2025 Best Picture Bracket Challenge-Round 2-Week 3
Round 2 is in full swing
Week 1 of round 2 is in the books and it’s time to get some votes for the second set of matchups.
If you want to see the full bracket, check it out here.
Round 2 Week 1 Recap
Already in the first week of round one, we’ve had some of the biggest blowouts I would expect to see this round. That’s even with our top seeds entering the fray, starting off with a 90-10 trouncing of (65) Rain Man by (1) The Godfather. (16) The Departed had a similar margin of victory over (49) Ordinary People 89-11 while (32) Forrest Gump defeated (33) Million Dollar Baby 70-30. The closest matchup in round 2 so far came from (17) Amadeus sinking the lowest remaining seed (81) Titanic 60-40. (Sorry, I’m obliged by the gods of movie writing to make a sinking joke any time I talk about Titanic)
Round 2 Week 3 Matchups
Here is this week’s segment of the bracket!
#4 Parasite (2019) vs #61 From Here to Eternity (1953)
On a very selfish note, I was super happy to see Parasite land at number 4 in the seedings when I put this event together. Ever since I saw it, it has had a permanent place in my top 4 on Letterboxd and I don’t see it getting kicked out any time soon. That said, From Here to Eternity is a wonderful movie that I saw for the first time just about a year and a half ago. This pairing encompasses such a variety in just two films, with Parasite delivering two movies in one in my opinion, and Eternity bringing a hug array of Hollywood Stars of the 1950s to the screen in one go from Burt Lancaster and Frank Sinatra, to Deborah Kerr, Donna Reed, and Ernest Borgnine.
#29 The Deer Hunter (1978) vs #36 Ben-Hur (1959)
This matchup is a bit surprising given the Academy Award success that the lower seed brings to the table. Ben-Hur was nominated for 12 Oscars and won 11, a feat which has only been duplicated by Titanic and The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King yet it sits in the bottom half of round two. The Deer Hunter was nominated for a respectable nine Oscars, but only won five including both Best Picture and Best Director. The film also marks the first of 21 acting nominations for Meryl Streep, the most of any actor.
#13 On the Waterfront (1954) vs #52 Midnight Cowboy (1969)
These are two films which I have seen for the first time in the last two years and had heard so much about both, I tried desperately not to go in with my expectations set too high. Brando is in rare form as always in On the Waterfront, which earned him his fourth consecutive nomination for Best Actor and his first win in the category. (He would famously refuse to accept his second win for The Godfather nearly 20 years later.) The film won eight awards on 12 nominations, compared with Midnight Cowboy only winning three on seven nominations. Of course, both Dustin Hoffman and Jon Voight were nominated in Best Actor, something that perhaps damaged both of their chances to win the category.
#20 It Happened One Night (1934) vs #45 Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022)
This is the epitome of some of the difficult choices that will need to be made in this round and beyond. It Happened One Night has been one of my favorite films from the classic period of Hollywood ever since I was introduced to it in film class in college. Everything Everywhere All at Once is one of my favorite movies of the last ten years. I love this matchup because I think of the modesty rules that were in effect in the 30s where Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert couldn’t sleep in the same bed on screen and had to even put up a barrier between their beds. Compare that with some of the scenes in Everything Everywhere and those characters from the 1930s would be aghast, but that just goes to show how far we’ve come in cinema, not just what we see on the screen, but what audiences are willing to engage with as art.