The 15 worst Oscar Best Picture winners of all time
From Crash to Gigi to Driving Miss Daisy, here are the Academy Award winners that just don't measure up—and the movies that should have won instead
Film Features Oscar
Whenever you repeat something 94 times, you’re bound to mess it up at least once or twice. Or 15 times. Enter the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, which has been doling out Best Picture Oscars since 1929 (the first winner being the eminently deserving World War I flyboy drama Wings). Since then, the Academy’s Best Picture winners have been a sometimes-inspiring, sometimes-baffling lot often chosen out of nostalgia (The Artist), merit (The Godfather, Part II), or routine (almost 50 musicals have been nominated for the big prize; 10 have won).
In at least a couple of dozen instances, it’s easy to wonder what the hell the Academy was thinking. But, in fairness, it’s instructive to consider the time period, the available moviemaking technology, the mood of the voting body, and the quality of the films in a given year. That said, some of their Best Picture choices were questionable then and they’re questionable now. So with an eye towards creating an alternate history where only great and timeless films win Best Picture, below is a ranking of the 15 worst Best Picture Oscar winners—and the films that should have won instead.
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Forrest Gump is insufferable.
I’m surprised they left that one out, considering how many other times this site had touted Pulp Fiction, not to mention The Shawshank Redemption was also in contention that year. (FTR, I liked Gump. But Shawshank should have won)
I totally agree. Shawshank is such a great film, while Gump is simply pleasant. When surfing, I will always stop for even just a few minutes, any scene, of Shawshank, but I won’t pause for a moment for Gump.
Shawshank is the one now showing up very high on the top films of all-time lists; I’d have picked that over Pulp Fiction. Shawshank is timeless, can you say the same about Pulp Fiction?
And Three Colors: Red. 1994 was one of the great years in cinema history, like 1939 or 1974, but unlike those years, the Academy got it utterly wrong, and picked the least deserving of the bunch.
Oh yeah – Shawshank not winning is still baffling. Quiz Show is better than Gump as well. But I don’t dislike it as much as a lot of people do. Shoehorning him into every major historical event of the period was simple, but Hanks sells the hell out of the ending after Jenny’s death and his bond with little Forrest. That rescues it for me.I also struggle with the suggestion that it’s racist. It’s set in 1950s and 60s Alabama but features a main character who is kind to everyone. Are there racists IN the movie? Obviously, and it would have been baffling if there weren’t.
Silly, not “simple” (although maybe that too)
Shawshank was a flop upon release, and how often does a flop win Best Picture?
What’s the opposite term for “victim of its own success”? I love those movies—like Shawshank and Clue and It’s a Wonderful Life—that went on to claim outsized cultural relevance because they flopped so hard and thus were so cheap for basic cable channels to acquire.
Office Space
Counterpoint: The Insider was boring as fuck. (OK, the deposition scene was good, but other than that it was the slowest 5 hours I ever spent in a movie theater. Mann is an action god, but this film was way outside his wheelhouse).
Lotr: Return of the King were 2004 version of The Greatest Show on Earth.Instead Mystic River, Lost in Translation, Seabiscuit and f**kin Master and Commander:FSotW!
Return of the King is easily the weakest of the trilogy as well, but I always interpreted that win as the acknowledgement of the collective achievement and cultural impact of all three films.
Yeah, I always thought the Oscar for Return of the King was basically the Academy saying, “You did it, Pete!”
The idea that Return of the King is the weakest film in the LOTR trilogy is patently absurd.
It most definitely was a “congrats on making three movies” ceremony, but by that logic, shouldn’t Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 have swept the Oscars a few years later?
The difference there would be that the LotR trilogy as a whole is worthy of recognition, and the Harry Potter movies are not.
Boy, were they ever not.
Agree. It was a win for the entire trilogy.
I don’t know that I’ve ever seen M&C on weekend basic cable, where it would seem a natural fit. It’s such a great movie with an fantastic cast yet almost no one I know has seen it. It took a friend who is a big history buff to drag me to it in the theater, and I was blown away.
The book series it’s based on is incredible as well. It’s a shame that there was never any interest in a sequel, because there are so many fantastic stories to adapt. In addition to all the naval battles, the books are also roughly equal parts spy intrigue and Jane Austenian comedies of manners, and it would have been great to see subsequent films explore those aspects. I really hope that HBO comes along one day and turns them into the next great prestige cable series.
So I’ve heard, including that this one is from someone in the middle of the series. Never read any of them.Filming on water is incredibly expensive so it may just be that no one sees the economic return in adapting these further. A quick lookup tells me it made $211 million on a $150 million budget.
I’d definitely recommend the books, even if you aren’t into historical fiction. Film!Far Side of the World kind of makes up its own plot and draws elements from a few different novels—as evidenced by the fact that movie mashes the titles of two different books together—but all the book fans I know love it and think it remains true to the spirit of the series. (Fun fact: book!Far Side is actually set during the War of 1812 and all the bad guys are Americans).And yeah, I can see how a truly faithful adaptation could be ruinously expensive, but if they threw Game of Thrones money at it I think they could make it work.
I showed M&C to a former roommate who had never heard of it before, and he sat there for a solid 30 minutes after it finished processing what he’d just seen. He loved it. It’s criminally underrated and has some of the most realistic late 18th/early 19th century naval warfare ever put to screen.
It’s also the best Star Trek movie ever made.
And the fact that it was clearly designed to be a franchise and it died… that makes so sad.
Funnily enough, the first time I saw M&C was on the HMS Surprise (well, a replica) in the San Diego Maritime museum. My wife was pissed that I sat there watching the whole thing. Lol.
If you are ever in San Diego, be sure to visit their Maritime Museum. Besides a collection of real ships, they have the replica HMS Surprise that was used in the movie (yes, I know it was an actual tall ship that was modified for the movie, but the point is that it wasn’t an actual 19th century ship).
City of God!
Titanic. L.A. Confidential should have won that year.
Seconded. Although there’s something to be said for Titanic pulling off what it did — massive commercial appeal for displaying an event 85 years in the past, after a troubled shoot that had some people doubting the film could succeed — its main story was eye-rollingly bad. It’s only saved only by Leo’s and Kate’s talent and on-screen chemistry (and Zane’s scene-chewing, although that kind of contributed to the eye-rolling).L.A. Confidential, on the other hand, had a large cast of very talented actors who pull together something like three different plots into the same story and, like Titanic, was set in a period of time that audiences of 1997 might have said “meh” to. Instead, it was absolutely gripping — and it did it without a jaw-dropping disaster sequence. Failing to include it in this list is as egregious as some of these Best Picture wins.
Eye-rollingly bad indeed, but we know these awards aren’t for excellence. I don’t suppose we’d still have any Oscars if they went to the best films:/
I only saw Titanic a couple of years ago, and I was surprised at how downright bad the writing is. Like, precocious middle schooler-level bad.“It was the ship of dreams to everyone else. To me it was a slave ship, taking me back to America in chains. Outwardly, I was everything a well brought up girl should be. Inside, I was screaming.”Christ.
In fairness, while that movie was nominated in nearly every category, it did not get a screenplay nom. But then, screenplays aren’t necessarily the most important part of a film. Case in point: MASH, on which Robert Altman essentially tossed out the dialogue and used only the structure as a basis for a more free-form, improvisational work. The great irony is, that script won the Oscar, despite bearing little resemblance to the final work.
And I’ll concede that Cameron directed the hell out of the movie. It’s a superb disaster flick once you get past the talky bits.
Precisely. Screenplays are more than about dialogue. They’re a blueprint, and blueprints change. Cameron absolutely deserved his best directing award for that film. Could the dialogue have been better? Sure. But dialogue in this movie was secondary, I dare say, tertiary to its success.
I dunno…when half the movie is boring terrible talk, and the other half is great tense action scenes, no matter how well-directed, can you really say it was the BEST picture when half the movie basically sucked?
Oh yeah. It’s the ultimate fireworks factory movie and once all hell breaks loose it’s a blast. Watching Fabrizio and his terrible Mario accent get crushed by a smoke stack was probably not meant to be enjoyed.
James Cameron movies all come off like he spent all his money on special effects and had to dig through the couch cushions to find money to pay writers
Well, Cameron doesn’t pay writers, he writes all his movies himself. And every single time, he makes it abundantly clear that he has never had a natural human conversation in his life. (Notably, he hired co-writers for the Avatar sequels, and as a result The Way of Water mostly managed to avoid having weird declarative back-and-forths in place of normal character interactions.)
But it started Kate Winslet’s career path of art house nudity culminating in the Oscar win for The Reader in 2008.
In Oscar’s defense they didn’t nominated it for screenplay.
Sure, but given how huge the movie was I was expecting the writing to at least be “middlebrow costume drama” level.
“I HOPE YOU ENJOY YOUR TIME TOGETHER!!!!!!!”That movie was filled with badly delivered, overwrought lines like these………….
Hahahaha.
To the Academy’s (partial) credit, Titanic’s 14 Oscar nominations did not include a Screenplay nod. James Cameron is a visionary and a genius when it comes to film technology, but the man can’t write.For me, the worst speech in the script is when Rose is strolling on the deck with the Titanic’s designer: “Mr. Andrews, forgive me. I did the sum in my head and with the number of
lifeboats times the capacity you mentioned, forgive me, but it seems
that there are not enough for everyone aboard.”Clunkiest, most ridiculous piece of exposition ever.
Hell yeah, love that movie. Still watch it from time to time.
Confidential is all-time top five for me, and is pretty much a perfect movie. But Titanic was such a juggernaut that I’m not surprised. Crowe is simply mesmerizing in that film.
Whenever people ask me what a “perfect” movie is, I always give them back LA Confidential. Everything about it is perfectly done, and even the tiniest roles (esp. the dead girl’s mother and the forensics guy in the basement) are perfectly cast. When it lost to Titanic was the last year I watched the actual Oscars; I was too disgusted.
And just tight as hell. Not a throwaway line in the whole movie, and the casting work was insane considering no one in the U.S. had ever heard of Crowe or Pearce.
All true, but the bit of casting that always gets me most is James Cromwell. How somehow could have watched him in Babe a couple of years before as the kindliest of men and then said, “That’s Captain Smith”….astounding. Gotta be the same people who somehow looked at then arch-villain Gary Oldman and saw Commissioner Gordon. I’m never not amazed when casting directors are able to pull the rabbit out of the hat like that.
No argument here. Cromwell’s one of my favorite actors in general and his involvement in LAC’s key twist (with another embedded twist that doesn’t become apparent until later) was a total rug-pull moment for me.
The Academy gave it up sooooooo sweet.
I don’t have much bad to say about Titanic but LA Confidential was brilliant in just about every way.
Lol the Anti-Cameron vibes from the site are absurd.
I’m also still a little peeved that Titanic beat out Starship Troopers for Best Visual Effects. Watch them both now, and tell me which one’s CGI has aged better.
Agreed, but Titanic is such a perfect fucking best picture movie I can’t really get worked up about it. Of course it won best picture, I mean jesus, look at it: an epic tragedy brought to the screen, overcoming the troubled production and the doubters, huge movie star performances, grand melodrama, giant, innovative spectacle, incomprehensible box office legs, the urge to finally give a brilliant filmmaker his due, etc. etc. etc. I have no need to ever see it again, as opposed to L.A. Confidential, which I could watch right now and be engrossed, but nothing was gonna beat Titanic.
