Thursday Movie Picks: Oscar Winning Movies

With the Oscars coming up this weekend, it’s a fitting theme for this week’s Thursday Movie Picks, hosted by Wandering Through the Shelves. I don’t forcefully watch a lot of Oscar movies; instead I tend to stumble upon them and discover they were nominated or they won for their year. I don’t like the pressure of having to see said film because it’s award-winning. So I try to watch most nominees before the actual nomination itself.  This week's theme doesn't only limit to best picture winners, but from the pool of animation and foreign film winners as well. Here are my picks this week:

The final film of the Lord of the Rings franchise, The Return of the King finalizes the battle between good and evil, as Rohan and their allies rise to fight orcs and their allies over at Minas Tirith. This is happening while Frodo, Sam and Gollum are making their way to the Mountain of Doom to finally rid themselves of the Ring, taking the longer route as to avoid being seen by Sauron. As much as I love this film, I was surprised that this was in the running and won for Best Picture. It seems so far off to be Oscar bait. 

My first experience of watching those two-VHS tapes long movies come from Titanic, the production that introduces Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet to the world. I still find myself watching this from time to time (whenever it’s on television), and I still get heartbroken by the latter half of the film. 

For my last pick, I decided to go with an animated film, Spirited Away. This is one of the best animation films I have seen, with the fantasy aspect weaving through the story of Chihiro, as she finds herself trapped in a world where her identity was stripped from her. There's a lot of character growth from this one, and the characters themselves were great additions to the film. They only started the category in recent years, and this is the first and so far the only non-English film to have coveted the award.