Most undeserving Best Picture winners of the past 25 years.

Cafe Society
1

Please rank, in order, the **three **most undeserving winners of the Academy Award for Best Picture in the last quarter century: a 1st place vote is worth three points, a 2nd is worth two, and a 3rd one. Hopefully we can settle this once and for all.

We’re starting with 1984. You can see all the winners and nominees here. Below I’ll list the winners, along with the films’ most notable competition for the prize; an asterisk denotes a film that was not actually nominated for Best Picture. Your vote isn’t entirely context dependent, but if a movie won in an unusually weak year (or bested an “obviously” superior film), you may wish to take that into consideration.
1984 – Amadeus (The Killing Fields)
1985 – Out of Africa (The Color Purple, Witness)
1986 – Platoon (Hannah and Her Sisters)
1987 – The Last Emperor (Broadcast News, Moonstruck)
1988 – Rain Man (*Mississippi Burning, The Accidental Tourist, Big)

1989 – Driving Miss Daisy (Born on the 4th of July, Field of Dreams, My Left Foot)
1990 – Dances With Wolves (Goodfellas)
1991 – The Silence of the Lambs (JFK)
1992 – Unforgiven (A Few Good Men)
1993 – Schindler’s List (The Fugitive)

1994 – Forrest Gump (Pulp Fiction, The Shawshank Redemption, Quiz Show)
1995 – Braveheart (*Apollo 13, Babe, *Toy Story, Se7en)
1996 – The English Patient (Fargo, Jerry Maguire)
1997 – Titanic (L.A. Confidential, Good Will Hunting)
1998 – Shakespeare in Love (Saving Private Ryan)

1999 – American Beauty (The Insider, The Sixth Sense, The Cider House Rules)
2000 – Gladiator (Traffic, Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon)
2001 – A Beautiful Mind (The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, Gosford Park)
2002 – Chicago (The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, Gangs of New York)
2003 – The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (Lost in Translation, Mystic River)

2004 – Million Dollar Baby (*Sideways, *The Incredibles, Spider-Man 2)
2005 – Crash (*Brokeback Mountain, Good Night and Good Luck, Munich, Batman Begins)
2006 – The Departed (Letters from Iwo Jima, Little Miss Sunshine)
2007 – No Country For Old Men (There Will Be Blood)
2008 – Slumdog Millionare (*Frost/Nixon, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Milk, The Dark Knight)

2
  1. Crash
  2. Dances With Wolves
  3. Gladiator
    I strongly disliked Crash: there are plenty of Best Picture winners to which I’m more or less indifferent, but *Crash *is the only one I’ve seen that I would describe as a bad movie.
3
  1. 2004 – Million Dollar Baby
  2. 2005 – Crash
  3. 1998 – Shakespeare in Love
4
  1. Dances with Wolves
  2. Gladiator
  3. A Beautiful Mind

Looking at my choices, as well as some of the others I seriously considered, is that they all seem so drecky compared to the competition.

There’s not really much to say about Dances with Wolves as compared to Goodfellas, is there? Goodfellas is a better film in just about every sense. If the category was "Best Movie that Had a Herd of Buffalo In It, I would say the two movies are tied, even though there wasn’t a herd of buffalo in Goodfellas.

I do agree that Gladiator had a compelling story (I think, I don’t really remember it that well, which also says something to me), but it wasn’t better storytelling than either Traffic or Crouching Tiger.

And A Beautiful Mind seems so forgettable to me, only eight years out. Personally, Gosford Park would have gotten my vote but both it and Fellowship strike me as much sturdier choices.

5
  1. Shakespeare in Love
  2. A Beautiful Mind
  3. Forrest Gump
6
  1. Crash
  2. Dances With Wolves
  3. Forrest Gump
7
  1. Crash
  2. Bravehart
  3. The English Patient

I hated Crash. The other choices are because I thought other nominated movies were “better”.

8
  1. Million Dollar Baby
  2. Braveheart
  3. Titanic

I don’t like Amadeus much either but I haven’t seen any of the other films nominated that year. Dances with Wolves is also a contender but I don’t really remember much about it. I rather like Titanic actually but it’s not as remotely as good as LA Confidential.

9

I would say that not only did any other the other candidates deserve to beat Braveheart, any Jenna Jameson movie that was released that year deserved to. I thought it was about as ridiculous as anything I’ve ever seen, but maybe I’ve got unrealistic expectations about movies that purport to be based on history.

10

  1. Crash. This movie seemed like a big After School Special on racism. I have no strong feelings about its competitors that year, but Crash seems lightweight.

  2. Dances with Wolves. Unlike Crash, this isn’t a case of a bad movie winning, but a case of a classic getting snubbed. GoodFellas is still a frequently-watched movie, and will probably still be one 20 years from now. Dances with Wolves, not so much.

  3. Forrest Gump. Same deal – a good movie, but it’s no Pulp Fiction, which influenced other films for years (and maybe still does).

Edited to add: I’ve always thought it would be interesting if the Academy revisited the best-picture contest 10 years later, and voted on which movie now seems the best, in hindsight. I think there would be a lot of changed votes.

11

There are movies that I wouldn’t have voted for, but that are still OK, if not necessarily the best from that year.

And then there are those that I can’t even call Good. At all. Braveheart and Gladiator (two sub-par Spartacus remakes) top that list, followed closely by the unbearable A Beautiful Mind and Forrest Gump.

12

Could you go back one more year? Terms of Endearment beating The Right Stuff is a travesty.

13
  1. Crash - trite and unsubtle, an especially poor movie when judged against its competition.
  2. Gladiator - personal bias, but CTHD succeeded better on all levels that one would judge a best picture by.
  3. Chicago - a weak film with no standout acting that won only out of industry nostalgia for the old musical days.
  4. Forrest Gump - all of its competitors were substantially better. I can only think that it was because of Tom Hank’s academy darling status at the time.
14
  1. Forrest Gump - Cute movie, but not an Oscar winner.
  2. Dances With Wolves - Enough has been said about this to fill a library.
  3. Out of Africa - The epitome of a boring film being lauded simply for having a normally good cast/crew.
15

If only the Academy could think about what they’re putting in the history books before they voted. I don’t think you had to be Nostradamus to predict that *Brokeback Mountain *was going to have a much more lasting impact than Crash.

16

The worst Best Picture selection I can recall was in 1968: The Lion in Winter was beat by freakin’ Oliver!. To say nothing of 2001: A Space Odyssey, which wasn’t even nominated…

17
  1. **Gladiator. ** It was a weak year, but still a long 50s costume drama. Just because Russell Crowe is better that Steve Reeves, it doesn’t make a good picture.
  2. **A Beautiful Mind. ** So-so biopic.
  3. Forrest Gump. Not all that bad, but there were better movies that year.

As for best, that’s easy.

  1. Shakespeare in Love. One of the Academy’s all-time best choices. One of the best written screenplays ever.
  2. Crash. Brilliant melding of stories and characters around the theme, and especially good because of the way it portrayed all facets of the racial issue in all their complexity.
  3. Chicago. Great reinvention of the musical genre.
18
  1. Titanic
  2. Forrest Gump
  3. Gladiator
19
  1. Gladiator
  2. Rain Man
  3. Crash
20

  1. Forrest Gump being picked over The Shawshank Redemption-single biggest travesty IMO.

  2. Titanic being picked over L.A. Confidential

  3. Gladiator over Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon