10 Worst OSCAR Best Picture Winners
It's a good list and they got the right #1, but they missed some winners which were much worse than American Beauty or The Artist. For example: How Green Was My Valley, Crash, Out of Africa and Driving Miss Daisy.
I wrote about this extensively back in 2002. It's a little dated now, but I tried to approach the question from several directions, using the "objective" standard of IMDb ratings rather than my own opinion.
What was the worst case of an inferior nominee beating out a much better nominee? (At the time: Chariots of Fire beating Raiders of the Lost Ark. I'm not sure if that is still the case.)
What was the worst case of a mediocre nominated film beating a much better unnominated one. (At the time: The Greatest Show on Earth beating Singin' in the Rain. I have not updated the study, but I guess that might still be the worst case.)
Which Oscar winners have the lowest rating at IMDb? (At the time: Out of Africa. Now: The Greatest Show on Earth)
What is the best film not to win a Best Picture Oscar? (At the time: either The Shawshank Redemption, Citizen Kane or Dr Strangelove. Now: clearly Shawshank, which is rated #1 of all time at IMDb.)
What is the best film not even nominated? (Excluding foreign classics like The Seven Samurai and The Bicycle Thief, there were several rated 8.7 on IMDb at the time: Hitchcock's Rear Window, Memento, The Usual Suspects, Paths of Glory and Raiders. Since then IMDb has been kind of overrun by fanboys, so The Dark Knight would be the new answer.
A great film not nominated: Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
ReplyDeleteI agree. I would have vote it Best Picture if I had a vote.
DeleteA few years ago I made an effort to watch all the Best Picture winners. The worst, in my opinion, was Greatest Show on Earth. It was the only one I considered a complete waste of time to have watched.
ReplyDeleteAll of the others, no matter how weak, even Cavalcade, had at least something redeemable. Not, however, Greatest Show on Earth. Even Jimmy Stewart sucked in it.
Yes, but Santa Claus Conquers the Martians is a very underrated best picture winner. :)
DeleteAgree. That is a completely unremarkable film.
DeleteThere are a bunch of Oscar Best Picture winners that I have tried to watch and have not made it through, which is worse than The Greatest Show on Earth, watching which is like rubbernecking a car wreck - almost impossible to turn away.
ReplyDeleteBut, all things considered, it's just about impossible to figure how the state of the industry could ever have been so bad that film professionals once considered The Greatest Show on Earth to be the summit of that year's achievements.
ReplyDeleteThere's a good book on this topic called "The Alternate Oscars" by Danny Peary. It helps explain what was going through the minds of people decades ago (or what the internal industry politics were) to result in some of those inexplicable Oscar winners.
ReplyDeleteMost of today's pop culture is geared toward younger people with undeveloped tastes, so as you noted, a Batman movie is now rated as history's greatest cinematic achievement. Personally, I thought "Shawshank" was a good movie, but it shouldn't even be mentioned in the same breath as "Citizen Kane." And I don't just say that out of respect for Welles' cinematic innovations; I actually enjoy watching "Kane" more than "Shawshank" (or any superhero movie.)
This tyranny of the young and ignorant is even more pronounced in the music world. I constantly see "Best of all time" lists from writers who must be 23 years old and don't know anything that happened before they hit puberty. For instance, the new Entertainment Weekly has an article about the greatest Disney movie songs of all time, and the top 10 is stacked with recent mediocre pap like "Colors of the Wind" and "Let It Go," but nowhere, even in the deep list of also-rans, will you find "Feed the Birds" from "Mary Poppins," Walt Disney's personal favorite of all the songs from his movies. He thought it was the best expression of the spirit of charity ever written and had the songwriter play it in his office every day. Think anyone who worked on that EW article knew that?
A similar situation prevails with the Grammy Awards. My wife is a voter, so we have to listen to every nominee in the categories in which she votes. This year, there's a lot of trash talk about the Grammy voters being racist because they didn't give Album of the Year to Beyonce's "Lemonade" (the greatest musical achievement not just of the last year, but EVER!) Personally, I thought it was a barely listenable music factory production job involving minimal input from Beyonce. But then, most of the major nominees were crap. I can't stand Adele's material, but at least she's a real singer performing real songs (songs for future cat ladies, but songs nonetheless). I also didn't care for Sturgill Simpson, but his was probably the best choice of a sorry lot (I'd rank it a distant 4th in the Best Country Album slot, where it actually won). I assure you, there were dozens of albums in the "niche" categories they don't show on TV, many of them by black artists, that were vastly superior to the commercial dreck they nominated in the major categories.
