Top 10 Great Movies That Didn’t Win An Oscar

As quickly as 2010 came and went, here we find ourselves in the middle of another exciting awards season. The Golden Globes have been awarded and the 83^rd Oscar ceremony is next.

When it comes to Hollywood’s highest honors, the Academy’s omissions often provoke more outcry and buzz than the actual winners. The Academy Awards are quite controversial among many film experts and fans. Although the Academy has honored many of the cinema’s masterpieces, numerous other great movies have been entirely overlooked. It seems they weren’t even worth the nomination. Other notable films were nominated, but didn’t win a single Oscar. It’s the case of Double Indemnity (a classic film noir masterpiece with seven nominations!!!) Pretty Woman, Being John Malkovich, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, The Talented Mr. Ripley, Munich, It’s A Wonderful Life,  Singin’ in The Rain, Mangnolia, The Magnificent Ambersons and many more.

10. Poltergeist (1982)

The first Poltergeist movie was released during the summer 1982. The very successful thriller of the 80s ranks 84th on AFI’s 100 Years…100 Thrills list. The 1986 and 1988 sequels didn’t quite measure up to the original.
Special effects can often make or break a film. It’s for sure not the case of Poltergeist (1982). Many consider that producer Steven Spielberg and director Tobe Hooper are the real stars of Poltergeist, both of them famous for creating awesome special effects. Poltergeist won in 1983 the BAFTA Film Award for Best Special Visual Effects, but failed to win the Oscar. It remains a visually striking movie that harmonically combines effective special effects with a human touch, something most horror movies lack these days.

Poltergeist – Oscar nominations

1983, Best Effects, Sound Effects Editing: Stephen Hunter Flick, Richard L. Anderson

Best Effects, Visual Effects: Richard Edlund, Michael Wood, Bruce Nicholson

Best Music, Original Score: Jerry Goldsmith

9. Ghostbusters (1984)

The 1984 Ghostbusters is one of those few great films “where the original, fragile comic vision has survived a multimillion-dollar production”, said Roger Ebert. The American fantasty-comedy made close to $300 millions in the United States, the equivalent of nowadays $596,878,264 and AFI ranked it #28 on the „ 100 Greates Comedies of all Time” list.

The plot of the movie is imaginative and very well written, the special effects were spectacular for it’s time and the cast was well put together, for both leading and supporting roles. Bill Murray portrayed Dr. Peter Venkman, Dan Aykroyd – Dr. Raymond Stantz, Sigourney Weaver – Dana Barrett and Harold Ramis – Dr. Egon Spengler.

Times columnist Caitlin Moran sparked quite a bit of controversy with her article titled “Sorry Star Wars fans, but Ghostbusters is the best film ever made!” I didn’t read such a funny, yet thought provoking article for a very long time. Great stuff, well worth reading. What do you think? Is she right?

Ghostbusters – Oscar nominations

1985,  Best Effects / Visual Effects: Richard Edlund, John Bruno, Mark Vargo, Chuck Gaspar

Best Music / Original Song: Ray Parker Jr.

8. Vertigo (1958)

Great story with original plot twists, obsessive passions, astonishingly visceral music, spine-tingling suspense, mystery…in one word: Vertigo! Vertigo’s screenplay is credited to Samuel Taylor and Alec Coppel. It  was an adaption of P. Boileau’s and T. Narcejac’s novel, D’Entre les Morts (Between Deaths / The Living and the Dead).

Although Hitchcock’s Vertigo was nominated for only two Oscars, and won none, it is widely regarded as a masterpiece. Hitchcock perfectly combined multiple levels to create a complex movie. On a literal level, Vertigo tells the  suspense-filled mystery story of a man manipulated into acting as an accomplice in a crime. On the other hand, the film’s psychological level reveals a man’s dark and twisted psyche full of fears and laden with guilt. The story follows Scottie’s obsessive fantasies and the desire to end his existential vertigo, “desperately searching for an object on which to concentrate its repressed energy”. (Magill’s Survey of Cinema) The movie explores the dangerous link between desire and death, between falling in love and falling. Finally, at a deeper and metaphorical level, Vertigo retells the ancient legend of Orpheus and Eurydice. John “Scottie” Ferguson, just like Orpheus, travels into the terrifying underworld to reclaim his lost love. These multiple levels blur the fine line between subjectivity and objectivity.

Vertigo – Oscar nominations

1959, Best Art Direction-Set Decoration / Black-and-White or Color: Hal Pereira, Henry Bumstead, Sam Comer, Frank R. McKelvy

Best Sound: George Dutton

7. Basic Instinct (1992)

Written by Joe Eszterhas and directed by Paul Verhoeven, Basic Instinct features Michael Douglas, Sharon Stone, Jeanne Tripplehorn and George Dzundza. The film generated major controversy  due to its steamy love scenes, overt sexuality and intense acts of violence.

A diabolical killer, a brutal murder, a police detective who can’t resist the temptation of danger, and a mysterious femme fatale who promises carnal pleasures, but delivers death. What more can we ask for? Basic Instinct was immensely successful upon release. It was one of the highest grossing movies of that year.

While Frank J. Urioste got nominated for Best Film Editing and Jerry Goldsmith  for Best Music, Sharone Stone and Paul Verhoeven were left out. Still can’t believe that Basic Instinct didn’t win a single Oscar.

Basic Instinct – Oscar nominations

1993, Best Film Editing: Frank J. Urioste

Best Music / Original Score: Jerry Goldsmith

6. Fatal Attraction (1987)

Can you trust that 26 directors rejected Fatal Attraction because they considered it uncommercial? One thing is for sure: Fatal Attraction was not ignored upon its release in 1987. It was the year’s most intensely debated movie, grossing over $320 million at the box office. Fatal Attraction was such a massive hit because it gave the audience something different. As Tom Hanks stated in Sleepless in Seattle: “Fatal Attraction scared the shit out of every man in America.” All the actors’ performances were outstanding. AFI ranked Glenn Close for portaying Alex Forrest #7 on its “100 Years…100 Heroes and Villains” list.
Although popular with six nominations, Fatal Attraction didn’t win any Academy Awards.

Fatal Attraction – Oscar nomincations

1988, Best Actress in a Leading Role: Glenn Close

Best Actress in a Supporting Role: Anne Archer

Best Director: Adrian Lyne

Best Film Editing: Michael Kahn, Peter E. Berger

Best Picture: Stanley R. Jaffe, Sherry Lansing

Best Writing, Screenplay Based on Material from Another Medium: James Dearden

5. Frost/Nixon (2008)

Ron Howard’s Frost/Nixon is a sharp historical drama adapted from a theatre play by Peter Morgan. Certain characters and actions have been fictionalized, but the plot is based on the famous 1977 interviews. The highlights of the movie are Frank Langella as former US President Richard Nixon and Michael Sheen as British journalist David Frost. The confrontations between these two ambitious men are truly electrifying. While Nixon struggled to regain his reputation by reminding America of his political achievements, Frost aspired to be recognized as a prominent journalist, he wanted to be admired and respected. Frost/Nixon was nominated for five Academy Awards, but lost most of the awards to Slumdog Millionaire. I’ll never understand how this fantastic movie lost to Slumdog Millionaire…

Frost/Nixon – Oscar nominations

2009, Best Achievement in Directing: Ron Howard

Best Achievement in Editing: Mike Hill, Daniel P. Hanley

Best Motion Picture of the Year: Brian Grazer, Ron Howard, Eric Fellner

Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role: Frank Langella

Best Writing, Screenplay Based on Material Previously Produced or Published: Peter Morgan

4. The Godfather, Part III (1990)

The third part of The Godfather trilogy is another interesting movie that failed to win an Academy Award, despite being nominated seven times. The American gangster film received mixed reviews. While Washington Post columnist Bal Hinson wrote “The man who made those two masterpieces is not the man who has given us this failed final chapter… you can’t help but see The Godfather Part III as his headstone”, Sun-Times critic Roger Ebert considerd it a “beautiful-looking film, a beautiful-feeling film, it’s great to see these people again. It’s interesting the way they dig in to the controversy invlving the Catholic Church.”

The Godfather, Part III – Oscar nominations

1991, Best Actor in a Supporting Role: Andy Garcia

Best Art Direction-Set Decoration: Dean Tavoularis, Gary Fettis

Best Cinematography: Gordon Willis

Best Director: Francis Ford Coppola

Best Film Editing: Barry Malkin, Lisa Fruchtman, Walter Murch

Best Music / Original Song: Carmine Coppola (music), John Bettis (lyrics) For the song “Promise Me You’ll Remember”.

Best Picture: Francis Ford Coppola

3. Once Upon A Time in America

One of the last memorable epics to come out of Hollywood is Sergio Leone’s Once Upon a Time in America starring Robert De Niro and James Woods. And I am talking about the original version with a running time of 227 minutes. Once Upon a Time in America was so heavily edited for its U.S. theatrical release, that the Italian film director was left inconsolable. He never made another film after Once Upon a Time in America. Unfortunately, the movie’s most interesting scenes are missing from the short version and the plot is kind of hard to understand. The full-length version of the crime drama explores the lives of a group of Jewish immigrants, chronicling their childhoods and years of glory as gangsters in America.
Why Leone’s masterpiece never received an Oscar, let alone a nomination, remains a mystery.

2. The Shawshank Redemption (1994)

The Shawshank Redemption is an inspiring ‘lesson’ on how to unleash our full potential by embracing new challenges, building on our strengths and having the courage to fight back against life’s injustices and miseries. “Get busy living…or get busy dying. That’s god damn right.” Just like Red (Morgan Freeman) said.

Although The Shawshank Redemption depicts the story of two men who become close friends while serving life sentences in a maximum security prison, it is not the typical prison drama. Frank Darabont defied all conventions of the genre (bullying, violence, crime, hopelessness of a life) to reveal new themes: friendship, determination, survival and faith. The cast is headed by Tim Robbins, Morgan Freeman and Bob Gunton. Yet, despite all of its greatness and 7 Oscar nominations, The Shawshank Redemption did not succeed in winning one.

The Shawshank Redemption – Oscar nominations

1995,  Best Actor in a Leading Role: Morgan Freeman

Best Cinematography: Roger Deakins

Best Film Editing: Richard Francis-Bruce

Best Music / Original Score: Thomas Newman

Best Picture: Niki Marvin

Best Sound: Robert J. Litt, Elliot Tyson, Michael Herbick, Willie D. Burton

Best Writing, Screenplay Based on Material from Another Medium: Frank Darabont

1.Psycho (1960)

Here we are at number one: immortal Psycho! No other movie had such a great psychological impact on the audience as Psycho had in its time. Hailed as the father of modern suspense, Hitchcock broke all the conventions and created one of the best and scariest movies ever. However, it failed to win an Academy Award. Psycho influenced many films that came after it ( Silence of the Lambs, Portrait of a Serial Killer etc.) and helped shape the slasher genre. No wonder it tops AFI’s list of 100 most thrilling American movies.

Psycho connects directly with some of our most vivid emotions: terror, despair, fear, and this makes it immortal. The nightmarish movie’s themes of paranoia caused by isolation, voyeurism, the dual nature of the human psyche, the lack of distinction between reality and appearance, the supremacy of death over life and the way in which madness is represented make Psycho stand out as one most disturbing and violent films. But…“We all go a little mad sometimes. Haven’t you?” – Norman Bates

Psycho – Oscar nominations

1961, Best Actress in a Supporting Role: Janet Leigh

Best Art Direction-Set Decoration, Black-and-White: Joseph Hurley, Robert Clatworthy, George Milo

Best Cinematography, Black-and-White: John L. Russell

Best Director: Alfred Hitchcock

Top 10 Best Picture Winners Weren’t That Great

Only 83 films have won Best Picture to date and the general sentiment is that winning the big prize ensures that your film will have a place among the classics. Here are 10 films that won the grand prize that are not considered classics today:

10. The Broadway Melody, 1929

Since sound was introduced into the movies in 1927, film studios realized the potential almost immediately of combining films with musical numbers. Released two years after the first talkie, The Broadway Melody was MGM’s first big-scale musical number. Heavily promoted by studio head Louis B. Mayer, the cliché-ridden film would win the 2nd best picture Oscar in history among what film historian Tim Dirks notes as, “some of the weakest films in the history of American cinema, reflecting the chaos of the transition from silents to sound films.” Although MGM would be synonymous with the best of the musical genre some fifteen years down the road, the early years of MGM’s musical branch were films so formulaic that they didn’t even bother changing the name for subsequent installments. They were simply known as The Broadway Melody of ____ with the year of release in the blank.

9. Cimarron, 1931

Cimarron is one of just three Westerns to win an Oscar. The film centers around a restless newspaper editor seeking to start a new life with his family in the newly opened territory of Oklahoma and covers a 40-year span in which he deserts his family but eventually comes back to fight for Indians’ rights. Despite its eventual pro-Indian stance, the film squanders its good will to modern viewers through its highly stereotypical representation of the Jewish tailor and the African American servant characters. The film has eight out of fourteen good reviews on rottentomatoes.com which clears it from being the worst-reviewed best picture winner (The Broadway Melody has 38%) but even the good reviews aren’t particularly enthusiastic about the film. One of the positive reviews, by Dennis Schwartz, says the film is “badly outdated, overly sentimental, the performance by Richard Dix that was well-received back then now seems overblown,” but he inexplicably gives the film a B-. If there’s a bright spot to the film, it’s the performance of Irene Dunne who was able to survive the transition to talkies through what most critics agree was a great performance.

8. Cavalcade, 1933

Cavalcade chronicles the story of a British family over two generations as they cope with war, societal change, and the sinking of the Titanic (one of the family members was on board). This film won in a year when Hollywood started to get comfortable enough with sound that many films broke out of the mold and revolutionized their genres, whether it was the message picture (I am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang), the musical (42^nd Street), the big budget action film (King Kong) or the risqué comedy (She Done Him Wrong). Ironically, it was also the first year in which the overproduced British period piece won the top prize. There’s no doubt that Hollywood owes a great debt to England’s grand theatrical tradition and its immensely talented pool of classically trained actors but the Academy’s being blind-sided by anything and everything British has led to most every baffling decision the Academy has made for best picture, which will be a recurring theme here.

7. You Can’t Take it With You, 1938

Frank Capra was the 1930′s version of Spielberg and Scorsese rolled into one. He was the most respected, revered and commercially successful director of his time. His visions of homespun Americana gave hope to millions during the Great Depression. You Can’t Take it With You was Capra’s third Oscar-winning film in the course of 6 years, and it was no doubt a popular film. The film, however, is something like Capra’s 7th or 8th best film today behind such classics that came nowhere close to winning an Oscar as It’s a Wonderful Life, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington or Arsenic and Old Lace. The film centers on the zany antics when the granddaughter of an eccentric free-spirited professor invites her straight-laced in-laws for dinner. Aside from being overshadowed by so many other Frank Capra films, the film is also  unremarkable because it’s not very much of a departure from the Pulitzer-prize winning stage play by George Kaufman and Moss Hart.

6. Mrs. Miniver, 1942

During World War II, Hollywood sought to assist with the war effort however it could. Top directors such as John Ford, John Huston and more made propaganda pictures and Hollywood produced wholesome images of homespun Americana and family life (Meet me in Saint Louis is a prime example) so that moviegoers could be reminded at the movies exactly what they were fighting for. At the same time, this was the Golden Age of film in which American cinema was really advancing as an art form. The Oscars during these years pitted the wholesome yet unremarkable films against the edgier film noirs, screwball comedies, or melodramas.  Mrs. Miniver, although depicting the idyll and noble life of a British family on the advent of war, was one such unremarkable film. It did make for some good propoganda. Winston Churchill wrote a thank-you note to MGM head Louis B. Mayer saying that the film was “Propoganda worth a hundred battleships.”

