another first). Let’s not diminish the acting career of Hattie McDaniel, who won one of “GWTW’s” eight Oscars for her portrayal of the house slave Mammy — she had the career that was afforded her at the time. But what a difference 73 years makes.

As has been the case literally every year since the Academy expanded the number of Best Picture nominees from five to up to 10 (to a full 10 beginning in 2021), 2013’s slate of picks feels padded. This is especially so given that five of the nominees received no awards, while another got just one. Of the nine nominees, only three won multiple Oscars, an egregious shortcoming for a year — like this one — when no one film really stood out.

The 86th Academy Awards were about as memorable as most such ceremonies (in other words, they were forgettable), but they did feature a couple of moments that stood out. Host Ellen DeGeneres took a smartphone photo of herself with several stars that may or may not have been spontaneous, although the bit felt that way and was fun. Remember when selfies were a novelty? And actor John Travolta bizarrely introduced singer/actress Idina Menzel as Adele Dazeem (ah, live television). A year later at the next Academy Awards, Menzel introduced Travolta as Glom Gozingo.

Below is my ranking of 2013’s Best Picture nominees in order of preference. While the first five films fully deserved their nominations, in my opinion, the last four, although they each have much to recommend them, could easily be excised from this category. As usual, my pick for the best of the best does not match up with the Academy’s winner, although I will point out that my choice did receive the most Oscars of any of the nominees overall.

Sandra Bullock stars as an astronaut marooned in low Earth orbit trying to find her way back home in the Alfonso Cuaron film “Gravity.” Photo courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures

Gravity

The vast majority of those who saw and enjoyed this, the best of the boomlet of outer space movies to grace the 2010’s, had little to no conception of the enormous nuts-and-bolts challenges director Alfonso Cuaron and company mastered to assemble this otherwise simple tale of survival in low Earth orbit. And that’s OK; it’s not an audience’s job to look for the strings that make a puppet show possible. But this film is far and away the most accomplished of the year’s Best Picture nominees. Of course, one could say the same about a “Transformers” flick, if only from a technical perspective. Most remarkable is how Cuaron and company utilized so many bells and whistles to tell a story so striking in its minimalism. While George Clooney turns in a snarky but key supporting performance, Sandra Bullock is the real star here. Thank goodness the film takes the trouble to give her character a back story so we care.

Oscar nominations, 10 — Best Picture, Director (Alfonso Cuaron), Actress (Sandra Bullock), Film Editing, Cinematography, Production Design, Original Score, Sound Editing, Sound Mixing, Visual Effects. Oscar wins, 7 — Director, Cinematography, Film Editing, Original Score, Sound Editing, Sound Mixing, Visual Effects.

Jennifer Lawrence and Amy Adams exchange words during a contentious scene in “American Hustle,” nominated for 10 Oscars. Photo courtesy of Sony Pictures Releasing

American Hustle

David O. Russell has made better films than this, and certainly more disciplined ones (if we can call any of his pictures disciplined), namely the previous year’s “Silver Linings Playbook” and “Three Kings” (1999). But “Hustle” may be Russell’s most entertaining movie to date; it’s certainly more fun to watch than any of this year’s other Best Picture nominees. It’s also a big, honking mess. Choosing to tell a complicated, highly fictionalized story about the 1970’s-80’s ABSCAM scandal (the who?) is where the trouble starts. I’m fairly sure everything fits together and makes sense in the end, but don’t ask me to recount it. Russell got great performances out of his cast, however, which saves the movie. Christian Bale, Amy Adams, Bradley Cooper and especially Jennifer Lawrence — they all received richly deserved acting Oscar noms. The period hair, fashions and music also make for a great ride.

Oscar nominations, 10 — Best Picture, Director (David O. Russell), Actor (Christian Bale), Actress (Amy Adams), Supporting Actor (Bradley Cooper), Supporting Actress (Jennifer Lawrence), Original Screenplay (Eric Warren Singer and Russell), Film Editing, Production Design, Costume Design. Oscar wins, 0.

