Crash. All of the nominated movies were better. Any movie that wasn’t released straight to video that year was better.
Rain Man
Shakespeare in Love
The last two are more matters of opinion and I’d be willing to entertain arguments for their merit. But Crash had one good scene in the midst of a bunch of awfulness.
Not in 1994 when the movie was made and definitely not in the early 80s of which the film is set.
Crash
Chicago
Driving Miss Daisy
Although Forrest Gump is a close 4th
Crash
Titanic
Forrest Gump
Dances With Wolves
Out of Africa
Driving Miss Daisy
If I could pick a fourth it’d be the current winner Slumdog Millionaire.
For anyone who’s interested, i’ve been keeping a running tally.
The “Score” is based on a 3-2-1 system. Movies voted worst got 3 points, second worst got 2 points, and third-worst got 1 point. So, the higher the score, the worse the movie (in the collective opinion of this thread). Where people did not provide actual numbers for their selections, i took them in order, starting with worst.
The “Mentions” is a simple tally of how many people chose each movie, regardless of whether it was first, second, or third on their list.
Year Movie Score Mentions
1984 Amadeus 0 0
1985 Out of Africa 9 4
1986 Platoon 0 0
1987 The Last Emperor 2 1
1988 Rain Man 9 4
1989 Driving Miss Daisy 3 3
1990 Dances With Wolves 21 11
1991 The Silence of the Lambs 3 1
1992 Unforgiven 0 0
1993 Schindler's List 0 0
1994 Forrest Gump 43 21
1995 Braveheart 16 7
1996 The English Patient 18 9
1997 Titanic 17 8
1998 Shakespeare in Love 15 9
1999 American Beauty 15 6
2000 Gladiator 26 14
2001 A Beautiful Mind 9 6
2002 Chicago 10 6
2003 The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King 3 1
2004 Million Dollar Baby 6 2
2005 Crash 53 24
2006 The Departed 2 1
2007 No Country For Old Men 0 0
2008 Slumdog Millionare 1 1
Note: for people who mentioned more than 3 movies, i just took the first three. For people who mentioned fewer than 3, i just took the ones mentioned.
Crash has a reasonably comfortable lead over Forrest Gump, and then there’s a fair gap to Gladiator, with Dances With Wolves close on its heels.
Of the 25, there are five movies that have not yet received a single vote, and five others with only a single mention.
The English Patient, hands down. What a load of crap. (Especially because it beat out Fargo.)
I’ve also been making a running count, but slightly differently. If people mentioned less than three movies, I didn’t count any. If, as in two cases, a person mentioned a movie more than once in an entry, I gave it points as mentioned(Crash, and The English Patient, I’m looking at you!)
Crash 52
Forrest Gump 36
Gladiator 24
The English Patient 21
Dances with Wolves 19
American Beauty 15
Shakespeare in Love 14
Titanic 12
Braveheart 11
Chicago 10
Rainman 9
Out of Africa 8
A Beautiful Mind 6
Million Dollar Baby 6
Driving Miss Daisy 3
L.A. Confidential 3
Silence of the Lambs 3
The Return of the King 3
Gosford Park 2
The Departed 2
The Last Emperor 2
Goodfellas 1
Slumdog Millionaire 1
Yay, someone’s counting the votes:
Crash - My God, I saw this with non-native English speakers who were not terribly familiar with America, and even they thought this was about as subtle as Dennis Rodman and as insightful as Paris Hilton.
The English Patient - Some good costumes, some good scenes, and some decent characterizations. However, the movie as a whole was just so long, meandering, and boring that I almost fell asleep, and it was a 6 PM screening!
Forrest Gump - It was a cute movie that I liked, and I’d say even a good movie. However, there’s simply no excuse for this beating out Pulp and Shawshank. I’m not especially outraged about this one, though.
Honorable Mention:
Titanic - I liked it, but I’m completely biased since I watched it with my first girlfriend…
Return of the King - very enjoyable, but also quite repetitive and non-sensical at times. Characterization and a greater perspective of the war were cut for unnecessary and unending battle scenes.
A Beautiful Mind - It almost felt like a by-the-numbers TV drama, with a standard psychologically-afflicted plot, complete with paranoid scenes and supporting wife. It felt pointless and brought nothing new to the table.
Least Deserving:
Forrest Gump --1994. There were three superior nominees: Pulp Fiction, Quiz Show, and Shawshank Redemption.
English Patient --1996. A good movie, but unfortunately it beat Fargo which is a great movie.
Gladiator --2000. I didn’t care much for any of the nominees (not a Crouching Tiger fan) but dammit Gladiator was a piece of Hollywood hack work.
Damn, now I wish I’d voted for Platoon, which I disliked for much the same reason as Crash, and which (IMO) doesn’t deserve to be one of the movies that hasn’t been mentioned yet. Unfortunately, among its competition I’ve only seen The Mission, so I didn’t feel totally comfortable listing it. And I like Woody Allen; I’ve got to rent Hannah and Her Sisters.
I am another person that thought *The English Patient *was a good movie. Maybe not as good as Fargo, but I found it very interesting. As far as being too long, just to put it into perspective, the theater projector broke down twice for a total of twenty minutes of the film, and I still enjoyed it. My favorite books and movies are often very long, so maybe I just was blessed with a decent attention span.
I don’t know, I guess I would say Forrest Gump, Titanic and Shakespeare in Love. I was born to love a movie called Shakespeare in Love- it’s so like all of my favorite movies, but I really disliked it and never want to see it again.
I am sure I am the only one with these particular opinions but…
Goodfellas bored the living crap out of me and I have never liked or recommended it to anyone in my life.
It is a very very close vote between Forrest Gump and Shawshank as to the two best…not necessarily my favorite…but overall BEST movies I have ever seen. To me this award goes to Forrest. I believe that in every aspect of filmmaking Forrest is the best movie I have ever seen. And even more to a point, the character of Lt. Dan is the best characterization in any movie I have seen, and most that I haven’t
I am also gonna give some quick love to Dances, I thought it was a great movie with some heart-string tugging moments in it.
Hmm, the mid-90s.
Forrest Gump - I hated this movie when it came out, but my opinion of it has softened over the years. But at best that movie is treacle and does not deserve a Best Picture nomination, especially compared to Pulp Fiction and The Shawshank Redemption.
Titanic - I thought it was an okay movie when I saw it but I didn’t get the hype. It’s a so-so love story with cool special effects. Another “shouldn’t have been nominated”. L.A. Confidential and Good Will Hunting were both Best Picture worthy IMO.
Chicago - I actually thought it was good flick and worthy of a nom, but how the hell did it beat out Gangs of New York? If you cut down Gangs of New York to just Daniel Day Lewis’s screen time you still have an Oscar worthy movie.
There were a few more I thought shouldn’t have won: Shakespeare in Love (over Saving Private Ryan?), Braveheart, and Gladiator are a few.
But there’s a special not mentioned for Crash: my girlfriend rented it and I only got fifteen minutes into it before I left the room. Those fifteen minutes contained the shittiest, most non-subtle appeals to emotion that I had ever seen in a movie, and ironically succeeded in sterotyping what racists were like in an “enlightened” way. It’s not on my list because I never watched the whole movie, but if I had I suspect it would top my list of undeserving Oscar winners.
<giggling>
Also count be as one who thinks Shakespeare in Love was the right choice (and I think Saving Private Ryan is terrific).
Yes. There’s a lot to like about Titanic, but there are serious problems with it. Shouldn’t have been anywhere near the Oscars.
I’ll take Beauty and the Beast over all of those.
Crash
The English Patient
No Country For Old Men
If I had to pick three…
As soon as these movies were over, and the lights were turned on in the theater, I was angry about how totally stupid these movies were, then I basically forgot that I had seen them and never thought about them again. Brokeback Mountain and Saving Private Ryan are two movies that I thought about and discussed with others a great deal, and they occassionally cross my mind to this day.
Didn’t Kirk Douglas do this same exact movie a couple of decades prior? Any movie that has Joaquin Phoenix utter “It vexes me. I am terribly vexed” should never have even been nominated for anything.
I wasn’t overwhelmed by a single flick on the OP’s list. How depressing. Silence of the Lambs was scary and funny, and The Departed was highly entertaining, Titanic was an orgy of cool effects, but not one of them was a work of art, IMHO.