…For no other reason than his two best movies, Raging Bull and Goodfellas, lost out in the Best Picture and Best Director categories to pretty-boy actors-turned-directors (Robert Redford for Ordinary People in 1980 and Kevin Costner for Dances with Wolves in 1990).

I haven’t seen the other nominees for Best Picture, so I can’t honestly measure the level of competition The Departed faces. That said, it was a very good movie, but it didn’t blow me away. The concept was great: A game of cat and mouse between a mob rat (Matt Damon) inside the police force and police rat (Leonardo DiCaprio) inside the mob. And they’re both working for the same boss (Jack Nicholson). Unfortunately the plot is hindered by too many characters and too many surprise endings. It also makes no sense whatsoever that, of all the talent in the movie, Mark Wahlberg is the actor to be nominated for an Oscar, considering the fact that he had surprisingly little screen time. DiCaprio should have been nominated, but he got one for Blood Diamond.

I hated to see Scorsese fall victim to the trend in Hollywood these days where diectors try to surprise viewers with multiple endings. He should know that audiences are pretty hard to shock these days.