Oscars rehash: ’07, Year of Finally

After losing to Robert Redford, Kevin Costner and Clint Eastwood, it's a good thing for Martin Scorsese that Russell Crowe didn't decide to direct a movie.Martin Scorsese was nominated for Best Director five times before finally winning, and that doesn't including the times he was screwed out of nominations for Taxi Driver, King of Comedy and Age of Innocence. So who beat him and how does it hold up over time:

1981 nominated for Raging Bull: Robert Redford won for Ordinary People, a slightly above ordinary drama. It was a fine movie that has weathered a little better than Timothy Hutton's acting skills, but certainly not a better movie than Raging Bull. Redford, who won primarily because he was Redford, Hollywood's Golden Boy directing his first movie, directed a few more good movies in The Milagro Beanfield War, A River Runs Through It and Quiz Show before beginning a steady decline into the sappy and dull. If it feels like he directed An Unfinished Life -- he actually didn't; that was Lasse Hallstrom's fault -- it's only because it's EXACTLY the kind of movie he would have directed right then.

1989 nominated for The Last Temptation of Christ: Barry Levinson won for Rain Man, a slightly above ordinary drama. Levinson is certainly no slouch as a director having contributed great movies like Diner, Bugsy, Avalon and Wag the Dog, all of which were better than the movie for which he won, and so-so movies like Good Morning Vietnam and The Natural that have been remembered far longer than they deserved to be. Still, The Last Temptation of Christ isn't the easiest movie to wrap your arms around, so Scorsese's loss isn't as tragic here.

1991 nominated for Goodfellas: Kevin Costner won for Dances With Wolves, a slightly above ordinary Western. For years I defended this choice, because a) I was born in South Dakota, and b) I saw it while in high school. It was an interesting film and certainly refreshing take on Westerns, but it was too long, too Important, too everything. As a director, Costner developed a fondness for unintentional disaster movies, creating two of the worst movies ever made in Waterworld and The Postman, which of course, only make Dances look like a miracle by comparison. But this was biggest screw job for Scorsese.

2003 nominated for Gangs of New York: Roman Polanski, to the great relief of anyone who actually saw Scorsese's opus, won for The Pianist. Polanski, who could also claim to have been screwed in 1981 when Ordinary People beat out Polanski's Tess, doesn't make many movies given his whole fugitive/exile lifestyle, but he makes his few offerings count.

2005 nominated for The Aviator: Clint Eastwood won for Million Dollar Baby. This one is certainly debatable, but Eastwood was in the middle of an epic run that produced Mystic River, Million Dollar Baby and his companion World War II pieces, Flags of Our Fathers and Letters from Iwo Jima in the span of four years. It's hard to argue with him winning even if in retrospect, The Aviator looks like the better film. At the very least, it's difficult to feel much outrage for The Aviator not winning. It was good, but it wasn't that good.

What should have won: Everything Crash wasn't, Babel was: layered, complex and nuanced. But it was also a very cold movie full of cold characters.

The Queen is an example of what has been happening in British storytelling -- or at least which British exports are getting the biggest play in the U.S. -- since about the late-90s. Movies like Remains of the Day, Howard's End, A Room With the View or really anything from the Merchant-Ivory canon no longer stand for British Cinema. Instead, complex stories about crime and politics like The Deal and The Queen -- companion pieces featuring Michael Sheen as Tony Blair -- or television miniseries like State of Play rule the day now. If only an Oscar could be given to British filmmakers as a whole for not turning their back on complexity. Still, the The Queen, while deserving, was not quite the Best Picture.

If it were possible to honor Clint Eastwood for both of his World War II movies -- Flags of Our Fathers and Letters From Iwo JIma -- at once, then he should have won this award. Flags on its own feels like a pretty straightforward World War II movie. Letters on its own, is too quiet and harsh in its judgment of Americans. Together, they make perfect companion stories about war by taking a very basic approach: show both sides. Seen separately one honors and one doubts. Taken together, they do both as one story. Unfortunately, they cannot he awarded together.

Martin Scorsese finally got his award for Best Picture and Best Director with The Departed. It's not a perfect movie and it's not his best movie. But by returning to his crime roots and relocating from New York to Boston, Scorsese was able to make a movie that felt both reassuringly familiar and new at the same time. While it's far less substantial than some of his work, it's fun in the way Goodfellas was fun and was more worthy of this award than his other recent close calls, Gangs of New York and The Aviator.

Little Miss Sunshine was just happy to nominated.

Better movies that got screwed:Alejandro Inarritu's friends Guillermo Del Toro and Alfonso Cuaron made better movies than he did with Pan's Labyrinth and Children of Men, but weren't nominated for Best Picture. Half Nelson manages to come face-to-face with every movie cliche about drug addicts, but each time turns abruptly the other way. Robert Altman made a sad epilogue for storytelling his final movie with A Prairie Home Companion; not his best movie, but a surprisingly lean and effective final statement. More: The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada, Volver, The Lives of Others and Bubble.

Worst award: Nothing stands out as a horrible miscarriage of Oscar justice. Alan Arkin won Best Supporting Actor for being high then dying in an overrated movie, but it's not the worst award ever. Djimon Hounsou in Blood Diamond and Mark Wahlberg in The Departed were marginally better and Jackie Earle Haley in Little Children was too unsettling in his comeback. Curiously, if Eddie Murphy, who had been a favorite to win this award for Dreamgirls, had won, that might have been the worst award.