3) The Blind Side
I tend to have more questions than answers about movies, which makes it tough for people to take me seriously when I write about them, and that’s ok. But movies like The Blind Side just baffle me sometimes. From where I stand, based on all the movies I’ve seen and witnessed how they’ve been received, which is limited in scope but all I have to draw upon, I can’t fathom exactly how a movie like The Blind Side gets nominated for an Oscar.
This is a type of movie, and it’s not exactly a movie that plays against this “type,” that does not typically generate awards consideration. It’s usually seen as harmless but not particularly noteworthy. And so I was expecting this movie to be in that pantheon of sports movies that people enjoy and are fine and good but don’t get elevated to the heights of awards reception because that would be crazy.
And then they went and nominated this thing and gave Sandra Bullock a freaking statue for it. I appreciate that it’s a really cool story and the movie tells it well enough. But why was it received so much better than the other movie director John Lee Hancock is known for, The Rookie? Or any other solid sports movie? How did this one break through and get nominated?
Even if it was the first year that expanded the number of Best Picture nominees from five to ten? I mean, The Rookie is a good movie. I just somehow completely missed how Sandra Bullock was more deserving of awards attention than Dennis Quaid, or insert any other overlooked sports movie example you want. Forget the actual huge issues people had with the movie, of which there were many. The acclaim for this one specifically, as opposed to the many others like it, is still bizarre to think about.