This is the week of the run up to the Academy Awards.  I'm going to do a couple of posts that are movie related in anticipation for the awards ceremony this Sunday night.  For nothing other than bragging rights, I'm picking the winners against my friends Sushi and Greg, defending my two-time title of "Oscar King" and attempting to threepeat. 

I'm kicking it off by listing some of the worst Best Picture winners over the history of the Oscars.  These are the most undeserving winners and the award almost certainly should have gone to another nominated movie.  All of this information can be obtained on IMDB.com.  The only confusing thing about the list is that they go by the year that the awards are handed out, so movies that won in 2008 were actually 2007 movies, so keep that in mind.

Honorable Mention(Chronologically):
1945 - Going My Way beats out Double Indemnity and Gaslight, two movies that are probably in the top 100 list of classics. 
1947 - The Best Years of Our Lives beats It's a Wonderful Life, a movie with possibly more staying power than any other movie from it's time as it is played every year and is still good.
1972 - French Connection over A Clockwork Orange, Fiddler on the Roof, and The Last Picture Show.  Not a bad movie, but the Gladiator to A Clockwork Orange's Crouching Tiger.
1978 - Annie Hall wins over Star Wars.  It's hard to fault the Academy for this pick, because Annie Hall is an iconic Woody Allen movie.  But they voters have a noted bias against anything sci-fi, and come on it's Star Wars.
1980 - Tough category that sees Kramer vs. Kramer getting the nod over All That Jazz, Norma Rae, and Apocalypse Now.  This just misses the top 10 because of how big Apocalypse Now is.
1981 - Ordinary People instead of The Coal Miner's Daughter, Elephant Man, and Raging Bull(I think this should have won).
1997 - The English Patient over Fargo.

10. 2003
Winner: Chicago
Nominees: Gangs of New York, The Hours, The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, The Pianist
Should have won: The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers
This is on here because all of the Lord of the Rings movies were the best movies made in each of the three years they were released.  There is no arguing this fact, in my opinion.  You can't help but factor in the bias against sci-fi/fantasy the Academy has as well as the bias in favor of musical adaptations that it has in looking at this outcome. 

9. 2002
Winner: A Beautiful Mind
Nominees: Gosford Park, In the Bedroom, Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, Moulin Rouge!
Should have won: Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring
A Beautiful Mind is an excellent movie and in most other years I could see the logic behind its Oscar, but not when it is released the same year as Fellowship of the Ring.  Fellowship of the Ring wildly exceeded everyone's expectations, hopes, and dreams when it came to putting the greatest 20th century trilogy on the big screen.  Return of the King won all of the awards, but I thought that Fellowship was the better overall movie of the three.

8. 1997
Winner: Titanic
Nominees: As Good As It Gets, Good Will Hunting, The Full Monty, L.A. Confidential
Should have won: Good Will Hunting
As the years pass, Titanic becomes more and more dated and laughable of a movie.  The only reason this movie won Best Picture was because it was the highest grossing movie of all time because women went insane for it.  The Academy was obligated to give it to Titanic (even though they apparently were not obligated to give even a nomination to The Dark Knight for the 2nd highest gross ever this year, but I digress...).  At the time, Titanic boasted the greatest special effects ever.  But those have been far surpassed.  And apparently the soap-opera-level acting was easily glossed over by people who voted for it.  With the passing of time I think Titanic and it's accomplishments will be seen like the steroids era in baseball and people will calm down about its "greatness."  I loved As Good As It Gets, Good Will Hunting, and L.A. Confidential far more than I liked Titanic.  Of those three, Good Will Hunting was the best.  But the hype machine for Titanic could not be topped.  I think Titanic is one of the most overrated Oscar winning movies ever.

7. 1999
Winner: Shakespeare in Love
Nominees: Elizabeth, Life Is Beautiful, The Thin Red Line, Saving Private Ryan
Should have won: Saving Private Ryan
I cannot claim to have seen all of these movies.  I have not seen Elizabeth, and I have only seen parts of Shakespeare in Love.  But from what I have seen of those two and having seen the other three, I think it is entirely possible that all four of the other nominees would have been better selections than Shakespeare in Love.  I think it would be ducking it out with The Thin Red Line for the last spot.  By all accounts, Elizabeth is a better movie.  As much as I can't stand Roberto Benigni and don't think he deserved to win Best Actor, the movie was good.  But Saving Private Ryan should have won this award.  That movie is nothing short of an experience.  By the end of the movie, you feel like you've been through war.  The silence and the subdued, respectful attitude of the audience walking out of that movie when I saw it is something that still stays with me.  Much more than Gwenyth Paltrow wearing men's clothing.

6. 1957
Winner: Around the World in 80 Days
Nominees: Friendly Persuasion, Giant, The King and I, The Ten Commandments
Should have won: The Ten Commandments
This is another example of the winner not being a deficient movie, just probably not the best of the bunch.  Having only seen The Ten Commandments, and knowing it's iconic place in pantheon of movies, I feel like I can say with a fair amount of certainty that The Ten Commandments was probably the best movie this year, and Around the World in 80 Days was probably the 2nd best.  And from what I've seen, Giant and The King and I are held in high esteem too.  It may just be one of those instances where the outcome seems more outrageous because of the passage of time and in 1957 these two movies were neck and neck, but I think cinematic history has played out for us which of these two movie is more highly regarded. 