I am still on the Beauty and the Beast should have won over Silence of the Lambs tirade and have been for 30 years.
That is one of the few times that the Oscars recognized anything that is even horror-adjacent. And while it would be great for them to set a precedent and give an animated film best picture (with giving an actual comedy best picture seemingly the final frontier), I can’t be mad at them for this one, or for rewarding Jonathan Demme.
Fair point.
Nah, that makes it suck even harder. The one time the Academy acknowledges something resembling a horror movie and the “monster” is just a trans person, stereotyped to the point of inhumanity. Horror movies deserve better than that. Silence is ultimately just a cop movie. It’s not bad, but it wastes a great villain by not letting him actually be the villain. Instead Lector is a charismatic douchebag in a box with impossible knowledge of everything that’s going on, to the point that it feels like he’s hiding a copy of the script behind his back and keeps checking it whenever Clarice’s back is turned.
To be fair, SOTL makes explicitly clear in Lecter’s dialogue that the killer is NOT trans, and that being trans is inversely associated with violence…basically, that Buffalo Bill is something unique, not a member of any group. For that era, when some people didn’t even know what trans meant, it was at least a decent job of separation. Also, Bill’s house is covered in Nazi shit, which to young me left a lot bigger impact than the whole woman-suit angle. I was like 12 at that point, but I thought him having swastikas everywhere was the real correlation.
To some extent fair, to some extent not (hasn’t he been secretly exchanging letters with Gumb? Or was that Dollarhyde?)To your fair point that the monster is just a trans person: and then you had “Monster” with elements of horror where they were like “and she’s sexually unattractive AND she’s a lesbian who is keeping Christina Ricci OFF THE MARKET”–I mean, based on a true story but still
That was Dollarhyde in Manhunter (or Red Dragon, I guess, for the book fans). But Lecter knew Buffalo Bill in SOTL as well because Bill had long ago killed one of his patients (the head in the bottle).
This. Silence of the Lambs is a good movie, but it is sweep the Oscars good? Nah. It’s a fine thriller. Hopkins should’ve won Best Supporting Actor. Jodie Foster deserved her award. Beauty and the Beast deserved Best Picture. The Best Director(s) that year weren’t even nominated: The Coen Brothers for Barton Fink.Silence of the Lambs won, because it was the first Oscar nominated movie to be released on VHS prior to the awards/nominations, and it benefitted from a massive boost in visibility. It’s win was due as much to marketing as it was quality.
Barton Fink was both pretty weird for a major release, and its portrayal of Hollywood decidedly unflattering. I’m not arguing your point but can’t say I’m stunned. Plenty of people didn’t know what to make of it.
One consistent lesson of the Oscars is that if you make a movie that honestly critiques Hollywood, you’ll lose. If you make a movie-mythologizing nostalgia blob about “tHe mAgIc oF tHe cInEma,” voters will eat that shit up no matter how shallow it is. Which is why I fully expect The Fablemans to be added to this list on Sunday.
Or at least let them in on the joke, like The Player.
I agree, Hopkins was brilliant but the film is extremely overrated. Critics at the time seemed to be in love with the idea that the killer was some kind of trans type. Critics have been hyping that stuff up since the 90s. Of course now they would complain that it is derogatory to trans people.
JFK should have won in ‘91.
Belfast?!
Any Best Picture winner that features a song called “Thank Heaven For Little Girls” and a 16-year-old title character being trained as a courtesan is not going to play well in 2023.Best Picture should have gone to the powerful and provocative The Defiant Ones.A) Maybe we should stop assigning views from 80 years into the future to understand why things happened in the past. Hollywood will almost always award safe spectacle over political drama.B) Often Oscar night celebrates more than just the story content of the film, and more about the behind the scenes process and backroom shenanigans itself. The only reason why Return of King wins is because the LotR series was considered to be unfilmable up to that time, and the HUGEleap of faith New Line took financing the whole trilogy all at once.
I don’t really agree with this in full, but I will say that The Defiant Ones is corny and ham-handed, so it really does kind of qualify as a “virtue-signaling pick” (trust me there are plenty of anti-virtue signaling picks out there also)
The Defiant Ones was released after the 1958 Oscars ceremony so it shouldn’t even be checked here.The best movie from 1958 is, for me, Vertigo. Best movie I have ever seen. But again it came out after the Oscars ceremony. That seems to be a technicality though as far as the writer of this piece is concerned. He rightly calls out Singin In The Rain as the best movie from 1952. The only problem is it was released at the end of March, a week after the Oscars….
Dude, Academy voters were never touching Vertigo with a ten foot pole. That movie is fucked up by today’s standards. Brilliant, mesmerizing, but deeply, deeply fucked up. And not in a “nobody thought anything of it at the time” kind of way.
A few others:2017 – The Shape of Water over Get Out?!2010: The King’s Speech over every other fucking film nominated?!1994: Forrest Gump over Pulp Fiction?1987: The Last Emperor (again, over basically all of the other fantastic nominees)It’s not just the case that there were better movies than these four, but these four movies are straight garbage. As someone else noted, Forrest Gump is insufferable Boomer-bait. The King’s Speech is utter fucking drivel. The Shape of Water is … I don’t know, stupid? And The Last Emperor is a total snoozefest. UGH.
I disagree about The King’s Speech and don’t understand why it gets the hate it gets. It’s a perfectly professional excellently written rip off of The Madness of King George and other better movies, and the Oscars love blowing themselves. It’s really a pretty good movie if you don’t mind that you’ve seen it several times before.
The Weinstein connection does help.
Phantom Thread > Shape of Water AND Get Out
While (the original) True Grit was a good enough film, so maybe it’s not the most undeserving, but it’s win over Midnight Cowboy has to be one of the greatest gulfs between the film that won and the film that should have won. That was the year that my eyes were opened to what the Oscars are really about.
Midnight Cowboy did win best picture that year! It’s possible you’re thinking of John Wayne’s win over Dustin Hoffman; I’d agree there’s a pretty big gulf there, Hoffman was really something special in MC.
You’re right, I stand corrected. I think that it was Wayne’s win that still sticks in my craw all these years later.
Midnight Cowboy won Best Picture. True Grit wasn’t even nominated. What you may be thinking of is that John Wayne won Best Actor over both Dustin Hoffman and Jon Voight
Are you fucking with me?
Midnight Cowboy is the one that won Best Picture that year, not True Grit. Were you thinking of the Best Actor race instead? (John Wayne winning over both Dustin Hoffman and Jon Voight?)
Get Out is overrated.
weak little bitch
Oh Forrest Gump is a perfectly dreadful film. I watched it for the first time in 20 years, and was amazed at how downright reactionary and conservative it is, and even racist. Pulp Fiction would’ve been a great alternative. In an ideal world, Three Colors: Red, would have won.
I’m genuinely curious what part of Forrest Gump is racist. Like, I want to take this as a good-faith complaint but honestly nothing about it sticks out to me that way.I DO prefer Pulp Fiction, but I can’t imagine any scenario where it beats Gump at the Oscars. For all their professed love of artistic filmmaking, Pulp Fiction just is NOT an Oscars movie.
The part where we’re supposed to be happy that Gump has monopolized the shrimp industry thanks to a hurricane that has run all his black competitors out of business.
Plus, he did spoil their Black Panther party.
Forrest apoligized for spoiling their Black Panther Party, what more do people want?
That too. They portray the Black Panthers and radicals in general as violent thugs who abuse women.
I mean, the women of the Black Panthers have said pretty definitively that the men in the organization were regularly abusive and misogynistic. Look up the beating of Regina Davis. Look up why Elaine Brown, the only woman to ever lead the Black Panthers, left and denounced them.
Or Hoop Dreams.
As the science fiction writer Bruce Sterling (who as a Boomer would be in the target audience) wrote “Forest Gump is Stalinist propaganda. The ideal citizen is loyal yet stupid.”
I don’t assign much importance to whatever wins Best Picture. Sometimes it’s deserved, a la Parasite. Other times, the winner fades into the background while the more deserving films gain steam.2017 is a great example. The Shape of Water won, but Get Out has had a bigger, more lasting cultural impact. Doesn’t really matter if it won BP because it won hearts and minds.
I love that the conversation these days about shape of water pretty much starts and ends with Woman fucks a Fish.
“Although one wonders if The Shape of Water would have been as highly acclaimed as it was if it was released under its original title ‘Fish Fucker’.”
Get out!
Well, that was what it was about (and also featured her gay friend, but that was a bit redundant as the whole point of the movie was a metaphor for sexualities shunned in mid-20th century America).
I mean, sure, among people who haven’t seen the movie but who are really into memes from 6 years ago.
I’ve seen the movie. Woman fucks a fish.
The Shape of Water teaches us that fish are friends, not friends with benefits.
The Shape of Water was truly good imo but yeah I’d have given it to Get Out nonetheless, a film that is tight and well made in every single way from style to substance.I also like the King’s Speech and I’m not sure what should have won this year among well known movies since the academy was unlikely to reward a small film. I like Black Swan too but I don’t think it’s better per se, same with the social network and Toy Story 3. I’m not a huge fan of inception (I mean I sort of liked it but that’s it. I thought that movie was a bit boring and forgettable but competently made at least).I haven’t seen True Grit though, maybe the Cohen Brothers should have won but I can’t speak on it.
I agree with The Shape of Water, and liked Get Out better, but I’m taking Dunkirk (or maybe even Call me By Your Name or Phantom Thread) over it. Definitely The Social Network over The King’s Speech.
Everyone’s an asshole about Shape of Water. I’m not going to say it’s “better than Get Out,” because that’s a stupid semantic debate and Get Out kicks ass. But both movies are excellent.Shape of Water is a queer fairy tale. It’s about a woman with sexual agency who falls in love with “queerness” abstracted into a character: a polymorphous fish-person with ambiguous genitalia who is wondrous to her but a source of disgust and hatred for the villain, a powerful conservative white man who’s obsessed with control.The disgust is the point, because disgust and rejection are the primary tools used by real-world detractors of anything queer. A movie about an actual queer relationship between familiar types of actual people comes pre-loaded with the viewer’s existing beliefs. But this premise, which is fantastical and impossible, asks you to see past whatever shock you may have over the weirdness, and acknowledge the love that underpins it.And that’s what the movie is really about: Eliza, a woman with a disability, recruits a coalition of allies including a gay man and a Black woman to liberate her lover from a villain who embodies white cishet patriarchy (and military-industrial capitalism) at its most abusive and powerful extreme. Her friends don’t entirely get what Eliza is doing, but they see the truth of it, and they help her because their own struggles give them common cause against a common enemy.The movie ends with a quote from Rumi: “Unable to perceive the shape of you, I find you all around me. Your presence fills my eyes with your love. It humbles my heart, for you are everywhere.” Love has no form, but it exists all around you whether you like it or not, and is powerful and transformative. And beautiful.But yeah, keep calling it “the fish fucker movie,” you assholes.
It’s an incredibly sincere movie, and that scares the shit out of a lot of people.
