There are certainly more than 10 examples to be found (and this feels like a wink and a nod to The Social Network likely coming up short this year), but here are the 10 that EW came up with, along with their reasoning:10. Forrest Gump (1994)
You won't catch me quoting Mama in Forrest Gump and saying ''stupid is as stupid does.'' But jeepers, Bubba! While the Oscar went to a gumbo of a feel-good movie about a simple Alabama fella who runs real fast and shows up for all the key events in the late 20th century without paying attention, Academy voters missed the headline: Oscar-worthy Pulp Fiction had reinvented the language of American moviemaking, becoming an instant classic. It deserved the prize royale. —Lisa Schwarzbaum
There are years when ''prestige'' is the ultimate Oscar catnip. That was certainly the case when Bernardo Bertolucci's frilly and gorgeous, dramatically bloodless historical drama about the Chinese emperor Pu Yi took home the big award. The Last Emperor is a fabulous piece of wallpaper, but it's really just a so-so movie, especially compared to the year's other potential winners: the juicy media love triangle Broadcast News, the daffy-sublime Moonstruck, or (not an ''Oscar movie,'' but in a more honest world it would be) the he's-just-not-that-into-you zeitgeist feminist revenge thriller Fatal Attraction. —Owen Gleiberman
8. Around the World in 80 Days (1956)
This lead balloon of a whimsical adventure ''romp,'' loosely adapted from Jules Verne and dotted with coy celebrity cameos, is the Hollywood road-show comedy as elephantine circus. It's barely watchable now, especially when seen next to the film that should have won: Giant, a deliriously engrossing oil-and-lust Texas soap opera — it's basically the original Dallas — that featured James Dean in his startling final performance. —OG
7. Gandhi (1982)
In one sense, you could say that the Academy's choice wasn't that far off: The picture that deserved to win — E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial — was also about a short, bald, glittery-eyed savior with shriveled skin. Three decades later, though, Steven Spielberg's cuddly-alien blockbuster remains a sweetly spectacular and timeless Hollywood fairy tale. It's an instant classic that should have been honored. Whereas Gandhi, by comparison, is prosaic, pious, and rather plodding, a great-man biopic that's far too trapped in its time. —OG
6. The English Patient (1996)
I'm with Seinfeld's Elaine, urging Ralph Fiennes' burn victim in The English Patient to just...die! But even if you're more patient than I am, can we at least agree that a drip-drip-slow, Brit-tinged prestige picture adapted from a prestige book, laden with prestige performances, and directed with a gilt-edged bookmark, isn't nearly as Oscar-worthy as Jerry Maguire, a lively, all-American original story about the all-American love of sports and money, inspiring one of all-American Tom Cruise's best performances ever? A not-too-shabby second option...how about Fargo FTW? —LS
5. Dances With Wolves (1990)
I'll say that Dances With Wolves was the right romance-y white-man-among-Indians revisionist epic for its time. But immediately after that I'll say that GoodFellas — Martin Scorsese's apotheosis of a gangster movie — is one of the great movies of all time. The saga of Scorsese's long, slow, delayed walk to the Oscar podium could have been shortened by 17 years had the director and his magnificent Mob picture won the Academy Awards they should have.
Think of Chariots of Fire and what comes to mind? Slo-mo running and that groovy essence-of-'80s electronic music by Vangelis, right? But the underdog-sports story is smaller than the grandeur of the score: A British-Jewish guy and a Scottish-Christian guy win a couple of footraces. For this they give out Oscars? Reds, by contrast, is a true epic, all the more stirring for the ambition with which it dramatizes a gigantic moment in American political history. It's about something big. And it should have won the big gold statuette. —LS
3. Shakespeare in Love (1998)
When is ''good taste'' bad taste? You can like Shakespeare in Love a lot and still think that something went haywire when it copped the award over Steven Spielberg's magnificent and devastating World War II masterpiece Saving Private Ryan, arguably the greatest combat movie ever made. The look of slack-jawed shock on Harrison Ford's face when he opened the envelope said it all: This choice wasn't justified — it was dazed and confused. —OG
2. How Green Was My Valley (1941)
John Ford's drama about a Welsh mining family at the turn of the century is overstuffed with sentimental blarney. Yet even if it were half as good as its reputation, it had no business winning over the most audacious and visionary film in the history of the studio system: Citizen Kane, the movie in which the young Orson Welles reinvented movies and should have been deified for it — but, instead, was shunned by a Hollywood that viewed his artistry as less savior than threat. —OG
1. Crash (2005)
What???? What the...???? Brokeback Mountain, that great, gorgeous, successful, boundary-breaking, conversation-starting romantic drama about the love between two men in the 20th-century American West loses to Crash, a tidily plotted chessboard game of a movie in which L.A. ''types'' from all over the Hollywood-approved socioeconomic map intersect. So wrong! And so...odd. Was homophobia at play? Or were Academy voters doing what Academy voters do, making up for missing the originality of Pulp Fiction's plot structure by shoving an award at the synthetic? Either way, a crashing mistake. —LS
-Joey's Two Cents: They're not going to get many arguments from me here...thoughts?
I think most years people don't see their favorite movie win, but it's just not an egregious error most years, but that's just me...
ReplyDeleteI agree with you. Looking back at the Academy's picks for Best Picture we will always question the years we believe they messed up. However, these past 4 years the Academy has done a fantastic job in choosing the best film of the year. (Mainly because they've sided with the critics)
ReplyDeleteThis year the Academy just seems to be doing their own thing. I know I'll look back and shake my head but it won't be another Crash/Brokeback Mountain fiasco all over again.
Those aren't exactly bold or idiosyncratic choices, but I do more or less agree with most of them.
ReplyDeleteMy only major quibbles are with their gushing over Saving Private Ryan (technically accomplished but stumbles in its conclusion, and The Thin Red Line is a much better film), and their assertion that Reds should have won simply because it was a more ambitious effort.
If I could add a few more, I think it's pretty embarrassing for the Academy to award Mel Gibson's simpleminded and bloodthirsty epic Braveheart over the joyous Babe (and many other un-nominated masterpieces like Toy Story and Safe) for 1995, Going My Way over Double Indemnity for 1944, and Driving Miss Daisy over an un-nominated Do the Right Thing for 1989.
A.O.- We shall see...
ReplyDeleteRobert- Their reasons are lacking a few times, for sure.
ReplyDeleteI'm really over the Crash Bash.
ReplyDeleteIn regards to your opening comment: The King's Speech peaked at the right time, it's about to make $100 Million, which The Social Network couldn't do, plus it's about as highly regarded as TSN, so maybe (if it wins) people will call it a mistake, later on, but it won't be in the same leage as the shakespeare in love/crash type mistake...
ReplyDeleteNathan- I still dislike the film intensely, but that's just me.
ReplyDeleteJonathan- It's never going to be considered this big a controversy, but it's certainly what inspired EW to write this up.
ReplyDelete