In Spike Jonze’s loopy, vaguely futuristic “Her,” Joaquin Phoenix portrays a lonely man who falls in love with his computer’s operating system. Photo courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures

Her

In the not too distant future, at least in the developed world, the notion of people falling in love with robots could be a reality. Wait for it. Thanks to this film, we can argue that writer/director Spike Jonze got there first. The logical place for Jonze to go with this picture (set in the not too distant future), in which Joaquin Phoenix plays a greeting card writer of sorts who has an emotionally intimate relationship with his computer’s operating system, would be satire. But remarkably, “Her” doesn’t go there at all. Instead, what should be a decidedly wacky premise is used as the starting-off point to explore big topics like the meaning of love and the social imperatives of our lives (we can’t really go it alone). While the movie inevitably has some creepy, awkward moments, it ultimately left me feeling hopeful, as well as once again admiring the performance of Phoenix, of whom I’m not a huge fan. But what’s with all the strange, high-waisted pants?

Oscar nominations, 5 — Best Picture, Original Screenplay (Spike Jonze), Production Design, Original Score, Original Song. Oscar wins, 1 — Original Screenplay.

In Steve McQueen’s Best Picture winner “12 Years a Slave,” Chiwetel Ejiofor plays Solomon Northup, a free black man who was kidnapped and sold into slavery in the years before America’s Civil War. Photo courtesy of Fox Searchlight Pictures

12 Years a Slave

The hate, the abuse and the injustice are very nearly too much to take. Film has always been particularly well suited to dramatizing soul-crushing wrongs. How many versions of “Les Miserables,” for instance, have made it to the big screen? (Fourteen, for the record.) But director Steve McQueen’s take on U.S. slavery, which lasted in the South for 250 years, is very hard to watch — ironically, because it’s so well done. While the “peculiar institution” harmed everyone it touched, and while the movie makes it abundantly clear that the harm was by no means evenly distributed, it’s also an eye-opener to see slaveholders portrayed with so much nihilism. Chiwetel Ejiofor, playing a real-life free black man kidnapped and sold into bondage, is our way into the story, but it’s then-newcomer Lupita Nyong’o, an Oscar winner for her performance, who elicits our fury. Did I mention that McQueen is British?

Oscar nominations, 9 — Best Picture, Director (Steve McQueen), Actor (Chiwetel Ejiofor), Supporting Actor (Michael Fassbender), Supporting Actress (Lupita Nyong’o), Adapted Screenplay (John Ridley), Film Editing, Production Design, Costume Design. Oscar wins, 3 — Best Picture, Supporting Actress, Adapted Screenplay.

Martin Scorsese’s “The Wolf of Wall Street” tracks the rise and fall of real-life stockbroker Jordan Belfort, played by Leonardo DiCaprio, seated at right. Photo courtesy of Paramount Pictures

The Wolf of Wall Street

I held this film in high regard upon its release, but my opinion of it has since soured. What happened? I don’t think it’s matured at all well. In telling a more-or-less true story about the rise and fall of a Wall Street type with low morals and no scruples, which isn’t exactly original (1987’s “Wall Street,” just for starters), director Martin Scorsese fills his picture to overflowing with highly memorable, often hilarious sequences, even if the movie is ultimately redundant and over-long. But despite the title character’s eventual comeuppance, the debauchery that overwhelms this movie feels celebrated, and that feels highly wrong today. And, it must be said, while Scorsese’s long and illustrious career behind the camera speaks for itself, it’s become evident that he’s delivered more variations on his “Goodfellas” (1990) than I can recall offhand, and this is just another. Still, this film does contain Leonardo DiCaprio’s arguably best performance to date.

Oscar nominations, 5 — Best Picture, Director (Martin Scorsese), Actor (Leonardo DiCaprio), Supporting Actor (Jonah Hill), Adapted Screenplay (Terence Winter). Oscar wins, 0.

“Philomena,” starring Judi Dench and Steve Coogan, was one of six 2013 films nominated for a Best Picture Oscar that was at least partially based on a true story. Photo courtesy of 20th Century Fox

Philomena

There isn’t a country in the world that doesn’t have at least one shameful incident in its past. Ireland has had to contend with the Magdalene Laundries, Catholic institutions in which thousands of “fallen women” were permanently separated from their children. This may be one of the mildest films made about this unfortunate aspect of Irish history, but it succeeds on the backs of its consistently competent director, Stephen Frears (2000’s “High Fidelity,” 2006’s “The Queen”) and strong cast, headed by Judi Dench and Steve Coogan (who also co-wrote the screenplay). The latter plays a laid-off journalist who helps the title character (Dench) track down her long-lost son for a human interest story. The film could easily have descended into sentimental schlock, and although it doesn’t escape those pitfalls entirely, the result is generally winning. This is also the first of four Best Picture nominees that doesn’t quite merit such a distinction.

Oscar nominations, 4 — Best Picture, Actress (Judi Dench), Adapted Screenplay (Steve Coogan and Jeff Pope), Original Score. Oscar wins, 0.

Tom Hanks, center, stars as Captain Richard Phillips, whose container ship Maersk Alabama was hijacked by Somali pirates in 2009, in the film “Captain Phillips.” Photo courtesy of Sony Pictures Releasing

Captain Phillips

If the use of a shaky, hand-held camera to project raw immediacy in an action flick has become a thing, director Paul Greengrass may be more responsible for making it so than anyone. That’s not necessarily a compliment, for the device has become hackneyed from overuse, especially by the likes of this filmmaker. That this movie succeeds despite that is a testament to the power of the real story it tells and the draw of its star, Tom Hanks. In the late 2000’s, piracy off the Horn of Africa had also become a thing, and Captain Phillips (Hanks), at the helm of a giant cargo ship, and his crew became the victims of it. It’s discomfiting to see white persons of privilege cower under the guns of desperately poor black people, but I don’t want to suggest that the film has aged poorly in the manner of, say, the “Dirty Harry” pictures. After all, this actually happened. Late in the movie, Hanks impresses with a striking bit of acting that lingers.

Oscar nominations, 6 — Best Picture, Supporting Actor (Barkhad Abdi), Adapted Screenplay (Billy Ray), Film Editing, Sound Editing, Sound Mixing. Oscar wins, 0.

Bruce Dern, left, received his second Academy Award nomination, following 1979’s “Coming Home,” for his performance in Alexander Payne’s “Nebraska,” also starring Will Forte, right. Photo courtesy of Paramount Vantage

Nebraska

Creative types from America’s so-called heartland routinely find themselves criticized for crafting works that demean their land of origin. Filmmaker Alexander Payne, a native of Nebraska, has largely avoided such criticism, although his 2002 film “About Schmidt” was at times problematic in this regard. His “Nebraska,” however, doesn’t hesitate to put forth characters that may best be described as dullards. The film affords a nice role for the perpetually overlooked Bruce Dern as an elderly man with mild dementia who thinks he’s won a big sweepstakes prize, and makes some interesting — if hardly revelatory — observations about how wealth changes one’s perceptions about other people. Payne’s decision to shoot in black and white was a good one; the stark Plains look gorgeous. And June Squibb makes a memorable impression in a supporting role. But the familial film is quirky to a fault, and patronizing.

Oscar nominations, 6 — Best Picture, Director (Alexander Payne), Actor (Bruce Dern), Supporting Actress (June Squibb), Original Screenplay (Bob Nelson), Cinematography. Oscar wins, 0.

Jared Leto and Matthew McConaughey, from left, portray AIDS patients in the 1980’s in Jean-Marc Vallee’s “Dallas Buyers Club.” Photo courtesy of Focus Features

Dallas Buyers Club

With empathy, all things are possible. This is being written amidst the 2020 coronavirus pandemic, when news stories about people convinced the virus is a hoax only to later die of it have become commonplace. This film, which tells the true story of an exuberantly heterosexual rodeo cowboy who contracted HIV during the 1980’s AIDS epidemic, unfortunately goes in the same direction. Well, at least he learned to love gay people! The more interesting story here is how the man, Ron Woodroof, took it upon himself to obtain appropriate medical care for himself and others like him. The movie goes through those narrative motions, but never gives a sense of the wider world in which Woodroof struggled. Matthew McConaughey likely deserved the Oscar he won for his portrayal of Woodroof; he did more than just lose an alarming amount of weight for the role. But it felt like stunt casting then for the rom-com star, and does so even more today.

Oscar nominations, 6 — Best Picture, Actor (Matthew McConaughey), Supporting Actor (Jared Leto), Original Screenplay (Craig Borten and Melisa Wallack), Film Editing, Makeup and Hairstyling. Oscar wins, 2 — Actor, Supporting Actor.

For further consideration

One advantage (probably the only one) of having a padded slate of Best Picture nominees is that the odds of any picture getting overlooked for one of these nominations is markedly lower. But there were still a few 2013 films that may have deserved a little more love than they got.

I’ll get this one out of the way first — “Inside Llewyn Davis,” the Coen brothers’ paean/indictment of Greenwich Village’s early Dylan era, was one of the most critically praised movies of the year. The Coens have always had fervent fans among cinema’s intelligentsia, and I’ve never been one of them. More often than not, I get the feeling watching one of their films that there’s an elaborate inside joke being told and that I should feel ashamed for not being in on it. But hands down, this film’s soundtrack was the best of 2013.

J.C. Chandor’s “All Is Lost” is a one-hander starring Robert Redford as a man sailing alone across the Indian Ocean. Photo courtesy of Lionsgate/Roadside Attractions

If survival tales, properly told, ask us to ponder how we would react when up against the elements, J.C. Chandor’s “All Is Lost” isn’t exactly life-affirming. It stars Robert Redford as a man sailing a 39-foot boat across the Indian Ocean who runs into some really bad luck … and then some even worse luck. The film would’ve been improved if it had given its only character at least some modicum of back story (see “Gravity,” above), but Redford’s nearly wordless performance is one of his strongest. A case could surely be made that he deserved a Best Actor Oscar for it; his not receiving even a nomination is baffling.

Greta Gerwig strikes a pose in Noam Baumbach’s “Frances Ha,” which Gerwig also co-wrote with the director. Photo courtesy of IFC Films

Noah Baumbach and Greta Gerwig’s “Frances Ha” looks better and more significant in retrospect, but then retrospective is what articles like this can afford. This is a delightful comedy that’s centered on female characters, just the sort of movie that’s sorely missed today. More importantly, it marks the second collaboration of actress Greta Gerwig and director Noah Baumbach, who a few years later would go on to multiple Academy Award nominations for various other movies. How prescient it would’ve been for the Oscars to anticipate that with some recognition for “Frances Ha,” instead of ignoring it completely, as it did.

Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy appear for the third time as a couple in Richard Linklater’s trilogy-ending “Before Midnight.” Photo courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics

When Peter Jackson’s last “Lord of the Rings” movie was lavished with 11 Oscars (on 11 nominations) in 2004, it was widely understood that the awards were for the entire trilogy of films. Nothing of the sort awaited “Before Midnight,” the third in Richard Linklater’s trilogy of films about a routine relationship between a man and a woman (Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy), shot over 18 years. (Each of the last two installments received an Oscar nomination for screenwriting.) There’s nothing remotely surprising about this. But taken together, Linklater’s three movies constitute something that’s both intimately and grandly human. Scale’s got nothing to do with it.

About this project

Some people vow to visit every continent on the planet, others to read everything Shakespeare (allegedly) wrote. I’ve never had much interest in doing either, but I am committed to seeing every motion picture ever nominated for a Best Picture Academy Award, back to the very first ones in 1927–28 (specifically, I’m talking about films nominated for Outstanding Picture, Outstanding Production, Outstanding Motion Picture, Best Motion Picture and Best Picture; I’m not sure why the Academy has seen fit to change the name of the award so frequently).

I don’t for one moment presume to operate under the assumption that the Best Picture nominees over time consistently represent the best American filmmakers have had to offer, which is why with each slate of nominees I also briefly consider some other consensus critical picks for the best movies of that year(s). Yes, there’s a lot of overlap, but not as much as there should be.

So, why am I taking the time to watch and then write about so many (563 following the 2020 Academy Awards) often sub-par movies? As anyone with just a passing knowledge of the Oscars knows, the voters often get it wrong, which isn’t so much fascinating as it is frustrating. The Oscars, however, have always mattered to the film industry, and matter still (the annual awards telecast, not so much). Each year’s Best Picture nominees help to paint a picture of how Hollywood saw itself at that time, they provide us with glimpses at trends in movie history that could be gone for good.

Most of all, they supply context. Think this year’s slate of nominees was the best ever? The worst? I can virtually guarantee you that’s not the case. No, really. You’d be surprised.

Todd Hill is a former journalist with 30 years of experience, much of it in film criticism, who misses neither journalism nor the film beat.