[1995 Academy Awards] Forrest Gump vs Shawshank Redemption vs Pulp Fiction.

i need my wife's opinion on this. her favorite movie is Pulp Fiction....but she loves Shawshank, too.

 

Winston Wolf is the best cinematic embodiment of The_Conquistador in real life.


So pretty please, with sugar on top, clean the f*in’ car.

 

Forrest Gump. Nostalgic, great sountrack, Tom Hanks and Gary Senise are fantastic, and still watchable to this day. I could watch it any time it comes on TV. (BTW in the book, Gump was an idiot savant, IIRC)


Pulp Fiction is also great - a cult classic as has been pointed out, but I have to be in the mood for it. And a lot of big names, but none of the performances blew me away, possibly with the exception of Harvey Keitel. Plus, after being stuck in a theater with Tarantino watching American Gangster with him laughing at the top of his lungs for nothing - I've lost a lot of respect for him/his work.


I've seen Shawshank Redemption once or twice. I don't get all the hype. But I was younger, and maybe now that I've got a more refined taste and appreciation of movies, I should sit down and reevaluate it.

 

All 3 are great, but I'd rank Forrest Gump >>>> Shawshank >>Pulp Fiction.

Forrest Gump was a movie about American culture that transcended the medium, becoming both a great movie and a great piece of pop culture in its own right. In retrospect, it deserved best picture, and Hanks deserved best actor. His performance made Forrest Gump an iconic character and film.

On the other hand, Pulp Fiction was for me more an icon of pop culture than it was a great movie. It was a cool, original style of exploitative film making. Quite a lot of fun. But the movie itself was not compelling as it seemed to be more of an exercise in style.

Finally, Shawshank was just a great, compelling movie, but ultimately failed to reach pop culture icon status.

 

vstexas09 told me to tell you guys that Slumdog Millionaire would have won the Oscar in 1995 if it was in the running against these other films.

 

Dylan, this is a brilliant skewering of Gump. I was a teenager when I saw all three of these; and the only one I've grown to despise was Gump for alot of the reasons you described. The funny thing is, I understand why this thing won back then, and why Benjamin Button might win this year. And I think those of us old enough (movie-wise) to remember when Tom Hanks could only do comedies would gladly take twenty Gumps for one Apollo 13, Charlie Wilson or Catch Me If You Can.

Now I've got to say the best movie of that time was Pulp Fiction. Broke too many rules while still succeeding:

-Multiple, parallel storylines in a non-linear sequence.
-Characters who all "broke even:" winning or losing at different points in the story (Vincent Vega helps stop a burglary but gets killed later on, Marcellus Wallace gets his briefcase but loses his fixed fight and gets raped, Butch wins money on the fixed fight, but is basically banished from LA under threat of death.)
-Crime, extreme violence, racism, near-fatal drug abuse (!) and rape (!!) successfully played for humor (rather than fear or anger) and moral ambiguity (rather than moral clarity).
-As with any future Tarantino film, declining (Travolta), little-known (Jackson, Roth, Rhames), underrated (Keitel, Walken) or mediocre actors (Stoltz, Arquette) who get career-defining performances, and A-List stars (Willis) who get to play against type (or brand).

At the time, it was the perfect repudiation of the previous fifteen years of crime, action and comedic filmmaking.

I disagree with this last statement as I think all three of these movies had influence over the last 13 -14 years. Gump influenced every god-awful Disney-fied biopic about race and/or sports that seems like it was written for people too young or too detached, geographically or politically, to have really understood or appreciated the social history of the '60s and '70s. And Shawshank made early 20th century period pieces, particularly early crime dramas. It's probably the only genre of the three that can be done over and over again successfully. Plus, I'm not sure Morgan Freeman would have become a commercially viable male lead without it.

 

I dunno about that part there. Not sure they were playing it for humor .... I wasn't laughing though.

 

Shawshank should have won best picture. I would have given Morgan Freeman best supporting actor(actually nominated for best actor). Tim Robbins best actor.

I probably wouldn't give Forrest Gump anything, because I do not like the movie.

Shawshank had it all to me, and is one of the greatest movies I've ever seen.

Pulp Fiction I love, but it is too much of cult type movie to take home best pic. I would probably go Best director, and screenplay(which it won), because it is so different than anything I had seen before it.

 

Of the movies nominated that year, the one I go back to and watch most often is actually Quiz Show.

The biggest question of 1994, though, is why was that God-awful Four Weddings and a Funeral nominated for Best Picture. Ed Wood was a much better film, to name one overlooked movie from that year.

And how the hell was Hoop Dreams not nominated for Best Documentary?

 

best actor - hanks
best movie - shawshank\
best director - quentin

 

Funny you mention that. My sister used to date one of the two guys in that documentary. I remember some people being so upset that the film didn't win they wanted an inquiry or investigation started. lol

 

Shawshank Redemption should have won best picture. As movie it was filmed amazing, script was tightly written, with great acting. Every important character was real and believable and developed. About the ending "saving the movie" as someone else mentioned, how can you rate a movie by removing 15-30 minutes of it? You have to take the whole movie as is, and that ending fits perfectly well with how they wrote and showed the character.

However, if you were to look back on in after 5, 10, 15 yrs and give a best picture award, Pulp Fiction is a much better movie. It just takes 2-4 viewings to completely get it. And those types of movies never do well at the Oscars.

Best Actor was correctly given to Tom Hanks. He became that character, and made the entire movie worth watching.

Adapted Screenplay should have gone to Shawshank because that movie is really about the story. The narration is tremendous as the depiction. Forrest Gump was a good screenplay but by no means that good.

New Screenplay was Pulp Fiction no question.

Best Director hands down was Tarantino.

Tim Robbins was robbed of not even being nominated for Best supporting actor forget Martin Landau winning for Ed Wood.

 

I wouldn't argue with Quiz Show being the best movie that year. Incredible acting and great "true" story. Great cinematography

 

This is close to it, but I think that the issue of "venturing outside of society's norms" misses by a little bit. The issue is actually one of fighting one's "destiny" versus just sitting back and going where the current takes you.

Jenny and Dan found happiness when they just went with the current - just as Forrest always had.

And so I think the movie is a real Rorschach test - do you view riding the current as a positive, or a negative?

In other words - it's all about the feather.

 

Definitely think Shawshank should have won best picture. That movie was a thing of beauty. Pulp Fiction was too violent and edgy for me for best picture, and Forrest Gump was too sappy/nostalgic. It's almost like Gump was cheating by pandering to the boomers and saps.

I don't have a problem with Tarantino for best director or Tom Hanks for best Actor, though.

Freeman for best supporting actor for sure.

 

who can deny the greatness of shawshank, it has one of the most moving scenes in movie history imo...

Spoiler

andy playing the opera music over the sound system just DOES it for me...the looks on the faces of all the prisoners, the defiance of authority it took to do it, fully knowing he would be put in an isolated cell for a hell of a long time.

then morgan freeman's voice over: "I have no idea to this day what those two Italian ladies were singing about. Truth is, I don't want to know. Some things are best left unsaid. I'd like to think they were singing about something so beautiful, it can't be expressed in words, and makes your heart ache because of it. I tell you, those voices soared higher and farther than anybody in a gray place dares to dream. It was like some beautiful bird flapped into our drab little cage and made those walls dissolve away, and for the briefest of moments, every last man in Shawshank felt free."

 

I'm surprised at the variety of answers here.

I agree with most of you; all three of them are great movies. I wish ever year could produce that caliber of best picture nominations.

If I had to give them an order, it would be :

Pulp Fiction
Shawshank Redemption
Forrest Gump

Pulp Fiction is probably my favorite movie. I love all the characters, I love the storytelling method, and I absolutely love the ending.

Shawshank Redemption is very well crafted; there's a huge sense of satisfaction at the end, too. Everything ends how it should.