The Great Escape
Two come to mind immediately;
**Rear Window
**
Memento
mmm
Sweet Smell of Success (1957) - No Oscar nominations for anything, despite excellent performances by Burt Lancaster (arguably his best) and Tony Curtis, a brilliant script by Ernest Lehman and Clifford Odets, fine direction by Alexander Mackendrick and beautiful b&w cinematography by James Wong Howe. I don’t even want to look who got nominated in these categories instead as it would just add salt to the wound.
Remember My Name (1978) - Little seen or heard of, yet containing Geraldine Chaplin’s finest performance as a troubled ex-con out for revenge on douche bag former boyfriend Anthony Perkins.
Witness For The Prosecution: up for Best Picture (and Director, and Actor, and plenty of other stuff), and 100% on Rotten Tomatoes, and — pfft.
How about The Other Waldo Pepper?
Is Alfred Hitchcock still considered to be the best director to not win Best Director at the Oscars?
Not mentioned yet:
Seven Samurai
The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
The Shining
In terms of Best Picture nominations and overall career, probably yes. But there are plenty of contenders. Here’s a list of twenty directors who never won Best Director, including Chaplin, Welles, Fellini, Kurosawa, Kubrick, Altman, Lang, and Bergman. Take your pick. Sometimes directors have received an award in part as compensation for not having won for better pictures, like Scorcese for The Departed.
I like this movie, I have this movie, but I’m not so sure of its Oscar potential.
I will say this for it (as someone who was there, back then): it nearly perfectly captures the Victory Hysteria (IMO, it’s sadly misplaced; it’s like a athletic teenager bragging about how they beat up a physically/mentally challenged seven-year-old on Halloween, and stole all their candy), especially amongst the REMFs whose closest encounter to anything combat-related was looking nervously towards the sky during SCUD alerts.
George Clooney also perfectly captures the weary cynicism of an actual combat vet, in his dealings with the various REMFs he encounters in hatching and carrying out his plan.
I don’t think that’s the best example. The Departed was a great movie and was Oscar-worthy on its own merits.
But Scorsese was long past due for recognition. I think the Academy realized it should have awarded him a Best Director Oscar for one of his earlier movies like Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, or Goodfellas. So they might have ended up giving him the award he deserved for a second-rate film. But then Scorsese resolved the potential dilemma for them by making another great movie.
I was just saying that The Departed wasn’t the best of all of Scorcese’s movies, not that it wasn’t good in its own right. But I recall a great deal of discussion at the time saying that Scorcese was sure to win for that because he hadn’t won previously.
Do you mean the original King Kong or the remake?
There have been two remakes of King Kong.
Jacob’s Ladder - 0 nominations, 0 wins
To be really picky, there have been four remakes of King Kong if you count two lost 1930’s Japanese remakes, and that’s not counting sequels to various of the versions.
I kind of think it was the victim of the year it was released, having to contend with American Beauty, The Insider, Cider House Rules, The Green Mile, The Hurricane, Being John Malkovich, Boys Don’t Cry and The Sixth Sense for Academy Awards.
No wins, and only one nomination - in Best Film Editing.
Sheesh.
You’ve all listed an impressive array of movies that got nothing. I think it’s a testament to how political and mercurial the awards process is.
“Manchester by the Sea” received two awards, and I wasn’t moved by that movie at all. In fact, I consider Casey Affleck to be a very ordinary actor, and I was mystified by his Best Actor award.
My SiL is an Academy voter (Screen Writers’ Guild), and even she is mystified by some of the results.
Interestingly, the Seven Samurai made a recent list of best foreign films. But without derailing the conversation too much, I am curious if anyone knows the basis for the seeming lack of love for the movie in Japan that is cited !?!
Don’t mind me - I’m still grumpy that The Lego Movie didn’t get a nomination in the Best Animated Film category despite being miiiiiiles ahead of the rest of the field (Big Hero 6? Pfui, I say!). 1 nomination (for the ubiquitous song), 0 wins.