10 great films from this century that didn’t win a single Oscar

If winning an Oscar wasn’t a big deal, why are the year’s biggest snubs and surprises the first topic of discussion following every nomination announcement? What would the discourse be this year if we weren’t talking about Greta Gerwig and Margot Robbie not making the cut in the tight categories of Best Actress and Best Director for Barbie? We’re all armchair Academy voters when it comes to the question of which films, stars, and directors are worthy of recognition, and no one really knows the strange alchemy that goes into picking the winners. Sometimes their choices age well, sometimes not so much. It’s still hard to fathom that there was no Oscar love for outstanding movies like Psycho, A Clockwork Orange, The Shawshank Redemption, Heat, or Fight Club.

Those historic oversights have become part of Hollywood’s legend now, and they tell us not only that the Academy is fallible, but that the story can change with a little time and distance. What can we learn from more recent losers, though? Going back even a couple of decades, you start to see some familiar names attached to films that went home empty-handed. Some of them may even get their due this year (here’s a hint: his name rhymes with Shmistopher Shmolan). Here’s a list of our top 10 favorites in chronological order of release. If it were up to us, they’d all be winners.

Memento

Christopher Nolan’s breakthrough film Memento signaled the arrival of a director to watch. An intricately crafted story told in reverse, it centers on a guy (or a Guy, as in Guy Pearce) with no short-term memory who sets out to solve the mystery of his wife’s murder and his own condition. Like this year’s Oscar favorite Oppenheimer, the narrative is delineated by scenes shot in black and white and color. It received wide acclaim, and was nominated for Best Original Screenplay and Best Film Editing, but lost both (to Gosford Park and Black Hawk Down, respectively). Nolan was subsequently nominated for his screenplay for Inception and for directing Dunkirk, but didn’t win those either. As of today, he still doesn’t have an Oscar to his name, but we bet that’s going to change very soon.