Winner? Eh.

#28: Watch every Best Picture Oscar winner from 1961-2013.
So, I watched The English Patient while I was doing laundry the other night, and I gotta say: I had pretty high hopes for it, and I was a little disappointed. However, I think there was a lesson to be learned from it: Husbands, never leave your wife alone in the desert with Ralph Fiennes.

What is it with all these cheating movies winning Best Picture...? I've seen a lot so far where that's either a side story or the main plot, and I don't like it. (And yes, I know it's based on a novel which is very loosely based on a real person, but does that really make a difference? Really?) I hate to just write it off, but I guess that's the world we live in. Well, in any case, I'm giving it a reluctant thumbs-down. The music, direction, and acting were all fantastic, which makes me think that the people who do this sort of thing professionally might disagree with my final verdict; but the plot just didn't do it for me, and that's kind of an important element, in my humble opinion. Then again, I looked up the other Best Picture nominees that year, and the pickings were a little slim, so I guess I would have given it to The English Patient too, just by default, if I were part of the Academy.

As a side note...To anyone else who's seen it, am I the only one who thinks the horribly-burned Count Almasy bears a slight resemblance to another character also played by Ralph Fiennes? Just sayin'.