The fuk? Forrest Gump as boomer-bait? You way off on that.
The Last Emperor is really good. Moonstruck and Broadcast News are good too, but they’re kind of slight by comparison.
Yeah, The Last Emperor is interesting in how it shows how someone like Puyi might be tempted to collaborate with the Japanese invaders. He was born into a system where he was all powerful and suddenly in 1912 Sun Yat-sen said he was nothing. Of course he’d betray his nation and return as Emperor of the fake country of Manchukuo.
Okay, I guess everyone in this thread has staked out their hill to die on, so this is mine: Shape of Water deserved to win. Yes, Get Out is terrific, but it’s the weakest of Jordan Peele’s horror films (this is actually a good thing; most directors wish they could consistently top themselves with every new movie.) But in any case, Shape of Water is better.It’s one of the very few Hollywood movies I can think of that has a disabled lead character but respects them as a complete person instead of treating their disability like a character flaw that needs fixing. It’s got an amazing sense of place and atmosphere, cleverly satirizes its time period (and takes pinpoint aim at modern nostalgia for it) plus you’ve got Michael Shannon as one of the decade’s best movie villains. And most of all, it challenges itself to sell the relationship between the two leads without words, and completely nails it. Most leading men would utterly fail to pull off a wordless love story under any circumstances. Doug Jones accomplishes it effortlessly while wearing a full body costume and submerged in a water tank.
Anyway, this is the point where people turn into Beavis and Butthead and reply with “huhuhuh, but she fucked a fish guy, huhuhhuh.” Yes, and? If you can accept the magical hypnosis and brain replacement in Get Out, then you can accept a mythical fish-man hooking up with a human lady. They’re both absurd fantasy premises used in service of a greater story, don’t pretend otherwise.
How is everyone ignoring Lady Bird? Easily the best of the pack.
How about if I think Shape of Water is a great movie but I still think it’s funny she fucks a fish?
I find it odd that two common criticisms of Forrest Gump are that it’s Boomer bait but also that it embraces conformity. I think those two criticisms contradict each other because a big part of Boomer mythology is how they fought the system, maaaaan!
I figure that Shape of Water was an apology award for all of his previous work. Get Out absolutely should have taken the award. We didn’t even need oscars so white for that. It was the best.
Get Out was a clever, but overall mid horror flick that was put on the list to check a box. I can’t understand the obsession with it. I’ll agree that Shape was probably undeserving, but I don’t know what I’d pick for a winner that year either.
Look, now we know Kevin Spacey is a shitbag, but American Beauty deserved the win, just a great movie. But hey, I thought CODA deserved it, so take my opinion with a grain of salt.
I’d call this a partial list of the worst opinions of all time.
the absence of gladiator on this list makes it null and void
Gladiator was great though. I watched it the other day. Was I not entertained? Yes I was, thoroughly.Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon is amazing but it’s in no way a travesty that it lost out to Gladiator. Either film would have been deserving
I think Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, like Saving Private Ryan suffered a bit from “presumed winner syndrome.” For whatever reason, the Academy voters don’t like it when everyone treats a particular film as a shoo-in for the award, and will frequently strike a contrarian tone.
I wonder if you get the Brits voting as a block once in a while, if it pushes a film over the finish line. Like in years where the Independent and Hollywood backed pictures kind of cancel each other out. Or I suppose that was Weinstein’s thing for 20 years. He was like the frickin House Majority Whip for Oscar Awards. Gladiator had both Hollywood (Universal) and Ridley Scott’s backers. Scott Free … I forget what Tony Scott had going that year. Was he part of Scott Free with his brother? Anyway, it’s like having two prime colors on the Monopoly board already locked up before Couching Tiger could start playing. Like with Titanic, just the sheer numbers of Academy Voters working for Paramount coproducing with Fox meant they had more votes than WB (for L.A. Confidential). That’s like two whole sides of the Monopoly board. Plus Fox and Paramount employees were getting seriously paid. Sorry for the tangents.
Agreed. So painfully overrated that it’s, well….painful.
Sounds like someone has never reclaimed Rome for their people
Cut it out, Ralph
Also surprised not to see Braveheart, if only to bitch about Gibson and historical inaccuracies.
I cannot abide Gibson, but Apocalypto was an extraordinary piece of visual filmaking. I don’t think there were even a dozen lines of script.
Helps that you don’t have to lay eyes on him.
I was obsessed with Braveheart when I first saw it, but even then I knew it wasn’t a great movie.
A true cinematic turd! Thank god there’s a sequel coming…
wait what?
Starring Paul Mescal!
Honest question: what’s so bad about Gladiator? It’s well acted, looks good, has a villain that you grow to hate, and an emotional ending. My biggest issue with it are the icky low framerate bits that get used a few times.
It’s just a Ben Hur retread.
It used vast amounts of CGI for one thing. Ridley Scott’s movies haven’t always been good, but they generally had amazing sets lovingly built. You feel you could walk around his worlds because the actors literally could. And then he throws it away to put Crowe in front of a green screen.
That god damn tiger.
Hear hear.
Fucking Chocolat was nominated that year.
That’s a “no, but” argument. Soderburgh directed two superior movies that year, CROUCHING TIGER had amazing cultural impact, and you felt the need to highlight the “chocolate makes people crazy!” movie like bad movies aren’t constantly nominated for Best Picture?
So you’re saying you were not. Entertained. Watching Gladiator. Huh.
Thank you. Gladiator had about twenty great actors and still managed to be…not great.
The title of this slideshow doesn’t seem to jibe with the content, as many of the “15 Worst Best Picture Winners of All Time” listed are perfectly good, even great movies, as the writers freely attest. Maybe something more like “the 15 least deserving best picture winners”? Or just framing the list in terms of the movies that should have won their respective years? I don’t know, any framing that prevents you from claiming How Green Was My Valley is dogshit just because it isn’t Citizen Kane.ETA: Ha, judging by my tabs I can surmise that the title originally was “The 15 most undeserving Oscar Winners.” Stupid editors.
Absolutely. “CODA was lovely! Also, one of the 15 Worst Best Picture winners of all time!”
Green Book —-> “While not a poorly made film, its very premise—two men become friends, despite race and class differences, wow!—should have been enough to steer Oscar voters toward other options.”Christ, you people. Know why we’re still mired in racist hell? Because nothing, absolutely nothing, will please the racial-conversation-shapeshifters and gatekeepers. I’ve never seen this movie but what a shit principle to live by. I wish I could get a copy of this secret racial rulebook, but alas, it can only be read by the priestly class. It can’t dare be published.
Lol ok racist
Eh, the rules would never be committed to a book, because they are ever-changing.
As someone from the city itself, I found Belfast absolutely nauseating. Twee, inauthentic nonsense with Van Morrison blaring over the whole film. It’s the Irish equivalent of Hillbilly Elegy.
For a moment I forgot Belfast was a movie and that made the first sentence of your post really funny.
It’s amusing since to use his own term, I doubt Keizer ever bothered to see a movie on The Troubles that Belfast can’t hold its own candle to, which was 2014’s ‘71.
I can see why you’d feel that way. There were parts of that movie that seemed too twee and dead on, but there were others that really hit the nail squarely on the head. I loved the way the film mixes Irish, British, and American accents, for example. It’s rare to see a film with the guts to criticize elements in the social group that’s telling the story, though I’m not sure how fair all those criticisms are. I thought the grandfather’s death was handled beautifully. But a few other things about the film did make me wince a little.
Branagh is insufferable. And highly punchable too.
He was good when he was younger and did Shakespeare stuff. His Henry V is brilliant and my favorite adaptation of any Shakespeare play. His later stuff, not so much.
Agreed. His first three films (Henry V, Dead Again, Much Ado about Nothing) were all great. Since then it’s been 30 years of straight garbage. His own fault for leaving Emma Thompson.
Dead Again is such a brilliant movie. The cast is a murder’s row (Branagh/Thompson plus Derek Jacobi, Andy Garcia, Robin Williams in one of my absolute favorite small roles of his, Miriam Margoyles), the story is fun and engaging, and Branagh is still, as you note, the best version of himself.
Some movies like American Beauty had big cultural impacts, and it’s hard to not take that into consideration (ie finally resetting suburbias Lolita complex by reminding audiences that Mena’s character really is a child). The movie is cheesy, but it’s still important. I guess I never really know what metric they are voting on at the end of the day lol.
I also feel like Mendes is poking a bit of fun at self-important artists with the whole “do you want to see the most beautiful thing I’ve ever filmed?” plastic bag bit. Bentley’s character is meant to come off exactly the way you’d expect from a teenaged tortured artist.
That scene actually makes the film for me. He describes the beauty of the world as something that makes his heart cave in where Lester later describes it as making his heart fill up as though it will burst. A simple illustration of the harm of abuse.
Janney’s the one who breaks my heart. The scenes of her sitting staring into space, or apologizing for their immaculate house being a wreck, show how little of herself is left after years under Cooper.ETA: I do love the scene where Cooper introduces himself to Spacey as a Marine and Spacey’s reply is “I didn’t know there was a base around here.” Cooper says nothing but the look on his face tells you 100% of his identity is the Marine Corps.
Totally! And to a teenager that pain he is feeling, and that beauty he is seeing, is totally real and relevant to that stage in his life. I think it’s a lovely scene, and as self important as it seems(which as you say, mendes is in on), it also makes you nostalgic for that lens of youth.
They tried to have it both ways though; they wanted to make her out to be a teenager but they still had to have the nude scene
I fully believe a lot of it comes down the which movies the voters actually watched. It’s not a big secret that the voters don’t watch all of the nominations. In particular that’s why the wins for animated film tend to Be Like That. They’re voting for things they recognize.
CODA shouldn’t have won Best Picture, but picking Belfast as the “should’ve” movie is even more erroneous. It’s a much worse film than CODA. Overall, 2021 was weak, but that year should’ve went to Drive My Car.
i adored licorice pizza and west side story, too.
CODA was a perfectly fine pick in a really bad year. They weren’t going to give it to Drive My Car so soon after Parasite, and the other best movies of the year were small (“Pig” was not going to win best picture). CODA made the best of a bad situation, and The Power of the Dog was NOT VERY GOOD!There is still a lot to disagree with in this list. BlacKKKlansman is a very flawed film that won’t be remembered in a few years (and he fucked the whole movie up with its ending). but then, 2018 was a REALLY bad year for movies and what were they going to give it to? Upgrade? Mandy? Honestly other than popcorn (Infinity War) very few of the movies that year were any good. Shit, they should have given it to Black Panther!The Insider, Do the Right Thing, Shaving Ryan’s Privates, Goodfellas, Giant, there may have been other even better movies in some of these years but all of these are good picks. But at least that white guy found a white girl to bang with all those indians around, otherwise he wouldn’t have won best picture! Shit in the remake Tom Cruise had to bang an actual asian woman, no wonder it didn’t win best picture.
Ha! I call it Shaving Ryan’s Privates all the time….much to the disdain of most of the people around me at the time.
What’s interesting about Goodfellas is I remember it opening to middling audience reception. I was in HS when it came out and my friends and I couldn’t get over how good it was. I really feel like it’s one that gradually grew into its current reputation.
