Does anyone agree? I would also pick Out of Sight, Being John Malkovich, Ratatouille, WALL-E, and Animal Kingdom for this title.
This movie takes the prize for me because it is so heartbreaking and emotional without ever feeling heavyhanded. An amazing movie.
I don't know. Especially when you throw movies like Heat, the Searchers, Original King Kong, Alien, Mean Streets, Some Like it Hot, as well as a seemingly endless amount of "classic movies," it really just too hard to boil it down to a "best 1," or even a "best 10."
Did deserve it though. Much better than the Aviator or Finding Neverland.
The 2004 nominations:
Aviator (eh, okay, not my favorite)
Million Dollar Baby (yes)
Ray (yes)
Sideways (THIS is where ESOTSM SHOULD have been)
Finding Neverland (again, not my favorite, but understandable nom)
It's not like the nominations for best picture were a 'wtf, why?' but there were definitely a few, in my opinion, that could have been nixed for this beaut to get the nod.
All of those movies were released well after ESOTSM (Feb 2004). The studio somehow wanted to market this film as a RomCom and failed miserably. They should have been more clever with their marketing and released it in the late summer/fall/winter in order to stay in the minds of Academy voters.