Thursday Movie Picks: Best Director (Oscar Winners Edition)

Wandering through the Shelves hosts a weekly movie challenge in which you choose 3-5 movies based on that Thursday’s theme and explain why you chose those movies.

Today’s theme is Best Director (Oscar Winners Edition), so here are my choices!

Peter Jackson (Return of the King)

Peter Jackson was nominated in 2001 for the first installment of The Lord of the Rings, The Fellowship of the Ring. He won two years later for the final film, The Return of the King, but I feel like this award was meant to encompass the entire trilogy and what he achieved.

A couple of years ago, I read his book,Anything You Can Imagine: Peter Jackson and The Making of Middle Earth, and it was so clearly not an easy process. The LOTR trilogy are some of my favorite movies, and I think Jackson deserved every award the movies won over the span of three years. I also think he’s a pretty down-to-earth, humble guy and a very underrated director when you look at his work outside of LOTR.

Chloe Zhao (Nomadland)

Full disclosure – I have not seen Nomadland. But I wanted to include Chloé Zhao because I was thrilled to see another woman win Best Director. It still absolutely blows my mind that Zhao is only the *second* woman to win this award, behind Kathryn Bigelow, who won for The Hurt Locker in 2010.

It’s such a travesty how little women are represented in this category. Zhao is the first woman of color to win as well. I still remember how happy everyone was when Halle Berry won for Monster’s Ball (Best Actress) in 2001. Berry was the first – and remains the only – woman of color to win in *that* category. I keep hoping these wins will turn the tide for those who remain underrepresented at the Oscars, but I’m not really holding my breath.

Ang Lee (Brokeback Mountain)

I’m not going to lie, it took me a while to come up with a third here, mainly because so many of the past winners made me feel mostly “meh”. Looking at those nominated, there were some directors so much more deserving of the award than those who actually won. So, I opted to stay with my theme… Jackson is from New Zealand, Zhao is from China, and Ang Lee, the winner for Brokeback Mountain, and later, Life of Pi, is from Taiwan.

Brokeback Mountain was such a beautiful film, and it’s still a disgrace that it lost Best Picture to Crash. Sometimes I wonder how you can justify awarding a movie Best Director and then snubbing it for Best Picture (ie Saving Private Ryan losing to Shakespeare in Love). Looking at who was nominated alongside Lee, I truly do think he was the right choice for the award.
Facebook-f Threads

© 2023 Created with Royal Elementor Addons