5. 2006
Winner: Crash
Nominees: Brokeback Mountain, Capote, Good Night, and Good Luck, Munich
Should have won: Brokeback Mountain
Of all the movies that have won Best Picture, if I had to choose one, I would say that Crash was the worst of them all, and perhaps the most undeserving.  However, most undeserving of all, and most undeserving comparative to it's competition within a given year are two different things, otherwise this would be #1 on my list with a bullet.  I thought Crash was pretentious and heavy-handed in the way it chose to look at race.  Everything point was hammered home with the subtlety of a frying pan over the head.  It was Babel on a local scale instead of a global scale.  As far as being a compelling story that links all of its diverse characters together in a neat little bow, Traffic and many other movies have done a far better job.  Out of the other nominees I've only seen Munich, but Brokeback Mountain seemed like it should have been the winner of this award.  It seemingly had all of the hype and not just because of the controversy surrounding the movie but because it was actually a quality movie on top of it all.

4. 1991
Winner: Dances With Wolves
Nominees: Awakenings, Ghost, The Godfather: Part III, Goodfellas
Should have won: Goodfellas
Dances With Wolves is a good movie.  I liked it more than Crash or some of the other winners in other years that I have disdain for.  But you can't tell me that Dances With Wolves is a better movie than Goodfellas.  It's certainly better than Ghost and The Godfather: Part III(Which got nominated on reputation, not because it was a good movie; it wasn't).  I'll even give it to you over Awakenings, even though that is one of the few serious roles I enjoyed Robin Williams in and it is a heartbreaking movie.  Dances With Wolves hits a lot of the right notes that seem to resonate with the Academy.  Not the least of which seem to be actors taking their turn at directing(Robert Redford, Clint Eastwood, and Mel Gibson immediately come to mind) becoming industry darlings for their efforts and versatility.  But when it is all said and done, we are talking about Goodfellas here, quite possibly the best film that one of cinema's greatest directors has ever made.  Goodfellas was the best movie of its year and Dances With Wolves stole it from them, much like how the U.S. stole land from the Indians.

3. 2001
Winner: Gladiator
Nominees: Chocolat, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Erin Brockovich, Traffic
Should have won: Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
I really liked Gladiator.  It is a movie I own on DVD; in fact one of the first I made a priority to own when I started my DVD collection.  It has a lot of strong themes and resonates well.  You root for Maximus as he fights against all of the injustice he has had to endure through the movie.  But that doesn't mean it was the best movie of 2000.  No, that title belongs to Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.  Crouching Tiger is one of the most poetic and beautiful movies I have ever seen.  There is an artistic elegance to it that I had never seen before in movies.  And it still works today.  It has yet to be matched in Asian cinema.  The Academy completely chickened out by giving Crouching Tiger the consolation prize of Best Foreign Film, but it should have gone a step farther and given it Best Picture. 

2. 1942
Winner: How Green Was My Valley
Nominees: Blossoms in the Dust, Citizen Kane, Here Comes Mr. Jordan, Hold Back the Dawn, The Little Foxes, The Maltese Falcon, One Foot In Heaven, Sergeant York, Suspicion
Should have won: Citizen Kane
This is perhaps the most famous snub of a movie not winning Best Picture.  It it certainly looks foolish since Citizen Kane is regarded by many people as the greatest movie ever made.  It has a permanent place in the AFI Top 10 of movies all-time.  How Green Was My Valley?  Doesn't even register.  Apparently Valley was a blockbuster movie in its day while Citizen Kane was merely a critical success.  I can't judge Valley on its own merits, but I have seen Citizen Kane, The Maltese Falcon, and Suspicion.  And I have no qualms in saying that all three were probably more deserving of the Best Picture and Citizen Kane was the most deserving of the three.

1. 1995
Winner: Forrest Gump
Nominees: Four Weddings and a Funeral, Pulp Fiction, Quiz Show, The Shawshank Redemption
Should have won: Pulp Fiction or The Shawshank Redemption
It takes a lot to have a year top 1942 with Citizen Kane losing out to How Green Was My Valley.  In fact, the only thing that could top it is having two truly great movies being overlooked for Best Picture in the same year.  Such was the case in 1995.  This was a very strong year for the Best Picture category.  Once again, Forrest Gump isn't a bad movie.  And in most years it probably wouldn't have been a bad selection for Best Picture.  But Pulp Fiction and Shawshank are two of the best movies of the decade.  Both of them were more deserving of Best Picture than Gump was.  In this case, it's very hard to even say which one of those two movies were more deserving, though I'd give the edge to Shawshank.  But if either one of those movies had won, I could not fault the selection.  The fact that neither one of them won is, in my opinion, the biggest outrage.

~Moose