Feature by Hemanth Kissoon
The Oscars are meant to award the best films of the year. Cinema being an art means that what is the “best” is always going to be subjective. However, every so often the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences somehow bestow the most coveted of film awards on to such a turkey or overlook a masterpiece that you question the existence of justice.
It would be too far ranging to include all possible films made every year that the ceremony has been conducted. The following travesties have been limited to the modern era – from 1978 onwards, and only include those movies that were nominated.
Let the bile flow forth….
10. Braveheart
The Academy always seems behind the times, never up with what is cutting edge. It seems more often than not that the Best Picture often goes to the film that’s legacy will not amount to much.
The awesome The Last of the Mohicans was not even nominated three years before and realizing their mistake voters reward a historically inaccurate superficial clunker like this.
9. Apollo 13
The Academy must have a low lactose intolerance as this cheesy predictable melodrama was nominated for Best Picture.
8. Kramer vs. Kramer over Apocalypse Now
A good film yes, but to overlook the fellow Best Picture nominee that is the greatest war film so far is sheer madness.
7. The Full Monty
Rumour has it the Boogie Nights was sixth on the list of nominees behind this. How is The Full Monty a good comedy let alone a good film?
6. As Good As It Gets
A double-whammy of awards bafflement from this sentimental stinker. He maybe a living legend but Jack Nicholson just seemed to play himself. The annoying Helen Hunt beat career pinnacles from both Judi Dench in Mrs. Brown and Helena Bonham Carter in The Wings of the Dove.
5. Rocky
Good uplifting sports movie perhaps but better than Taxi Driver or All the President’s Men? No.
4. Chicago
Moulin Rouge was impressive and the voters realized too late so awarded this musical instead which never transcended its stage origins. Acquire the rights of a musical near you and point a camera at the stage and you too might win your own Oscar.
3. A Beautiful Mind
TV Movies of the Week have no place at such awards ceremonies, especially when the competition is The Fellowship of the Ring and Moulin Rouge.
2. Ordinary People instead of Raging Bull
How does the greatest sports film in history not win?
1. Forrest Gump
Another double-whammy of awards bafflement. Could anyone have played the titular Gump? Probably. Then how come Morgan Freeman in The Shawshank Redemption, and John Travolta in Pulp Fiction were over-looked? To rub salt in the festering wounds, Forrest Gump won Best Picture over some of the most important movies of the 90s – Pulp Fiction and The Shawshank Redemption.
If you are burning with anger at the above go and sit down, breath in and out deeply, while wrapping as presents for your beloved the films that should have won – that way they live on beyond the chaff.
Tell us your top ten Oscar travesties in our forum.
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