I don’t remember its reception either way but it also basically opened right around when Godfather 3 did and anticipation for that was sky high. I suspect they cancelled each other out when it came to awards season. Just like how Goodfellas grew in stature over time, Godfather 3 seemed to take a while before the conventional wisdom turned to “hey wait this sucks!”
It’s remarkable just how bad Godfather 3 is. Sophia Coppola got a truckload of shit for it, but she really wasn’t even in it enough to be a bother, even with the weird voice over. Andy Garcia and Bridget Fonda were miscast, IMHO. The whole thing felt like a TV movie-of-the-week instead of the follow-up to 2 of the greatest movies of all time.
GF3 is stagey and wooden. Sofia C should not have been in it. I still enjoyed it overall.
My dad took me to Goodfellas due to Siskel & Ebert’s raves (particularly Saint Ebert), so it received glowing reviews from 100% of the critics I was aware of in 1990!
It was received incredibly well by everyone when it came out. The original post about it are just wrong.
Its box office was pretty modest given all the major names attached. I think one reason Goodfellas went unrecognized in its time is simply because it didn’t get a ton of promotion or attention.
It wasn’t unrecognized. That idea is just wrong. It was a massive hit loved by millions. There was no hype going it, but it had a huge amount of fans and many were upset it didn’t win Best Picture. It was directed by one of the all-time great directors with a top cast so it wasn’t like it was a surprise to anyone. Some people just have really horrible memories.
I do not remember that at all. May be in your community. I saw it with friends when it came out and we were all blown away. Everyone was talking about that film from the first time it came out until now. Don’t know how you missed it. I don’t know if I can think of another film that has been as universally loved from the moment it came out until as that film. Maybe Jaws.
King Richard, Belfast, Dune, West Side Story, Drive My Car, and yes what should have worn best picture and is an excellent film The Power of the Dog. It was in no way a bad year; The Tragedy of Macbeth, The Worst Person in the World, Flee, The Lost Daughter, all movies that had nominations at the ceremonies that were vastly superior films. The perplexing that it did not get nominated The Last Duel, was easily better than CODA, Licorice Pizza, Nightmare Alley, and Dont Look Up. CODA was dreck, a Hallmark channel movie
meh
“They weren’t going to give it to Drive My Car so soon after Parasite”Of course not. Drive My Car was pretentious glacial criticbait garbage. BlacKKKlansman may not be a perfect film, but it was rather interesting for Topher Grace’s career track into reedy “banality of evil” types he had been doing (see Spider-Man 3, Predators, American Ultra)
I’ll never get over Gigi winning Best Picture over Vertigo – which wasn’t even nominated!
Vertigo – which wasn’t even nominated!I never knew this, but I do believe it. I watched it for the first time a few years ago and spent most of the film saying to myself, “I can’t believe how much psychological fucked-upedness this old, old movie is portraying.” For its era, it must have been absolutely horrifying to the Academy. That scene when she walks in all dressed up like the wife and Jimmy Stewart’s face is just transformed with joy…I felt sick to my stomach. Like so many Hitchcock movies, it’s amazing that he even got away with making the thing. But yeah, in a just world, it would have been Best Picture no matter what year it came out. What a movie.
Belfast was made too soon after Roma. CODA is fine. Don’t be ridiculous.
CODA is… yes, fine; that’s a good word. But as a member of the Deaf community (I have hearing in one ear, but I’m fluent in ASL), I can tell you many of us watched it and got the distinct feeling that the writers pitched it as “What if ‘Glee,’ but Deaf?”
CODA was fine. It wasn’t great, and it was certainly nowhere near as good as The Power of the Dog.
You forgot The Shape of Water.
Get the fuck outta here with How Green Was My Valley. One of the best Best Picture winners ever. The fact that it beat Kane is irrelevant. It’s a masterpiece.
You forgot Ordinary People, Chariots of Fire, A Beautiful Mind, Chicago, Kramer vs. Kramer, and Rain Man.
Chicago is great cinema, and an amazing adaptation of a musical imo
Documentary Now said it best: “Chariots of Fire? What the hell is that? A soundtrack your mom keeps in the car, maybe.”
That was also the year Warren Beatty won for directing one of the most boring movies I’ve ever seen. Banner year for bad decisions.
With Reds, idk, I liked it at the time. It had it’s David Lean-adjacent mojo working. I’m impressed now with the interstitial interviews between every third scene or so. They got Henry Miller on camera! Let’s see those outtakes.
What the fuck is Chariots of Fire even about? I don’t know. Nobody knows. We all know the song but that’s where humanity’s knowledge of this film ends. I just looked it up on Wikipedia. It’s about the Olympics? But not some sort of awesome historically inaccurate flaming chariot race like the title would suggest. No, it’s about some assholes running a footrace in the 1920’s Olympics. That’s a total bait and switch! No wonder everyone blocked out all memory of this movie.
It’s a good movie actually. Just not as good as Raiders or Reds.
It’s actually quite a good movie, because each of the runners has to overcome a serious personal obstacle to perform well in the Olympics. But yeah, it hasn’t aged that well, and definitely shouldn’t have won over Raiders of the Lost Ark (the CLEAR best picture).
Agree. Raiders was a corner-turned for popular cinema.
That was an annoying movie. It had Alice Krige in it, though. I always wondered what happened to her career.
She was terrific in Star Trek: First Contact.
I forgot that she played the Borg Queen!. Why are you grey?
I’m only ungrey on Jezebel. I keep hoping for AV Club’s love, but so far… 🙂
Jalopnik and Jez are the two remaining places I need to get ungreyed.
LOL if I ever see you on Jez I’ll try to ungrey you.
Ordinary fuckin’ people.
I hate ‘em.
I mentioned this in my own comment, but you have to remember that the acting branch is the largest chunk of voters and a bunch of the movies you listed are movies where actors get to ACT. Sometimes that does make the Best Picture (Kramer vs. Kramer and Ordinary People are beautiful films), sometimes it holds up less well (Rain Man). Musicals will always have some edge given they are more rare and the actors recognize that’s a lot of skill to put on screen.
My very first date was taking a girl to Kramer vs Kramer.That was the only date we ever went on, surprisingly.
I hated that movie. They never explained which one was the real Kramer, and the fistfight they have in Jerry’s apartment goes on way too long. I do like the scene where George falls out the window and no one acknowledges it, though.
Take your star, orgy person.
Chicago is my favorite movie musical.
Chicago is one of those films that’s bafflingly bad, because it assembles so much talent and then proceeds to wring weirdly mediocre performances out of all them.
I think that’s a failing of all musicals brought to the big screen, because just when the good actors are about to do some serious acting and actually engage you emotionally, as they would in any other film, they have to break into song, ruining the whole illusion. It works in the theater (with a good enough musical, anyway) but onscreen, I just regret that they couldn’t just sit there and ACT.
Since “Do The Right Thing” was even nominated why go there?So these are the other movies Driving Miss Daisy was up againstBorn on the Fourth of July Dead Poets SocietyField of DreamsMy Left Foot Out these I’d say Born on the Fourth deserved it, and Driving Miss Daisy was the least deserving of all.
If you look at it from now as “what were they thinking” Do the right thing obviously jumps out to tell a story about where the oscars were, as well as what America is. And that Driving Miss Daisy was even nominated over Do the right thing was telling. Of the nominated films, I’d probably be okay giving it to any of the first three, but outside of a couple of famous quotes, their cultural legacy has been nil.
Daisy’s also not a terrible movie, just shallow. I My Left Foot got the artsy votes and the other three split the rest of the ticket. Those are all really good movies and deserving nominees. I’ll co-sign on 4th of July as the best, and still some of the best work Cruise has ever done.
Daisy is very well acted. The plot is reductive, but Jessica Tandy’s win was deserved and was a HUGE part of the narrative driving the movie – a Golden Age star of screen and stage given a career best at age 80? That certainly helped.I’m surprised Field of Dreams and Dead Poet’s Society didn’t have more momentum, tbh (deserved or not)
Also Glory not as Good as Doing the Right Thing but worthy.
I kinda think Coda was legit winner. Me and wifey enjoyed it simply for what it was.
Oh I so tire of the drubbing How Green Was My Valley gets, for having the temerity to receive the Academy’s recognition over Citizen Kane. I can’t even compare the films, because they are so different, but Valley is a marvelous film in its own right, one of John Ford’s very best, and ought to be regarded on its own merits, rather than compared against the so-called Greatest Film Ever made, which I dare say, wasn’t even the best film Orson Welles ever made.
This one shares something in common with a lot of the “worst Oscar snub ever!” entries, which is that it took many years for Citizen Kane to acquire its present reputation. It’s only with the benefit of hindsight that we can appreciate how groundbreaking and influential Kane was. At the time, nobody was beating the Greatest Film of All Time drum for it.A lot of the winners on this list are perfectly well made, it’s just that decades later they are much less watched and discussed and appreciated than the movies they beat at the Oscars. But Academy voters can’t possibly predict which nominees people will enjoy 80 years in the future.
And I think people miss out. Why can’t you love them both? The cinemtography and acting in HGWMV is exquisite. It’s a beautiful film all its own, and to call it one of the worst Best Picture winners is a grave disservice.
How Green is one of the best BP winners ever. Full stop.
It should have gone to How Beige Was My Jacket…
Citizen Kane has taken up this weird realm of: yes it was a great film and did a lot to advance how cinema is directed and scripted. Which most people who critically analyze it can say. But then when you say it is not the greatest film ever made, and isn’t the greatest by far even while comparing it to Kane’s contemporaries. You get this crowd that probably couldn’t even recollect much of it to you saying “no Citizen Kane is the greatest.”
Still can’t believe Bohemian Rhapsody was nominated. It was a (barely) glorified standard issue VH1 Behind the Music. Best actor, maybe, but everything else was average at best. It contains a 4th wall breaking Wayne’s World joke, ffs.
Bohemian Rhapsody did not win best picture. Rami Malek did win best actor, though.
I thought Rocket Man was so much better. I have to applaud the departure from the typical biopic. The music scenes were fabulous.
Those dentures acted their ass off
Unfortunate side effect of expanding the number of nominations.
Seems like there’s at least one biopic nominated each year, regardless of quality. This year we get “Elvis’ which in my opinion is borderline unwatchable.
Agreed. Baz Luhrmann does so much better when he doesn’t make musicals. I know the Elvis kid has been winning all the acting awards, but if he beats out Colin Farrell at the Oscars I’m just going to give up.
It’s hard to tell if the Elvis kid (Austin Butler) even did a good job with the part because you never see him for more than 3 seconds at a time. Luhrmann has so many cuts in the film…
It’s trash.
Honest Trailers did their annual ‘The Oscars’ treatment this week, and when showing a montage of what goes horribly wrong at the ceremony, they showed The Slap, the La La Land/Moonlight debacle, and Crash winning Best Picture.
You can add this year’s winner to the list when you do it next year.
A common theme of many of the films that have taken top awards only to be scrutinized anew with the gift of hindsight is the “white savior” narrative.Almost as though you’re including certain films because you dislike them thematically, and not due to their cinematic quality.We wouldn’t go as far as to claim Dances With Wolves isn’t a well-made filmIt is unfortunate, then, that this wound up being #6 on a list your editors have entitled “The 15 worst Oscar Best Picture winners of all time.”
Plus Costner doesn’t save them from anyone. There’s no denying U.S. manifest destiny and the wave after wave of first military then others flowing west. The tribe is dislocated and while they did escape, will spend the rest of its existence on the run before being forced onto a reservation. Costner does find buffalo, but that’s a plot device to ingratiate him with the tribe. I also disagree that the tribespeople are caricatures – there is clearly major difference of opinion on what do to with this white man, and relationships that gradually develop.
I have hated this movie for a long long time, in part because of its themes ad in part because my father loves it and made me sit through it more than once (awkward sex scene and all), but I’m going to have to agree with this.We really need a term for problematic movies where white characters integrate into indigenous populations as part of their character growth or to find peace or become enlightened or whatever separate from white savior. White saviors save people, it’s a defining characteristic, and are usually better at the native culture than the natives themselves. This is more something where the white person disappears into native culture as a balm for their guilt.
We do have a term for that: “going native.”
I’d say that is a related trope, but not entirely the same (though they often coexist in the same work). Going native has, I think, the connotation of noble savagery, so it wouldn’t necessarily fit in media where the indigenous people are portrayed as “civilized,” so it wouldn’t necessarily feel appropriate for something like The Last Samurai.Also because of the implication of savagery, I think going native as a term has its own baggage.
“White salvation”?
It’s been forever, but while they humanize one tribe, the rival tribes are still portrayed as murderous savages who just want to kill you.They fell into exactly the trope that the movie supposedly subverting.
Yeah, it’s been forever for me as well and I remember very little about the other tribes. But I have done quite a bit of reading on the American west in general and plenty of them decided (not unfairly, after a few interactions) that white people were interlopers to be dispatched at all costs. So that characterization wouldn’t be entirely out of bounds.
Isn’t that the way a lot of those Indian tribes saw each other?
Almost as though you’re including certain films because you dislike them thematically, and not due to their cinematic quality.Themes are an aspect of cinematic quality.Also, white savior stories aren’t just outdated, they’re fucking boring. Oh hey, let’s look at this amazing overlooked culture, but instead of getting to know someone who actually lives in that culture, we’re going to squander all that potential by making you look at Generic Man for the entire movie. Here’s our protagonist, Vanilla Mayonnaise Jones. He’s here to teach the filthy savages about toilets or something.
The problem with Dances with Wolves is that it was boring, nothing else. One of those ridiculously hyped films that when you see it you have no clue what the hell they were talking about. Dull, dull, dull. The hype came because at the time Costner was Hollywood’s golden boy. When that went away they turned on him and his films big time. Hollywood and their award shows are 100% crap.
As long as they are putting in films that weren’t even nominated, The Matrix should have won instead of American Beauty. It literally changed the world perception of the internet and their reality. University classes around the world sprung up to debate the philosophy of the matrix. American Beauty was a middling family drama which the academy would have ignored except its membership of mostly older men saw two teenage girls topless in it.
I wonder how much of the sentiment here is coming from a bias towards the home viewing experience. Some of the films that are highlighted were celebrated in part for the theatrical experience while the ones that have gotten more acclaim over time were smaller films that make much more of a a impact when watched at home. The critics who are doing the re-evaluating didn’t have the opportunity to experience these films in a theater with a crowd that is tuned in to what these films offer. I see a lot of people in the comments dragging Forest Gump. While I think Pulp Fiction is a better movie, Forest Gump was a film that really created a emotional response in the theater goers at the time.
Another film that really created an emotional response in theater-goers at the time? Triumph of the Will.
Truly the most random appearance of Godwin’s Law I’ve ever come across
I don’t believe you. Positing that an emotional response from an audience is the main goal of propaganda is not a stretch, and I used the example to argue how poor a criterion that is for evaluating a film’s quality.
You really cannot disagree that the film is incredibly well made and Leni ( it’s far easier to spell) had incredible talent. It likely would have been long forgotten if it was made by anyone else. Too bad her subject caused such horror throughout the world.Whether you believe her that she was nothing more than a director for hire we can discuss forever.
You’re right, it is a well-made film, much more so than Forrest Gump.
I’m Jewish enough by ancestry to have been sent to the camps had I been living then, but it is an amazing picture. I think she might not have been a true believer in Nazism but I’m not sure that’s a compliment. People like her and Wernher Von Braun may have only been using the system to their benefit, but in a way that’s worse than the people who really believed that stuff. They could have refused to work to support the system but they didn’t.
But there are lots of movies whereby it is a valid criterion (among other criteria ). Generally a film has to be well made to be able to generate an emotional response in the audienceI was (an Englishman) living in Scotland when Braveheart was released. Whoa – talk about an emotional response. Now that movie was an anglophobic / homophobic historical travesty but it was well made and very entertaining
Triumph of the Will is a documentary. Best Picture Oscars are typically movies classified as feature films (a narrative work of fiction) which Triumph is not.
Lol. You are joking right? My point was not to argue the merit of the movie based on the emotional response it garnered but to point out that the home viewing experience and theater experience are so much different that this ranking misses a key point.
I could not get past first reel of “Crash”. I don’t think Oscar bait has ever been so blatant from the opening scenes.
Crash is a literal assault on common sense and I am BEWILDERED at how well it was received. It’s also weird how, in a movie about how everyone is a virulant racist, for some reason none of the Latin people are racist. Why does everyone else get to be racist but not them? THAT’S RACIST! Also at the end the cop who thinks he isn’t racist does a racism and shoots the one thief, but we as the audience know that dude actually IS an armed carjacker? Which creates kind of a weird dissonance where it seems like the film is kind of suggesting sometimes kneejerk race panic is appropriate? And the thing with pervert cop… It’s just an icky movie.Not to mention it overshadowed the OTHER Crash, which is a far far better movie.
Ah, Crash. Two hours of pap with a lesson that can be better learned from three minutes of Do the Right Thing.
I’m not sure how Do The Right Thing has to do with getting aroused by automobile accidents. We are talking about the Cronenberg/Ballard Crash, right?
I’d rather be.
Oliver! won over 2001: A Space Odyssey. Only one of these films made the Sight & Sound 2022 critics’ poll (and topped the directors’ poll.) Take a guess.
Titanic???
OK hold up – I love Saving Private Ryan and it deserved BP. But Shakespeare in Love is a GREAT flick. It’s a “they don’t make em like they used to” movie: it’s funny, well-written, well-acted, beautifully shot, and smart but crowd-pleasing. It’s so good that even Ben Affleck’s good in it! It’s also weird to single out Judi Dench’s scene-stealing performance without acknowledging the controversy around HER winning best supporting actress, since her part was so small. No doubt that also had to do with Weinstein. I still say “I don’t know, it’s a mystery”, and I don’t think people have any idea what I’m referencing.
See, I found Shakespeare in Love utterly forgettable; if not for Ralph Fiennes and the presence of like thirty other great British actors, it would have just been a cheesy rom-com. For that year, I thought Elizabeth was the same-era material but MUCH better done, and certainly that Cate Blanchett was WAY better than Gwyneth. I’ve never wanted to see SIL a second time.
It’s the other Fiennes.
I knew about Joseph; honestly, I thought Ralph Fiennes was the asshole she ended up with at the end (haven’t seen it since 1998; looking at IMDB, I guess it was Colin Firth…I think I’m confusing it with The Duchess). My bad. On the other hand, I can’t stand Joseph Fiennes; he comes off as so smarmy in every single role. And again, that works in Elizabeth, where he’s meant to be a douchebag…less so as Shakespeare.
Hmm – I’ve not seen Elizabeth so I cannot at all judge that movie, but they seem very different, like apples and oranges. Are you comparing them cause it’s a similar period and they both have Fiennes and Rush? Isn’t it like a hardcore dramatic biopic? Whereas SIL is basically a romantic dramedy centered on a very fictionalized portrayal of Shakespeare.
OK but CODA is a great movie. I agree that Belfast likely should have won, but calling Coda among the “worst” best pictures is bullshit.
1932-33 Cavalcade is the most egregious. The same period as King Kong, Duck Soup, I was a Fugitive from a Chain Gang, Scarface…pretty much any film anyone remembers or has seen from that era.It doesn’t even go into rotation at TCM
Love Duck Soup but it was too ahead of it’s time to be nominated.
Thanks for putting Green Book on this list. Not only does it suck but I really hate this turd of a movie. It ended up being the last movie I saw with my mom. She wanted to see it because of the Oscar’s I should have watched The Favorite with her instead.
Thank GOD for the “American Beauty/The Insider” mention. The Insider is one of the greatest movies ever. Like you said… stone cold masterpiece. I was stunned it didn’t win (although I guess not really stunned given the clamor AB was getting).
But it is so far above American Beauty, I swear I spend a healthy portion of every year of my life trying to convince people to watch The Insider. Just f’in amazing.
Seconded. I actually think it’s Russell Crowe’s best bit of acting as well, playing against his own type. He did a lot of yelling in Gladiator, and I guess they gave him the Oscar for that, but I’ve always thought his Jeff Wiegand, with that controlled rage and quiet dignity, was a much more powerful performance.
And he’s just barely hanging on by a thread mentally and he plays that so well. God I love that movie.
Me too. Michael Mann in general is probably the most underappreciated director out there. He should have about three Best Pictures by now, especially for The Insider and Heat.Now you’ve made me run off to watch it again. 🙂
…and very, very likely the reason Crowe won the Best Actor Oscar the following year…
I’d say Roma was snubbed when Green Book won. Probably only didn’t win because it was on Netflix.
My dad loved Green Book.
Everybody’s dad loved Green Book.
Literally every other movie was snubbed when Green Book won, including movies that weren’t nominated.
No list of “worst Best Picture winners” is complete without Cavalcade (1933). On the other hand I will die on the hill that Cimarron’s bonkers series of improbably righteous escapades for Frontier Journalist and Vigilante Preacher Yancey Cravat, Attorney-at-Law is a delight if you can vibe with it.
And no, CODA wasn’t the best picture, but neither was Belfast. It was either West Side Story or Drive My Car.
Even though Gladiator is a great film, it pales in comparison to Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon. Also, A Beautiful Mind beating Fellowship of the Ring was a travesty.
I’m with you all the way on Fellowship vs. Mind.
Also, A Beautiful Mind beating Fellowship of the Ring was a travesty.Hard agree. Fellowship is by far the best movie of the trilogy and honestly deserved it more than ROTK three years later.
I’m impressed nobody has mentioned The Hurt Locker. That film is one of the most overrated films I’ve ever seen, and I’ve always considered it’s winning best picture to be a huge military propaganda stunt.
I’m definitely picking Inglorious Bastards or A Serious Man.
Definitely. I don’t hate Hurt Locker but I still think about the last shot of A Serious Man even 15 years later.
I mean, I got a real senseless of war vibe, but then again, I’m anti-war to begin with.
You think Hurt Locker was a recruitment film?
Man if he did think this, he probably thought Platoon was a comedy. Wow.
Speaking of utterly great movies…
Take the stars.
I don’t think Hurt Locker is all that enduring or anything, but it’s pretty bad propaganda if that was its goal.The movie is about how a soldier being immersed in violence completely dehumanizes him. He no longer fears his own death, and has come to see human lives as this meaningless sum of parts, totally mechanistic.By the end, “going home” has become alienating and unwanted for him, as he’s now been subsumed body and soul into the war machine.