5. Around the World in 80 Days, 1956

This film is a fun, scenic romp best known for its endless string of cameos by the likes of Frank Sinatra, Cesar Romero, Charles Coburn, Red Skelton, Marlene Dietrich, and many more. It’s speculated that the film won only because all the actors with cameos voted for their own film. Even if the film is more popcorn entertainment than a great film, credit still should be given to producer Mike Todd (one former husband of the late Elizabeth Taylor) for his sheer ambition. Employing a record 33 assistant directors, Todd personally jetted to Pakistan, India, China and Thailand to meet with Kings and princes to secure the most luxurious locations he could find. Getting half of Hollywood to appear in his film wasn’t easy either: Todd spent months asking any actor with even a mild curiosity about the film to appear in a small role. In fact, it can be said that this film originated the very concept of the cameo.

4. The Greatest Show on Earth, 1952

This is a film that centers around the trials and tribulations of a travelling circus (the title comes from the motto for Barnum and Bailey’s Circus). Audiences hear about the film and the storied career of its director, Cecille B. DeMille, every year because the Lifetime Achievement Award at the Golden Globes is named after him. Upon receiving the award, for example, Spielberg paid tribute to The Greatest Show on Earth by saying that he practically owes his career to this film having recreated the famous train crash scene in his living room over and over as a kid. Even if we take Spielberg at his word (he’s known to embellish his stories), he’s in the minority of people who took anything inspirational from the film. When I did an informal poll among other film buffs in preparation for this list, they all insisted that this was the most forgettable entry be included. Like Around the World in 80 Days, the film is more spectacle than it is timeless. Outside of that one train crash scene, the film doesn’t offer much of the grand sights of a film like Around the World in 80 Days. Unless you’re a humongous circus fan you should just catch them live when they’re in town.

3. Oliver!, 1968

To be fair, British Director Carol Reed did produce at least one classic in The Third Man almost 20 years before he was handed a make-up award for this film. The adaptation of the classic Charles Dickens novel Oliver Twist had the necessary pedigree of Britishness (see the Mrs Miniver entry) and came during a decade in which musicals were in fashion with the Oscars (3 other films from the 1960′s also won Best Picture). Ironically, among the other two front-runners that year, The Lion in the Winter also had the British pedigree and Funny Girl was a musical.

2. Chariots of Fire, 1981

Today, the film is only remembered for its synthetic score that’s been reused for athletic montages in practically every movie since. The tale, examining the conflicting journeys to glory of two British gold medalist runners in the 1924 Olympics, isn’t so much a bad film as a massive surprise in a crowded field of great films that included Raiders of the Lost Ark, Reds, Atlantic City and On Golden Pond. Roger Ebert wrote that when he met the producers and the directors of the film at that year’s Cannes film festival before the film had found an American distributor, they told him that they didn’t think their film would even play in America, let alone win an Oscar. Ebert also speculated that in today’s movie market, it would likely have not survived more than one weekend in the theaters.

1. The English Patient, 1996

An epic love story set at the close of World War II centering on the search for the identity of a plane crash survivor, the film isn’t necessarily bad but it has been ignored by pretty much every list of great films (Empire Magazine, National Society of Film Critics, the AFI, Time Out, etc.) . The film is mostly remembered today for being the basis of a Seinfeld episode in which Elaine is driven insane in trying to avoid being ostracized for being the only one of her friends who doesn’t like the film. It’s worth noting that as Elaine’s friends in that Seinfeld episode love the film, it opened to some remarkably good reviews. Susan Stark of Detroit News famously called it the best film she’s seen in 16 years of reviewing cinema. While Best Picture winners of the 1990′s like Forrest Gump (which beat out Quiz Show, Pulp Fiction, and The Shawshank Redemption) and Dances with Wolves (which beat out Goodfellas) are now almost universally hated for taking the trophy away from those beloved films, The English Patient seems to have faded into oblivion.  Even though some might hate it for taking the honor away from Shine or Fargo, both nominated that year.