Listmania! Worst Best Picture Winners

by BRIAN KESLER

A friend asked me for my least favorite Best Picture Winners today, and it gave me the idea to do a Listmania! on the subject. There are a lot of bad Best Picture Winners. Not all of them are bad movies, exactly, but most of them are bad choices. Why? Because movies with momentum and popularity at a certain time don't necessarily age well. In fact, I would say they age less gracefully than usual. Why? Because they cater to a specific audiences' wants and needs of a certain era. With almost all of the movies on this list, I am judging the win to be miscalculated due to competition - in fact, I LOVE some of the movies on this list, but they won against better movies. The list is in alphabetical order.


'Around the World in 80 Days' - This cheesy and unfortunate film version of Jules Vern's novel had stiff competition that year. 'Giant,' and 'The Ten Commandments.' Some might also consider 'The King and I' stiff competition, but movies about Christian white women teaching barbaric Buddhist Asians how to be human beings instead of animals aren't really my thing.

'Crash' - A preachy, cliched, and poorly edited film about intolerance won against a groundbreaking and beautifully shot film with pitch perfect performances and one of the best screenplays ever written: 'Brokeback Mountain.' Huge snub. I jumped out of my seat in disbelief when Jack Nicholson announced the winner. The audience mostly did too.

'Dances with Wolves' - A good film, but winning against a masterpiece from Martin Scorsese, 'Goodfellas.' This has gone down as one of the biggest snubs in the history of the Academy.

'The Departed' - After the aforementioned snub, and feeling like Scorsese might die soon and they need to give him an Academy Award sometime, the Academy finally blessed the gifted director for one of his least liked films. Considering 'Letters from Iwo Jima' and 'Little Miss Sunshine' were fellow nominees, this pity win was less than satisfactory.

'Driving Miss Daisy' - This is the most uncontroversial, mellow social commentary on race disparity I have ever seen. This movie is filmed with a rose-colored lens and treats racism like something sweet and nostalgic. Oh, those old people from the south. They're so cute when they're racist. Oh, the old woman learned to love her driver even though he's black. That's sweet. The irony is that Spike Lee's culturally significant and daring, 'Do the Right Thing' wasn't even given a nomination. The other Best Picture nominees, however, make this win even more incredulous. 'Born on the Fourth of July,' 'My Left Foot,' 'Field of Dreams,' and 'Dead Poets Society.' All things considered, this is one of, but not the, worst Best Picture winners in the history of the awards.

'Forest Gump' - I love this movie. I truly do. I love Tom Hanks in this movie. I love the lightness of the film and the fun it pokes at history and the groundbreaking special effects it uses to do so. However, this film went up against 'The Shawshank Redemption.' Oh, and 'Pulp Fiction.' To put it in perspective, 'The Shawshank Redemption' is listed as IMDB's number 1 movie, voted by users. And 'Pulp Fiction'.... need I say more?

'Gentleman's Agreement' - Considering this film went up against David Lean's 'Great Expectations,' and considering that David Lean is one of my favorite directors and Charles Dickens one of my favorite novelists, and considering the two of them combined makes for a happy Brian .... this is a no brainer. Also, 'Miracle on 34th Street.'

'Gigi' - Not that it had stiff competition - 'Cat on a Hot Tin Roof' is a great film, though. I just don't really love 'Gigi.' Not my favorite MGM musical. And old men singing about little girls is just creepy.

'The Greatest Show on Earth' - I'm going to say it. This is the worst Best Picture Winner of them all. Imagine a bloated, 3 hour commercial for the Ringling Bros. Circus staring Jimmy Stewart, Charlton Heston, and Betty Hutton. This is that commercial, directed by the sloppy hand of Cecil B. DeMille, this movie is an abomination that should burn in Hell where it belongs.

'Hamlet' - 'The Red Shoes' has become, in many ways, the ultimate classic. Martin Scorsese praises it as his favorite movie, and people have become dangerously obsessed with the Archers' technicolor masterpiece. It is THE "composed picture" (a movie with the perfect combination of visuals, colors, sound, music, editing, movement, acting, and dialogue). That is why 'Hamlet' seems an odd choice.

'How Green was my Valley' - A sappy and preachy movie that won against 'The Maltese Falcon' and  ... wait for it ..... 'Citizen "FREAKING" Kane'! Yeah, that movie that's deemed the best movie of all time. Orson Welles' visual and character masterpiece that has and will forever haunt movie watchers with its intricate cinematography and dark portrait of the American Dream. That one. It lost.

'Kramer Vs. Kramer' - A good, if not sentimental, movie with demanding performances from Meryl Streep and Dustin Hoffman, 'Kramer Vs. Kramer' took the award against Bob Fosse's final film, 'All that Jazz' and Francis Ford Coppola's daring and astonishing Vietnam War epic, 'Apocalypse Now.'

'A Man for All Seasons' - 'Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf,' the first film from Mike Nichols, with brilliant photography, a nearly perfect screenplay, and divine performances from Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, was passed up for this good, but somewhat forgettable, film.

'Ordinary People' - I'll admit I've never seen 'Ordinary People,' so it's probably inappropriate for me to suggest that 'Raging Bull' was snubbed. But ... 'Raging Bull' was snubbed. Martin Scorsese's tale of the rise and fall of a boxer's professional and personal life is beautifully photographed and was honored by AFI by being named one of the top ten films of all time. Where was 'Ordinary People' on the top 100 list? Nowhere. Come to think of it, have you ever seen 'Ordinary People' on any Best-of list?

'Out of Africa' - Steven Spielberg's powerful adaptation of Alice Walker's 'The Color Purple,' received eleven nominations and received exactly zero awards. It was an unfortunate snub for the best movie of that year.

'Rocky' - You're shocked, I know. Let me first say that I love 'Rocky,' and that it does fall somewhere on my favorite movies list. However, 'Network' is higher up on that list and 'Taxi Driver' is my favorite Martin Scorsese movie ever made, falls in my top ten ever list, and is the biggest snub of Scorsese's career.

'Shakespeare in Love' - Harvey Weinstein has the system rigged nowadays, and does anything possible to get his films nominated, if not selected as the Best Picture of the Year. There is more in the way of business, politics, and money that selects the winners and less in the way of artistic integrity. 'The Thin Red Line' and 'Saving Private Ryan' are both far superior films. For that matter, so are 'Life is Beautiful' and 'Elizabeth.' There is an audible gasp from the audience at the Oscars ceremony when 'Shakespeare in Love' is announced the winner. It set a new beginning for swindling and campaigning a movie to win. By the way, it is not required for the voters to actually watch the complete list of nominees. What a great system.