By the end, “going home” has become alienating and unwanted for him, as he’s now been subsumed body and soul into the war machine.This is exactly what I took from it too. Plus, they made Iraq look about as appealing as Vietnam as a fighting theatre to be stuck in. It’s nobody’s army propaganda.
Lighting up some of your comments while I have time. I’m surprised you aren’t approved.
Thanks!
🙂
Do you also think The Wire is copaganda?
You think The Hurt Locker made people want to enlist? I would listen to that argument for Zero Dark Thirty, but not The Hurt Locker.
Winners vs Authors Choice w/ IMDB Ratings:How Green Was My Valley – 7.7 vs. Citizen Kane – 8.3The Great Ziegfeld – 6.7 vs. The Story of Louis Pasteur – 7.3The Broadway Melody – 5.6 vs. The Patriot – (Not Rated)CODA – 8.0 vs. Belfast – 7.3Out of Africa – 7.1 vs. The Color Purple – 7.7Cimarron – 5.8 vs. The Front Page – 7.3The Greatest Show On Earth – 6.6 vs. High Noon – 8.0American Beauty – 8.4 vs. The Insider – 7.8Around The World In 80 Days – 6.7 vs. Giant – 7.6Dances With Wolves – 8.0 vs. Goodfellas – 8.7Gigi – 6.6 vs. The Defiant Ones – 7.6Driving Miss Daisy – 7.3 vs. Do The Right Thing – 8.0Shakespeare In Love – 7.1 vs. Saving Private Ryan – 8.6Green book – 8.2 vs. BlacKkKlansman – 7.5Crash – 7.7 vs. Brokeback Mountain – 7.7
I hate that half of these are from a time before my mom was even born (1961), and I’m in my 30s now… so unless some 70-80 year-olds are “reading” this slideshow, half the films here are hardly relevant for discussion.The commenters seem to have a much better list of recommendations.
Because films from before you were born are “hardly relevant”? That’s an incredibly narrow and disappointing viewpoint. There are films that are worth watching from the silent film era, the black & white “talkie” era, and later eras. Many of them are more interesting than the latest superhero movie.
Not to mention that every snub has knock-on effects – if you do research, you’ll see how those old terrible picks led to some of the bad selections today. Everything is connected in Hollywood.
Just because you weren’t alive doesn’t make them any less relevant. dear god. Some people like to watch older movies as well as newer ones. Cinephiles are seriously into this s**t. Also, the older ones are known egregious overlooks and are hardly controversial. The list was for the whole of all of the best picture winners, which, if you’re counting, there have been 94 of so far. If the list didn’t include any from the Pre-NotEricAndre era someone else would complain.
People are seriously out here trying to argue with my use of the word “relevant” so I’m just gonna put that point to bed with a definition:Relevant (Adj): Appropriate to the current time, period, or circumstances; of contemporary interest.As I said, I wasn’t alive when these some of these movies were made, and that would be okay, but both my mom and dad weren’t alive either when those movies won Oscars—making them from my the time period of my deceased grandma and grandpa and therefore (by definition) not “relevant” in the current time period…So okay boomers, I’ll concede that some people like to watch old movies, but 7 out of 15 of these are from before 1960… and as you can see for yourself, no one in the comments is even engaged in the discussion for “What should have won?” regarding those older films—further exemplifying that they are not of contemporary interest to the audience—ergo irrelevant. If you honestly care about contended movie awards from the Baby Boomer generation, then go ahead and have that discussion. I can wait for some points to be made about them, but if you’re replying to this and you haven’t seen any of those movies, then you’re just exemplifying their disconnect from relevance.What I’m not saying is that they aren’t worth watching. That’s not anywhere near to what I said or meant by talking about relevance… Old movies can indeed be watched and enjoyed infinitely past their release, but this isn’t a discussion about the merits of watching old films. This is an article is about their contended Oscar nominations, which would be akin to watching old Oscar ceremonies and engaging in the discussions of the winners. If you’re doing THAT for movie award ceremonies from 60+ years ago, then pardon me, but you’re probably a weirdo and you probably already know that, or you’re older than my dead grandpa.My point still stands, there are many more recent instances worth discussion. Dedicating half of the list to 60+ year-old movies and their concurring award ceremonies is, IMO, quite boring and irrelevant. Sorry if that triggers you.
There’s a difference between “this is not relevant” and “this is something that I am not personally interested in.” You should probably figure that difference out.Also: just because something isn’t relevant now doesn’t mean it’s not historically valuable or interesting. Besides, some works of art stop being relevant for a while and then become that way again. It’s not a straight line.
You are aware there is a thing called “history,” right? That events which occur outside of your lifespan might have some relevance for people? Jesus.
This is an article is about their contended Oscar nominations, which would be akin to watching old Oscar ceremonies and engaging in the discussions of the winners. If you’re doing THAT for movie award ceremonies from 60+ years ago, then pardon me, but you’re probably a weirdo and you probably already know that, or you’re older than my dead grandpa.I very much doubt I am older than your dead grandpa, but you should probably be advised that there are, in fact, lots of people who do exactly THAT for movie award ceremonies from 60+ years ago. Many books have been published on the subject.
(And yes, we Oscar junkies are weirdos 🙂
To address your exact point… I think the biggest reason that it’s relevant to discuss these old films in this exact context is to show that the Academy has pretty much been picking the wrong winner (with notable exceptions) since they Oscars were first introduced.
I hate people who think everything that happened before they were born is irrelevant.
I like that so many of these are from a time before our moms were born. It’s nice when contemporary film writing shows any awareness of history.
so unless some 70-80 year-olds are “reading” this slideshow, half the films here are hardly relevant for discussion. Whoah… wanna tame the ego a bit buddy? Hey, I know you think we’re all living in the A.D. (for “Anno DefinitelyNotAndre”), but works of art and culture created before your lifetime or the lifetimes of your immediate family members do merit discussion.Like, do you think the only reason the Mona Lisa is still hanging in the Louvre is because they don’t have anything new to put in that spot?
The dig at Dances With Wolves as dabbling in the “noble savage” / “white savior” trope is a profound and absurd misread of the film.It bends over backwards presenting itself as the opposite of those tropes – and it succeeds brilliantly.
Did you really say Belfast should have won Best Picture when The Power of the Dog and Drive My Car were in contention
There’s no way Forrest Gump should have beaten both Pulp Fiction AND The Shawshank Redemption. I don’t like the movie in the first place but come on.
Shawshank is my favorite movie of all time. Totally kills my weekend afternoon, when I happen to catch it on the TV when taking a break. I have sat through FG exactly once. No desire to ever watch it again.
Pulp Fiction is the best of the three (and also the greatest work of one of the the greatest filmmakers of all time), but there was no way Academy voters were ever going to give that movie an Oscar. It was the opposite of Oscar bait in every way, and the movie wears that distinction like a badge of honor.Shawshank, on the other hand, is a perfect Oscar Movie, and it makes zero sense that it didn’t get the award over Gump, which is certainly entertaining, but also ridiculous, and relies on an over-the-top performance and early CGI gimmickry that everybody should have known would age like milk.
Agreed about Pulp Fiction, it was never going to win but it is better. I think the reason Forrest Gump won over Shawshank is that it’s boomer nostalgia bait – it doesn’t just tell one story, it tells like six stories about one guy and they all rely on some form of “look at how great things were when I was younger”.
1994 had an absolutely stacked Best Picture lineup and then they went and gave it to the very worst one. Wish I could say that was the last time that happened.
I agree Forrest Gump was truly overrated but like so many of these “winners” checked all the boxes that the Academy wants filled to show its diversity. There is usually an underlying social agenda being pushed by the Academy and it gets mor obvious and annoying as time goes by. This is the main reason it is no longer relevant to most people.
Yeah there’s a reason “Oscar-bait” is a genre of movies.
Quiz Show is a better movie than Gump too.
I haven’t seen Quiz Show and know nothing about it but I’m inclined to agree.
Watch Quiz Show. It’s still terrific and VERY relevant, probably the best thing Redford ever directed, and a great performance from Ralph Fiennes.
I don’t get the love for The Shawshank Redemption. To me it’s always seemed like a movie that people like who never really watch movies.
I mean, maybe? I’m definitely not a cinephile (I prefer tv and video games to movies, most years I’ve only seen 0-1 of the Best Picture noms) but is that a problem? There are certainly more emotionally complicated movies out there than what I usually prefer (including Shawshank Redemption) but that is decidedly also NOT Forrest Gump.
CODA was a GREAT movie. Go pound salt.
It was meh. Others were more deserving.
I just watched it again today, it’s wonderful
Something that a lot of these highlight is that the acting branch of the Academy has always consistently been the largest. Many of the wins that are retrospectively shrugged off are very actorly movies. Driving Miss Daisy is a good example. Is it a very reductive movie? Absolutely, and Do the Right Thing is absolutely a better movie. But Tandy and Freeman give very good, very subtle performances in Driving Miss Daisy and Tandy’s win was definitely deserved. Their performances and the way the acting branch viewed their performances likely helped carry it. I think similar arguments can be made for a lot of the films on the list even Crash.
Gladiator isn’t really a bad movie, but Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon should have been the first foreign film to win Best Picture.
In 1939, a movie celebrating racist slavers won instead of Mr. Smith Goes To Washington, Stagecoach, or goddamn Wizard of Oz.
Although it wasn’t clear what policies Jimmy Stewart’s Mr Smith favored other than establishing a Boy Scout camp. He was into filibusters, which don’t have a very savory reputation as they were often used by segregationists to prevent any introduction of civil rights legislation.
1939 rivals 1999 for all time movie years: https://mubi.com/lists/mubi-s-top-50-films-of-1939More than half of the films on that list could have been Best Picture and it’d be fine. It’s kind of nuts.
1939 rivals 1999 for all time movie years
1939 was considered the all time great movie year decades before most moviegoers in 1999 were even born. Also, 1974 or GTFO.
Also a great year, no argument. I clued into the “wtf with all these movies from 1939?” thing in the early 90s when I first got obsessive about film history and started taping shit off of TCM. Then it was thrilling to find myself in the middle of something similar in ‘99, back when I was still in school and still going to the movies 2 or three times a week.
Have you read Ted Sennett’s book Hollywood’s Golden Year, 1939? Great argument for that year as the peak year in film history.
There was no way the Academy wasn’t going to give the award to GWTW. The making of that movie was front-page news for more than 3 years, the “search for Scarlett O’Hara” was legendary, just about every actor and craftsman in Hollywood wanted to be a part of it (except of course poor Leslie Howard). It would have won based on its monumental production alone, regardless of quality. (And in 1939, the “racist slaver” aspect of it wouldn’t have been considered any kind of knock against its quality.)
It’s amazing how poorly American Beauty has aged. I thought it was a transcendent masterpiece when I first saw it in 2001. A couple of years ago I happened to catch it on TV and I had to turn it off after 20 minutes. Just unbearable. And dull, too. Just desperately dull. Maybe I’m the one who’s aged badly?
Besides the issues with it starring Kevin Spacey, I think we just have less patience with stories of upper-class white guys who are having a mid-life crisis these days.
I don’t think him being white should really have anything to do with it, since I don’t remember race being a factor in the movie. I think it’d make more sense to bring up him being straight, since homosexuality actually does come up in the film.
Well, that’s possible. But have there been movies about non-white men having mid-life crises? I think the whole idea comes from John Updike and his tales of the woes of white New England men, but it would be interesting to see a tale of say, an Korean immigrant having a mid-life crisis.
Sounds good to me. Another issue that I have with the backlash to this movie, though, is that often people say “money can’t buy happiness” but act like they don’t really believe it, and I think the reactions to Lester’s unhappiness is an example.
It had some great one liners. But on second viewing years later, I cringed.
I saw it as a teenager and thought it was deep. Now as a full-grown adult, it seems pretty surface level… and of course Kevin Spacey…
It’s got that pre-9/11 American middle class ennui thing happening. Here we are at the end of history and… is this all there is? There was a lot of that in the 90s. We had no idea how good we had it.
You’ve nailed what I dislike most about turn-of-the-millennium pop culture, which is that much of it is complaining about the existential dissatisfaction of having everything you need and most of what you want, except it’s still unfulfilling.Things were too calm and comfortable for wealthy white screenwriters and songwriters, and so the overarching narrative in pop culture at the time was that perfect is boring. Never mind that things weren’t exactly perfect for everyone.We’ve lived through some not-boring times since and the grass isn’t greener on this side of it.
I confess that having turned 18 in 1994, and having graduated law school and just started looking for my first “real job” in the spring of 2001, I have a hell of a time trying to sort out what’s personal nostalgia and what was actually more broadly true. As you say, things weren’t great for everybody.
But the plastic bag floating through the air…and stuff.
Yeah, you guys are just mad about Kevin being a perv. Enjoy your movies made by saints.
p.s. Hollywood is packed with creeps. Learn to separate things.
The difference is the transition from “topical” to “time capsule”. If you look at the history of Oscars or even films in general, there’s often a premium put on “timelessness”. The dullness you speak of IS Lester’s life. That’s the point.
Shawshank Redemption is “timeless” because Andy Dufresne isn’t a grey character and is a generic “triumph of the human spirit” piece. The Insider comes from the school of generic “Fighting the good Fight” porn. That’s how you look at them if you give their premise no credit.
The problem for American Beauty is what it shows is ennui and quiet desperation, two things that are often not universal and somewhat unique to periods of history and social context. Consequently it is VERY EASY for a critic in 2010 on to give the premise no credit, and thus everything after that comes across as a hit piece. Because it’s OF its time and not a “period piece”, it doesn’t really get credit for capturing that sense and being an outsider. It is penalized for it, as if Alan Ball and Sam Mendes don’t understand their own historical context. It’s worth noting the, “I hate American Beauty” movement has sort of been going since 2010 and colored the perceptions of a bunch of people.But if you look at it realistically, often criticisms fall into the characters being unlikable (they are), privileged (they are), and self-indulgent. These current criticism miss the point though – it DID resonate in the time it was written which means what we’re demonstrating isn’t so much a weakness in the film, as a deficiency of empathy in the critic. If you don’t want to take the journey with Lester (American Beauty), or Forrest (Forrest Gump), or even Marty(Marty) these films can’t work.
I remember cringeing to the plastic bag thing. That has always been shit.
I’ve never seen any of these.
I also don’t see things.
What the fuck is a “movie.”
Just because HOW GREEN WAS MY VALLEY isn’t CITIZEN KANE doesn’t mean it belongs on a “worst” list. It’s a very charming movie!
Indeed. Many Oscar best winner movies are nice, charming movies even if they aren’t really “the best” of their year. More recently, Shakespeare in Love winning over Saving Private Ryan, for example. It was a very charming movie and Paltrow was cute in it and hadn’t gotten into her Goop pseudoscience yet. But it isn’t a movie anyone really thinks about anymore as opposed to SPR.
I’ll go one further – How Green is a masterpiece and one of the best movies ever to win the Best Picture Oscar (the fact that it beat Kane is beside the point).
Yeah, at least they put it last on the list. Also (hot take incoming), SPR is overrated, and although Weinstein was/is a reprehensible person, he was not wrong when he put the bug in voters’ ears that it’s really just about the (admittedly stunning) first 20 minutes. The rest of the movie is a fairly conventional war film with some modern flourishes. And Shakespeare in Love is a very good movie. That year was not in any way some kind of outrage.
I’m still waiting for the sequel, where we finally find out exactly how green his valley was.
None. None more green.
I thought for sure #1 would be Forrest Gump winning over Pulp Fiction. Weird that it’s not even in the top 10.
I think it’s because Forrest Gump, like it or not, is still a very warmly regarded film. So is Pulp Fiction, but it’s hard to say Forrest Gump is one of the worst best picture winners when it’s still loved, even if Pulp Fiction should have won.
There are a few films that you will hear almost nothing positive about from what could broadly be called Film Buffs, and almost nothing negative about from the general film-watching public. That’s one of them.
Pulp Fiction is better but was NEVER goin to win, and Forrest Gump isn’t bad enough on it’s own to put it on this list anyway. Shawshank should’ve won that year if we’re talking quality combined with palatability for the Academy.
While Saving Private Ryan is certainly a terrific film in it’s own right, Shakespeare In Love is an astonishingly smart, well acted film. It does not belong on a Worst Oscar Best Picture list. It’s a brilliant film.
Notably absent: Forrest Gump winning over The Shawshank Redemption.
Crash sucked.
I remember seeing Crash in a theater and CACKLING throughout. It was so so bad.
My gripes from this list:For ‘22 and CODA, I agree it’s not the best (it’s a red flag when the diector of the Best Picture winner is isn’t nominated) but Belfast?! I am squarely in the psychographic audience that would like this, which I did…fine, but that was not the best film of the year. I probably would’ve gone with The Power of the Dog or Drive my Car, though not passionately.
For ‘00 and The Green Mile, The Insider was good but definitely didn’t age as well as some of the others: The Talented Mr. Ripley, Being John Malkovich, Magnolia, The Matrix. I’m probably going with The Talented Mr. Ripley.For ‘86 and Out of Africa, I personally like The Color Purple much more but it’s definitely not widely held in the esteem indicated here. I think Ran would be the choice.
The characters in Brokeback Mountain were not cowboys! They were literally shepherds!
Every time I’m reminded that Singin’ in the Rain wasn’t nominated I’m stunned.
is a work of humanism and power that both defines and redefines love for all generations.Yeah……………it did not do that at all.
Forest Gump should be on here over Pulp Fiction.This list does a great job showing how absoutly pointless and what a sham the Oscars are.
More than half of Best Picture winners are terrible. I will never, ever watch Marty, Gone With The Wind, The Last Emperor, Forest Gump, Chicago, The Artist (WTF!!!!), Chariots Of Fire, Gandhi, Ordinary People….I can go on and on and on.
Thank you for going after the second ever Academy Award results in 2023. True service journalism.
I imagine it’s tough, because the sweet spot for picks most people want to discuss centers around the 90s, but if they make the list of the “worst oscars best picture winners” reflect that, they’ll get mocked for it.
Too many of these reviews begin or end with “Hollywood missed a chance to make a statement.” The Awards weren’t created to give Hollywood a chance to make a statement; the Awards were created to drum up business. Anyone who thinks otherwise just needs to look back at Frank Capra’s autobiography or any biography of Louis B Mayer.
Good list! My only disagreement would be with BlackkKlansman (BK) deserving the oscar. Not that Green Book DOES deserve its Oscar, and not that BK isn’t a good movie that highlights an important piece of history, but BK is in no way groundbreaking or even particularly varied from your average historical drama. And Lee’s decision to end the film with recent scenes of graphic, real-world racial/political violence feels emotionally manipulative rather than good film-making. It’s like he wanted his audience to leave the theater feeling something, but didn’t want to do the necessary work with the screenplay/acting/direction. I absolutely love Spike Lee, and he/his movies have been very deserving of Oscars several times over, but I don’t think BK is one of them. I don’t know what should have won in 2019. Maybe The Favourite or Black Panther.
re: Green Book vs Black KkKlansman; not coming down on the merits of the argument one way or the other (in fact, I’d be inclined to agree), but it seemed pretty clear from the video that Jackson was struggling with the pronunciation of names, not with the chosen winner.
The Academy felt so bad about passing over Russell Crowe for Insider that they gave him TWO consolation prizes. Gladiator was a fine action movie, but nothing to email the vicar about. A Beautiful Mind was a horribly written by-the-numbers biopic with dialog so wooden it gives you splinters. Gosford Park, Fellowship of the Ring and even Moulin Rouge! would have been a better choice.
What? Crowe only has one Oscar, for Gladiator. Denzel won in ‘01.
Have always thought this too about Gladiator. Russell Crowe gave the best performance of his entire career in The Insider (a very subtle and nuanced role, that one), but the Academy was still snubbing Michael Mann as an “action director” at that point (nothing for Heat? seriously? nothing???) and so couldn’t even give him a supporting award. Then along comes the Gladiator role, which has no subtlety at all and basically consists of being angry for two hours…and that’s the one he wins for? Nope. It never added up.
CODA is still a better film than Belfast. I loved both, and being Irish, I should have fallen for Belfast, but it didn’t have as much story as CODA and suffered for that. For an Irish movie that is great, look no further than this years Foreign Film nominee, The Quiet Girl. This movie ranks in my top 50 somewhere…it’s a beautiful film and story
I saw “Saving Private Ryan” and “Life Is Beautiful” in the theater before the Oscars. I left the theater both times just wrecked from the emotional impact of both films. Then “Shakespeare In Love” beat them both for best picture, so I was pretty excited to see a movie better than those two. I walked out of the cinema after SIL was over and was just shaking my head thinking “what the hell was that tripe?” Not that it was a bad movie, but it was about as interesting as the average episode of “Gray’s Anatomy.”
I was only 12 when American Beauty came out, but already being into film at the time I remember there was such a weird buzz in the months leading to the film opening in theaters. Like, everyone was talking about how good and important it was. Anyway, I liked at the time that there were boobies in it.
I watched the 180-person dance routine (on 2x speed because musicals? more like ~*~ snooze-icals*~*) and about 30 of them danced. The rest sat on steps or leaned against a pillar. Booo.
I like “Return of the King” but no way should it have beaten “Master and Commander” for best picture. They should have given Peter Jackson a special achievement award for the trilogy, because M&C was the better movie vs RotK.
Whenever the “wrong” movie wins the Oscar, there’s a real tendency to vilify the movie that won, sometimes unfairly. Sure, Dances with Wolves shouldn’t have won over Goodfellas, but it’s a very good film and saying the Sioux in it were caricatures is really not accurate even if you watch the film today. Its biggest failing is having Kevin Costner in the lead; a better actor would have made it an even better film. Likewise, Crash is pretty weak for an Oscar entry but it’s not a BAD film like everyone says it is. It’s just not that great, certainly nowhere near Brokeback Mountain. And I’m sorry, but Out of Africa IS a great film, albeit maybe a fraction less great than The Color Purple. I haven’t seen any of the oldies in the slideshow above, but in the modern era the only Best Picture winner that I would argue was truly a bad film was Titanic. Terrible script, cliched characters and a sludgy story; all it had was great special effects, and if you took them away it would have sucked completely. That that mess won over both Good Will Hunting and LA Confidential….ugh, it still stings.
Hot take: Saving Private Ryan is wildly overrated. While brilliantly directed, it has a seriously weak script and deserved to lose.
It feels kind of like you’re implying Gigi is a lesser film because it’s about a teenaged girl who’s being groomed to become a sex worker? Is such a story, which by the way is actually about Gigi refusing to accept that fate, inherently lesser because it doesn’t tackle what the writer deems as Important Social Issues (a take that I believe many feminists would disagree with)?
I like that there are two movies named Crash and the one that aged better is the one about people having weird kinky car crash sex.
Belfast got nominated in a weak year for movies (gee, can’t imagine what world event might have happened to cause that) largely because the Academy was fond of Branagh, and its a decent enough film. The problem is that it’s not even close to the best movie on The Troubles in the last decade; that goes to 2014’s criminally underseen ‘71, which won all sorts of indy awards but never gained mainstream traction.I don’t think in most years CODA would have won, but I don’t have a problem with it. Possibly that’s because I’ve spent a decent amount of time in small fishing communities, including a little in Gloucester, and know how close to the edge many of them live and how no one gives a shit about them (including the reviewer apparently), and the presentation of that subtext is a far better and funnier take on white working class poor than most of what’s out there. The deaf/hearing storyline was eye opening for many, the details of how the film got made are fascinating, and even the Glee story isn’t terrible, and I generally don’t like choir movies; Emilia Jones really does a nice job. About the only thing wrong with it was the ‘We’ll miss her so much at college!’ when Berklee is an hour away on commuter rail and she probably would be coming home every weekend to do laundry.
While it’s one of John Ford’s better films, it ain’t Citizen Kane. In fact, at this point, Valley is most memorable for being the answer to the trivia question, “Which film beat Citizen Kane at the 1942 Oscars?” Anything that is “one of John Ford’s better films” is, by definition, not one of the “worst” best picture winners. The only reason it appears on this list is because it beat out an even better film, Citizen Kane. That happens fairly frequently. But that doesn’t make it one of the worst films amongst Best Picture winners. Oliver!, Terms of Endearment, and Kramer vs. Kramer aren’t on this list, and HGWMV is more worthy than any of them.
If we’re going to have another slot on the list for one film defeating an objectively better one, you probably should’ve gone with Ordinary People on account of its victory over Raging Bull (although I actually kind of like OP).
One wonders how much influence Hearst may have had in how the awards for Kane turned out. There was a LOT of opposition to the film and that is mostly lost today.It’s funny how the movies that lost are often far more memorable and popular than the winners. Gandi won over E.T. in 1982. When was the last time anyone has sat down to re-watch (or for the first time) Sir Richard Attenborough’s epic compared to that little alien? I would even venture that Star Wars is superior to Annie Hall simply because of the marvel that film was compared to Woody’s little film.
It would be amazing of Maverick gets Best Picture this year but don’t hold your breath.
Grinding Nemo erasure.
meh, Dances With Wolves is still one of my favorite movies.
#16 The King’s SpeechShould’ve won: The Social Network
Between Weinstein’s grubbiness and ability to jock Paltrow into any kind of relevance and Spike Lee’s payout “aimed at improving relations with minority communities” that likely forced Blackkklansman onto the masses, it kinda makes you wonder just how much do we really need these damn awards (and some of the crap movies), no?
Peoples taste in movies changes along with everything else. I find it tough to judge whether a movie made in 1935 was the best of that year or not.
Dances with Totem Pole was pretty bad. But a few hours ago I just watched it, enjoying every minute! And unlike most of nominated top movies in recent decades, people actually watched it. Far too many nominated films these days are joyless, boring wastes of money both in the making and viewing.
How Green Was My Valley is superior to Citizen Kane and is one of the greatest films ever made.
The Hurt Locker winning best picture always annoyed me, it’s just another US war propaganda movie.
My Dad is from Belfast and I spent a lot of my childhood there and no, Belfast is not a good film.
Can’t believe there hasn’t been a mention of a travesty of justice that has aged even more poorly than Crash:Oliver! winning over 2001: A Space Odyssey.For Christ’s sake, it’s arguably the most influential film of the past 60 years, made by one of the all-time greatest directors at the peak of his powers, and it lost to a bunch of singing street urchins. I know it’s far-fetched to imagine the Academy voting for a film that begins with 4 minutes of atonal music over a black screen and ends with a 30-minute LSD-swirling-color head fuck, but COME ON.
It amazes me how often y’all forget the ramifications of the movies AT THE TIME they were released….and then you apply current political topics, culture and themes to them. All of that said, Crash had no business winning! lmao
The omission of Kramer v Kramer, IMO, nullifies the entire piece. K v K wasn’t the Best Picture of *any* year. Granted, it had weak competition (All That Jazz. Apocalypse Now. Breaking Away. Norma Rae.) but, IMO, *any* of the other four are much better films. K v K had all the charm of a daytime soap opera and the quality of a made-for-TV movie.
What should have won: Do The Right Thing—infamously—was not even nominated for the evening’s top prize. But we’re adding it to this list anyway because its lack of a Best Picture nomination stands as one of the Academy’s most egregious oversights. Spike Lee’s instant classic failed to merit Academy recognition beyond nods for Lee’s screenplay and supporting actor Danny Aiello, despite being the most politically urgent film of 1989.
Hats off to Kim Basinger, for saying this at 1990 Oscars
Why is deaf capitalized in the entry for CODA?
no Forrest Gump?
You forgot the 2nd biggest travesty of the 21st century, after Crash: Chicago winning in 2003. The Two Towers, The Pianist*, and Gangs of New York are all massively better films. *Although I do see why the Academy would not have wanted to honor a Polanski film.
Holy shit. I somehow didn’t realize that won. I’d add Far from Heaven, Talk to Her, Road to Perdition, Y Tu Mama Tabien as contenders though there’s not really a slam dunk other than…if any year was going to have an animated winner, Spirited Away by a fucking MILE over Chicago.
Totally disagree about Greenbook. It is one of my new favorites. It has some of everything in it. We don’t see male friendship portrayed this way and it’s nice. Well deserving of best picture. Agreed that Brokeback Mountain should have been the winner it’s nominated year, and Color Purple.
Dances of Wolves won instead of Goodfellas, and what is the movie we still watch, The Oscars have always been a joke.
Out of Africa does have one of the best ever scenes when they’re flying over the Serengeti with the amazing soundtrack by John Barry.
Call me what you will, but I have always loved “Gigi.” Politically and culturally disturbing now? Yes, it is. But it wasn’t made now. It was made then. And everything about it, from the script to the score to the production to the performances was just right.My mother refused to see it because she hated Maurice Chevalier, “that Nazi collaborator”. Maybe I should hate him, too, but in this movie, I can’t.
I’ve had the misfortune to see the watch-once-and-forget Shakespeare in Love precisely b/c I’m a Paltrow fan who twice couldn’t remember whether I’d seen it before. Eff Weinstein for many, many things, including triumphing in his awards-grasp for this okayness.
Thank you. Shakespeare in Love is just a forgettable rom-com with a better-than-usual cast of British who’s who. I can’t remember what else was nominated that year except for Elizabeth, which was a much better film, and Cate Blanchett, who should have won her first Oscar that year instead of Gwyneth Paltrow.
Dances With Wolves is not exactly a white savior film. Costner’s character does help the Lakotans fight off a Pawnee attack by sharing the arms and training he had been given by his army. But the main conflict is that he gets the Lakotan band in trouble because the army is looking for him and their band’s location is in his diary. The Lakotans save him, not the other way around.
People of different races need to learn to understand each other and get along.But also: We hate those kinds of movies.
I spat my whiskey to the wall when BELFAST was considered deserving of anything.
Slumdog Millionaire was worse than all 15 of these movies, as well as every other Oscar nominee I’ve ever seen.
Please. Out of Africa sucks, and so does The Color Purple. Spielberg makes it look like the poor people’s pavilion at Epcot. Every inch of it seems phony.
Actually, I remember The Greatest Show on Earth because I’ve seen it.
1) Aside from 1941, the worst snub in history has to be Rocky winning over All The President’s Men, Network, and Taxi Driver. Rocky is a perfectly good film; it’s iconic, ends happily, and basically created a whole genre. But it does not hold a candle to any of those other three, which are all stone-cold classics and among the best films ever made. I understand that in the aftermath of the Vietnam War and Watergate people wanted something earnest, but just in terms of quality of a film, Rocky beating those three is a travesty.2) Gladiator over Crouching Tiger? Really?3) You forgot Slumdog Millionaire. That was a very weak year, but it’s also a deeply mediocre film.4) Just to add insult to injury, How Green Was My Valley beat not only Citizen fucking Caine, but also The Maltese Falcon, which in almost any other year could have been the best movie.
Color Purple is way overrated.
Where is “Life is Beautiful” (1999), one of the worst movies I’ve ever seen?
The writer’s list and comments are more nauseating than the academy’s choices. Dances with Wolves didn’t get a different viewpoint decades later because of some kind of white-person guilt as the writer claims, it was always considered a massive bore by audiences and no one could pretend otherwise only a few years after its release. It was widely regarded in the 90s as a long, boring, overhyped film.
I was a fan of Elizabeth more than the silly Shakespeare in Love. I couldn’t understand how that movie won best picture until I heard that there’s a party where all the cast members mingled with the judges. Whoever smoozed the best won. As for Saving Private Ryan, I liked that movie a lot but I thought there were inconsistencies that were pretty glaring to me. The beginning with the older guy at the gravesite with his family. We were supposed to believe he was Ryan, but suddenly he was Tom Hanks remembering everything. How was Ryan supposed to know all that happened before they met up with him? He had his own battles to remember. Then there’s that tank that blew up from the P-51 tank buster. We’re to believe a 250 lb or 500 lb bomb exploded without any shockwave whatsoever that would have basically blew Tom Hanks away.
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Crash had no redeeming factors. Calling it clunky is letting it off easy.
It’s really interesting how Crash… crashed. At the time it felt like this juggernaut. I thought it was really ham-fisted at the time, but it didn’t feel like a common sentiment. I met few people who didn’t care for it and it came up in so many conversations in a way that I don’t feel many Best Picture-nominated films had in a while.
“Goodfellas” over “Dances With Wolves”?I love both movies, and I get, and agree with, the modern views on DWW’s “white savior” narrative, but “Goodfellas” simply entertains (albeit, brilliantly), while “Dances With Wolves” inspires. A truly great movie needs to awe and inspire.
No, American Beauty absolutely was the best film that year by a huge margin. Insider was good, but not AB good. AB is a once a decade film.
Coda somehow managed to have the level of offensiveness and outdated perspective on its subject that most movies take 50 years to achieve. Man what a terrible sub-Hallmark movie.The Sound of Metal came out a year earlier and is so much better in every way as far as the subject of deafness goes.
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hating on coda but picking belfast. lol. aside from power of the dog, you got dune, drive my car, and west side story. belfast most probably on the lower half rank that year.