AK'd... How embarrassing! Sorry folks.
With our 6th pick, BF & the BFFs are proud to select, in the category of
War, the late Anthony Minghella's WW2 masterpiece... One of the better novel adaptations you will ever see - not in terms of faithfulness to the source material, but in terms of adapting the novel for a different medium, creating a new work of art that can stand alone, but that also maintains the spirit and feeling of the original... Featuring a top-notch cast, breathtaking cinematography, and a brilliant score... One of the least linear plots to win best picture in the last 20 years...
The English Patient
Quote:
The film garnered widespread critical acclaim and was a major award winner as well as a box office success; its awards included the Academy Award for Best Picture, the Golden Globe Award and the BAFTA Award for Best Film. Juliette Binoche won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress, winning out over Lauren Bacall for The Mirror Has Two Faces (it would have been Bacall's only Oscar win, and in her acceptance speech Binoche commented that she had expected Bacall to win). Anthony Minghella took home the Oscar for Best Director. Kristin Scott Thomas and Ralph Fiennes were nominated for Best Actress and Best Actor. In all, The English Patient was nominated for an impressive 12 awards and ultimately walked away with 9. It is the highest-grossing non-IMAX film (and second highest-grossing film overall) to never reach the weekend box office top 5.[2]
An episode of Seinfeld was devoted to lampooning the film's fervent supporters: Elaine is dumped by her boyfriend because of her tepid response to the film, and her critique culminates with the outburst, "Quit telling your stupid story, about the stupid desert, and just die already! Die!!".
Since weekend box office top 10 rankings were first recorded in 1982, The English Patient and Amadeus are the only two Best Picture winners to never enter the weekend box office top 5.[3][4]
Pulitzer Prize winning critic Roger Ebert, from the Chicago Sun Times gave the movie a 4 star rating, saying that "It is the kind of movie you can see twice--first for the questions, the second time for the answers."[5]
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