The pictures got small — maybe that's okay

The Academy Awards shine brightest when spotlighting human-scale films

Oscars.
(Image credit: Illustrated | iStock)

Here's a trivia game. I'm going to describe some contenders for the Academy Award for Best Picture, and you try to guess what year they were nominated.

  • A young man grapples with his guilt over his brother's death, and his own subsequent attempted suicide.
  • An abused, severely disabled man is taken in by a surgeon, and reveals himself to be kind, gracious, intelligent, and urbane.
  • An aging small-time gangster, reduced to caring for the widow of his old boss, lunges for a last illusory hope of achieving his big-time dreams.
  • A retired couple bond with the young son of their estranged daughter's boyfriend.
  • A personal assistant aids a veteran actor in getting through a difficult performance.
  • A hard-to-please mother and her unhappily-married daughter must come to terms before the daughter dies of cancer.
  • An alcoholic country singer slowly gets his life back on track with the help of a kind widow.

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Noah Millman

Noah Millman is a screenwriter and filmmaker, a political columnist and a critic. From 2012 through 2017 he was a senior editor and featured blogger at The American Conservative. His work has also appeared in The New York Times Book Review, Politico, USA Today, The New Republic, The Weekly Standard, Foreign Policy, Modern Age, First Things, and the Jewish Review of Books, among other publications. Noah lives in Brooklyn with his wife and son.