Sunday Top Ten - Best Picture winners

Oscar season has been well underway for weeks at this point, and yet I confess and apologize that I've been rather lax on Oscar conversation in this space. Life has been hectic as of late. But while we still have a number of weeks to go before December reveals the really big hopefuls, I figured now is as good a time as any to dust of the corner of my brain that promotes awards discussion by dedicating an installment of Sunday Top Ten to the best of the Best – Best Pictures, that is.

This sort of list is different for everyone, but I'll bet one common theme is how difficult it is for everyone to narrow their list down to ten. Easy as it is to complain about Oscar's taste, they've picked a lot of damn good movies over the last 80-some-odd years. In my humble opinion, the cream of the crop are:

Sunday Top Ten - James Cameron action sequences

With a mere eight feature films gracing his thirty-year career (not including his forays into television and deep-sea documentary filmmaking), it can be a bit frustrating being a James Cameron fan. Who wants to wait three years at a time between films? But then again, it's Cameron's painstaking perfectionism that makes his movies, and especially his action sequences, so thrilling and unforgettable, and most definitely worth the wait. No one understands better than he that action should extend organically from the story, yet should also take on a life of its own; a mini-story within the story. For my money, these are the master storyteller's ten best: