11 Most Disappointing Best Picture Winners

This was supposed to be a Top 10 list, but I already cut 13 other contenders and I just couldn't choose between the final 11.


1998
The Nominees: Shakespeare in Love, Elizabeth, The Thin Red Line, Life is Beautiful and Saving Private Ryan.
Winner: Shakespeare in Love. As a Shakespeare fanatic, I actually adore this movie and it's audacious mix of bawdy humor and thwarted destiny. All-around amazing performances (even from much-maligned Best Actress winner Gwyneth Paltrow; did Cate Blanchett deserve it more? Perhaps. But Paltrow was sweet and spirited in the role, really very good casting) and a top-notch script from playwright Tom Stoppard. But...
Should Have Won: Saving Private Ryan.  The crime is that this film beat Speilberg's masterpiece, perhaps the seminal war film of this generation. In retrospect, not the perfect film we thought it was at the time, but for that first 30 minutes alone, Ryan should have had it in the bag. Ebert praised it saying, "They have made a philosophical film about war almost entirely in terms of action." I wrote my junior year persuasive essay on the reasons Ryan should have taken the prize over Shakespeare and I have yet to falter in my resolve. No other film has ever gutted me quite like this, except for maybe Schindler's List, another Spielberg classic that was rightly awarded.
Should Have Been in the Mix: A Simple Plan or The Truman Show.


1938
The Nominees: Alexander's Ragtime Band, The Citadel, Boys Town, You Can't Take it With You, The Adventures of Robin Hood, Le Grande Illusion, Jezebel, Pygmalion, Four Daughters and Test Pilot
Winner: You Can't Take It With You. Pretty cute movie based on a stage play; in fact my little sister played the lead in her senior year of high school. It's full of wacky characters and was directed by darling Frank Capra, but it lacks the umph of It Happened One Night or It's a Wonderful Life. In retrospect, a rather insignificant picture.
Should Have Won: The prize should have gone to the technicolor joy of Michael Cudlitz's The Adventures of Robin Hood starring a most dashing and irreverent Errol Flynn, or French master Jean Renior's influential Grand Illusion, and not one of the lesser Capra confections.
Should Have Been in the Mix: Actually, the list of nominees is pretty solid, though not as strong as '39 or '41. They just picked the wrong winner.

1956
The Nominees: Around the World in 80 Days, The King and I, The Ten Commandments, Giant, and Friendly Persuasion.
Winner: Around the World in 80 Days. This was a terrible year all around. And this overblown, though beautiful, travelogue featuring stereotypes prancing about as if they were real characters is just too trifling to be deserving of even a nomination.
Should Have Won: Under duress, Giant. Mostly well-known as "James Dean's Last Film," but directed by the capable and respected George Stevens (better represented by other films such as A Place in the Sun, Swing Time, The Diary of Anne Frank and Shane). About the trials and tribulations of an oil tycoon, it also starred Rock Hudson and Elizabeth Taylor . Good enough I guess, but this movie was a tremendous bore for me.
Should Have Been in the Mix: Lust for Life, John Ford/John Wayne classic The Searchers, Kubrick's debut The Killing, Lawrence Olivier's Richard III, and under known Hitchcock film The Wrong Man.


2005
The Nominees: Crash, Munich, Brokeback Mountain, Capote, and Good Night and Good Luck.
Winner: Crash. A very interesting idea with some strong themes and a few good sequences, but as a film it has no business competing with the other nominees. It's point - the racism still exists in spades, even in a city as supposedly liberal as L.A. - is well-intentioned, but the handling is so clumsy and obvious.
Should Have Won: Brokeback Mountain or Good Night and Good Luck. Anything else. Obviously I was pulling for Ang Lee's quiet storm, Brokeback Mountain. It featured the performance of the year, as far as I'm concerned, and told such a simple story so truthfully and sadly. Beautiful score as well. And Good Night and Good Luck was tight and straightforward with a lot of great ensemble work and a story that is still relevant today. But 2005 was one of the great years for movies in general, so it's hard to get too bent out of shape, even if Brokeback will be hailed as the classic for years to come.
Should Have Been in the Mix: A History of Violence, Cinderella Man and Pride and Prejudice.

1941
The Nominees: Blossoms in the Dust, Citizen Kane, How Green Was My Valley, Suspicion, Sergeant York, Here Comes Mr. Jordan, Hold Back the Dawn, The Little Foxes, The Maltese Falcon, and One Foot in Heaven.
Winner:How Green Was My Valley. Another film guilty of being only great in the face of game-changing awesomeness, How Green Was My Valley was a respectable film by much-acclaimed director John Ford, but a rather prosaic story about a mining family over several generations. It's a sweeping epic about good, hardworking people, and it didn't piss anyone off.
Should Have Won: That honor went to Orson Welles and Citizen Kane, a movie that pretty much invented (or at least perfected) almost all the film techniques we now take for granted. Too bad Welles based his film on newspaper mogul William Randolph Heart and embarrassed columnist Louella Parsons, a move that garnered a lot of negative press for the film and resulted in it being banned from all Hearst publications. But it is obviously the Best Picture of 1941. Also worthy that year: classic film noir The Maltese Falcon.
Should Have Been in the Mix: The Lady Eve (but overall a solid year, I just wish more people knew about this delightful Barbara Stanwyck comedy).


2001
The Nominees: The Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring, In the Bedroom, Moulin Rouge, A Beautiful Mind, and Gosford Park.
Winner: A Beautiful Mind. It features a great performance from Russell Crowe - and the last time he was nominated; after being snubbed in competitive years in 2003, 2005 & 2007, his hot streak seemed to peter out - and it's hard for me to begrudge Ron Howard, he seems like such a nice fellow.
Should Have Won: Moulin Rouge or Gosford Park. The former is an in-your-face, manically edited assault on the senses and the heart, and the later represents yet another tremendous ensemble from director Robert Altman, built around a murder at a shooting party in one of those posh, Upstairs/Downstairs houses. Think "Downton Abbey" meets Murder by Death, but infinitely more clever and admirable than either. I also would accept the brilliantly rendered and casted first installment of Lord of the Rings.
Should Have Been in the Mix: Mulholland Drive and The Royal Tenenbaums.


1940

The Nominees: Our Town, The Long Voyage Home, The Grapes of Wrath, Foreign Correspondent, All This and Heaven Too, Rebecca, The Great Dictator, Kitty Foyle, The Letter, and The Philadelphia Story. 

Winner: Rebecca.  It seems in poor taste to bag on the only Alfred Hitchcock film to ever win Best Picture (not only that but Vertigo, Psycho, Rear Window, Strangers on a Train, Notorious and North by Northwest weren't even nominated!), and granted, Rebecca has some very creepy scenes in that cold, cruel house, including a menacing performance from Judith Anderson as the obsessed servant Mrs. Danvers. Hitchcock's Foreign Correspondent was nominated this year as well, but neither really stacks up against some of the other nominees.
Should Have Won: The excellent line-up of Best Picture nominees for 1940 included The Great Dictator - Charlie Chaplin's divinely funny take-down of Hitler, The Grapes of Wrath - a classic John Ford picture with an iconic performance from Henry Fonda, and the frothy and sharply funny The Philadelphia Story, all more fitting choices.
Should Have Been in the Mix: His Girl Friday (though the list is an embarrassment of riches already).

