This Sunday evening will be the Academy Awards, something that once was one of the milestones in my year.
I started going to movies nearly 70 years ago, and they were nearly always my main form of entertainment, either alone or with dates. I remember my first dates with both of my wives, “American Graffiti” in 1973 and “Bob Roberts” in 1992, and in my second marriage, we pretty much went to movies every Saturday night for most of the 1990s.
Each year, as the Oscars approached, Nicole and I made an effort to see as many of the major nominees as we could and then watched the show to see who won.
Most years, we saw most of the Best Picture nominees, but all that changed when we moved to Georgia. With Sunday’s nominees, there will be a total of 140 films nominated for Best Picture released since we relocated here.
I have seen 17 of them.
I have seen one that won.
I saw none of them in theaters. In fact, I have seen three movies in theaters since we moved here — the last Harry Potter movie, “A Dog’s Purpose” and “Stan and Ollie.”
This year will be the first time I haven’t seen any of the 10 nominees, and there have been only four years that I have seen more than one.
I saw one nominee last year and it wasn’t “Oppenheimer.” The only nominee I saw from 2022 was the “Top Gun” sequel.
The year before was a big one. I saw two of the nominees and both were pretty decent — “Don’t Look Up” and the Spielberg remake of “West Side Story.” The year 2020 I saw one I really liked — “The Trail of the Chicago Seven.”
The one I saw in 2019 was unique on my list. “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood” was the only one of the 17 on my list that I didn’t see all the way through. It was OK, but I passed on the last 20-30 minutes because — spoiler alert? — I didn’t want to see the Manson murders.
I’ve never really been a big Quentin Tarantino fan anyway.
I won’t bore you by going year by year through the last 11. The only one to win an award was 2015’s “Spotlight,” which I thought was wonderful. I saw “Vice” and “Arrival” because I think Amy Adams is wonderful and I saw “Midnight in Paris” because I still like a good Woody Allen movie and I love Paris.
The other seven share one thing other than their nominations. I liked all of them — “Darkest Hour” with an amazing Gary Oldman performance, “The Post,” “The Martian,” “The Grand Budapest Hotel,” “Gravity,” “Lincoln” and “Moneyball.”
As I said earlier, I haven’t seen any of this year’s 10 nominees. In fact, when I look at the list I see only one on there that I might like to see.