I wonder how many of the people crying that "Lemonade" is the greatest record of their lives will still be listening to it 10 years from now? Meanwhile, I've listened to Sinatra's "Come Fly With Me," Jethro Tull's "War Child," Julie London's "Lonely Girl" and the Beatles' "Rubber Soul" just in the past few days, and the most recent one of those is 43 years old. And incidentally, none of them won a Grammy.
PS - Whoever put "Gigi" on the list of 10 worst Oscar winners should have his typing fingers amputated.
ReplyDeleteLet me be the lone voice lamenting the constant cold shoulder genre films get. I'm shocked Arrival got what it did, but that's a very unconventional genre film. Meanwhile, movies like conjuring 2 feature the best work yet from James Wan who is pretty much kicking Hitchcock's ass for incredible artistic direction of thrillers. 10 Cloverfield Lane, troubled though it is, features a lifetime best performance from John Goodman, completely ignored in the acting awards because it's a spooky movie. Through the years you have The Shining completely ignored, The Exorcist only wins best screenplay, the aforementioned Raiders of the Lost Ark and many other genre classics shunned for no better reason than the Academy was stuffed with self-important snobs.
ReplyDeleteI've been singing that tune for years, except the genre I lobby for is comedies. Why are great comedies not considered as good as great dramas? Doesn't make sense, particularly since many comedies are much better at social commentary. Where's the Oscar Best Picture nomination for Blazing Saddles, Duck Soup, Singin' in the Rain, There's Something About Mary, Borat, any number of Preston Sturges movies, etc.
DeleteI don't know about Conjuring II getting a best picture nominee as it was a sequel however you are absolutely correct that essentially the only films that get nominated for best picture these days are dramas (including Arrival and last year's The Martian, even though that was the best comedy or musical winner at the Golden Globes - who have since changed their criteria.)
DeleteFor best picture, no chance of getting nominated
1.Animated movies, gave up and asked for their own category years ago.
2.Horror movies
3.Superhero movies, This year's Deadpool and The Dark Knight probably both deserved nominations
4.Comedies, except for comedies that remind the academy voters of the golden age of movies like satires and screwball comedies, this likely explains why both the Coen Brothers and Woody Allen have gotten occasional movies nominated in recent years.
The surprise nominees to me are the light dramas (or dramadies) like this year's Hidden Figures or Silver Linings Playbook of a few years ago.
5.Action films. Mad Max: Fury Road was nominated last year likely both due to its technical achievement and that the Oscar voter's hands may have been forced a bit by it winning a number of critic circles awards.
These days I doubt very much a Raiders of the Lost Ark or a Star Wars would even get nominated for best picture yet alone have a shot at winning.
When I'm asked to name my top five films of all time, regardless of genre, "Duck Soup" is right up there with "Citizen Kane."
DeleteOne film nobody has mentioned here yet: Titanic. "I'm the king of crappy movies!"
ReplyDeleteAlso, I was very young when I saw Chariots of Fire (maybe 10) but though the phrase didn't exist back then, the entire time I was watching the film all I could think was 'first world problems.'
I don't care for the film myself, but a friend of mine mentioned that the year Oliver won for best picture, 2001: A Space Odyssey wasn't even nominated in that category.
ReplyDeleteNo one's yet mentioned the greatest injustice of my lifetime, which was Shakespeare in Love beating Saving Private Ryan. How the hell did that happen? A well made, above average romantic comedy beating out one of the classic war movies ever made? I mean, Shakespeare had Gwynneth Paltrow in it, for crissakes! I nearly put my foot thru the TV screen when I saw the announcement.
ReplyDeleteI really like Shakespeare in Love. Very entertaining movie. But you're right in that it's not really in the same league as SPR.
DeleteBy the way, the generation of my oldest sons, first kids of the baby boomers, seems to think that the biggest injustice was Forrest Gump winning over both Pulp Fiction and Shawshank.
To me that represents a failure of nomenclature. We should not be calling it "Best Picture," but "Favorite Picture" because we're really talking about films that we like, as opposed to measuring them on some objective standard of merit. I don't want any part of that discussion. I will join in as soon as somebody can tell me whether Fantasia is "better" or "worse" than Pulp Fiction, and why. I think you can make a very food case that the technically savvy Forrest Gump is objectively a greater achievement than Shawshank, which is basically just guys sitting around and talking, or Pulp Fiction, which was innovative only because of the hip dialogue and music. If Gump didn't have so many sappy moments, I could consider defending its Oscar.