1989
The Nominees: Field of Dreams, Driving Miss Daisy, My Left Foot, Dead Poets Society, and Born on the Fourth of July.
Winner: Driving Miss Daisy. Jessica Tandy won Best Actress - and good for her, the oldest competitive winner until Christpher Plummer in 2011, and Morgan Freeman plays her loyal driver and friend. But the movie presents a nostalgic look at the good ol' days when blacks were the help and respected and protected their employers more than deserved. A rather old-fashioned choice for 1989.
Should Have Won: My personal preference is for the nostalgic, hopeful and elegiac Field of Dreams, a film that is now etched in our collective consciousness forever. But I also wouldn't have minded Born on the Fourth of July, Oliver Stone's damning crusade for Vietnam veterans and featuring the first really exciting performance of Tom Cruise's career. It was bold and fearless, an achievement for which Stone was awarded Best Director.
Should Have Been in the Mix: Spike Lee's Do The Right Thing. (Also, The Little Mermaid :))


1952
The Nominees: High Noon, Ivanhoe, The Greatest Show on Earth, Moulin Rouge and The Quiet Man.
Winner: The Greatest Show on Earth. A bunch of big Hollywood names (including James Stewart, Betty Hutton and Charlton Heston) dramatize the backstage antics of group of circus performers. Fun and colorful, sure. But so slight.
Should Have Won: High Noon. The ultimate story of the beleaguered hero standing up to evil all alone. Gary Cooper rightly won Best Actor for his performance, and the film is revered for its message about standing up for what is right in the face of personal harm.Told in real time (a bold choice for a Hollywood Western) it features the major film debut of Grace Kelly, a sharp script, a dazzling technical brilliance.
Should Have Been in the Mix: SINGIN' IN THE RAIN!!! For heaven's sake!


1968
The Nominees: Romeo and Juliet, Oliver!, Rachel, Rachel, The Lion in Winter, and Funny Girl.
Winner: Oliver! The sad truth is that Oliver! just isn't very fun. The music is a slog to get through and I was bored and fast forwarding things less than halfway through the movie. And don't get me started on that exclamation point; I don't care if it's in the "original Broadway production" title - that exclamation point is a pretentious whore in it's preposterous attempts to glam up a fairly serious and bleak Charles Dickens novel!
Should Have Won: Romeo and Juliet or Funny Girl.  Yes, I love the Zefferelli version of Romeo and Juliet, my favorite film from 1991-1993. Vibrant and lush, great Mercutio and Tybalt, fantastic locations. And Funny Girl - and Barbra Streisand's dynamite comedienne performance - is a musical that actually earned an exclamation point!
Should Have Been in the Mix: Kubrick's Future Hall of Famer, 2001: A Space Odyssey (I'm not really the biggest fan, but I can't deny it's relevance, influence or invention in the film cannon).

2000
The Nominees: Gladiator, Erin Brockovich, Traffic, Chocolate, and Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon.
Winner: Gladiator. God, did I hate this movie during my freshman year of college. I thought it decent entertainment in the theater, but after refreshing my palette with more creative and lively films, to see this formulaic, poorly CGI'd and dingy gladiator epic (anchored by an admittedly strong performance from Crowe and some great score from Hans Zimmer) take the grand prize was to say the least, a disappointment.
Should Have Won: Traffic or Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon. After being blown away by the audacious artistry and heartbreaking showmanship of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, and then being further impressed, and warily worn down by the circular games and power ploys of Soderburg's Traffic, I knew where my loyalties lay. For some reason, this year sticks a craw in my gut like no other. How the Academy could have not recognized these highly superior films for the masterpieces they were will forever remain a mystery to me.
Should Have Been in the Mix: Wonder Boys, High Fidelity and Almost Famous.




Just missed the cut: Forrest Gump, My Fair Lady, Gigi, Chariots of Fire, and The Last Emperor.



(Damn the '70's were awesome!!!! Not a single entry from the 1970's on this list, because while the winner wasn't always my personal favorite, it's hard to find fault with such strong lists of nominees. Take a look at this list of films nominated between 1971 and 1977: The French Connection, A Clockwork Orange, The Last Picture Show, Fiddler on the Roof, The Godfather, Cabaret, Deliverance, The Sting, The Exorcist, American Graffiti, The Godfather Pt2, Chinatown, The Conversation, Lenny, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Dog Day Afternoon, Jaws, Nashville, Rocky, All the President's Men, Network, Bound for Glory, Taxi Driver, Annie Hall, Julia and Star Wars.)