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Just because the Academy Awards are the most celebrated institution for honoring the finest work in cinema, it doesn’t mean they are always right. Year after year, the Oscars, across all its categories, have made countless head-scratching decisions, and their egregious snubs are as famous as the golden statuettes themselves. Perhaps due to living in a cultural bubble or being swayed by dreaded Oscar bait, the history of Best Picture winners is a mixed bag. While there are various canonical classics, such as Gone With the Wind, Casablanca, The Godfather, and Schindler’s List, there are plenty of forgotten historical epics and dramas. However, these eight inexplicable Best Picture winners were more likely to be on people’s worst of the year lists.
8
‘American Beauty’ (1999)
If this were 10 years ago, American Beauty would likely not be on this list. Widely celebrated for its honest, transgressive dissection of America’s middle class, Sam Mendes‘ debut feature film has taken a sharp nosedive in popularity among the public in the wake of Kevin Spacey‘s scandals and affairs that eerily mirror his character’s thorny emotional complex in the movie. When you look past its initial pitch, American Beauty‘s self-indulgence and masculine angst has aged like milk.
One of the many things holding American Beauty back in 2026 is that it was released in 1999, a high-water mark year for cinema, and the last thing we want is a misguided modern fable about a bored suburban father lusting over his teenage daughter’s friend. While the film features some inspired performances, particularly by Annette Bening, it’s impossible to get over the fact that it ostensibly sympathizes with Spacey’s Lester Burnham. As time went on, Fight Club endured as the 1999 film that more presciently identified the toxic masculinity that would dominate the 21st century. In the end, American Beauty isn’t as smart as it thinks it is, and various sequences, including the laughable plastic bag monologue, just make you want to roll your eyes. There’s not much left to chew on when watching the film today, as the film does it all for you.
7
‘Out of Africa’ (1985)
On paper, Out of Africa is your classic sweeping romantic historical epic representing the apex of Hollywood as an idea: a dream factory that can make something with impeccable grandeur and sophisticated integrity. Sure, the 1985 Best Picture winner is handsomely crafted by Sydney Pollack and stars two icons in Robert Redford and Meryl Streep, but good luck staying awake throughout its dense runtime and lackluster pacing.
Following the passionate love affair between baroness Karen Blixen (Streep) and big-game hunter Denys (Redford), Out of Africa wishes it could be the next Casablanca or Lawrence of Arabia, but its lofty ambitions just got the better of all parties involved. When Karen first arrives on the sweeping vistas of Africa, where we see the best of its geography and gorgeous horizons, the film takes your breath away, but after the initial pop, you’ll be checking the runtime endlessly. A film that proved to be thematically inert, despite its weighty subject, Out of Africa somehow made a romance between Streep and Redford feel flat. The film’s critical acclaim at the time has certainly not carried over to today, as it’s become a footnote in Oscar history. Sometimes you have the perfect ingredients to produce a classic, but it takes a singular direction and inventive storytelling angle to make a tasty concoction.
6
‘Green Book’ (2018)
When asked about his opinion of Green Book immediately after it won Best Picture at the 91st Academy Awards, fellow nominee Spike Lee, who directed BlackKklansman, quipped, “It wasn’t my cup of tea.” Lee was preaching to the choir that night, with his harsh critiques further justified by the fact that Peter Farrelly‘s biographical road-trip dramedy mirrored the simplistic racial politics and whitewashed sentimentality of a future Best Picture winner on this list. Following Moonlight, the Oscars showed incredible progress, but this win sent them back a few years.
Green Book is undoubtedly a pleasant and easy watch, one that certainly doesn’t fail to entertain or put a smile on your face—a credit to its pair of inspired performances by Viggo Mortensen as Tony Vallelonga and Mahershala Ali as Don Shirley. Their banter is natural and drops audiences into their culture clash, and the dynamic allows two beloved actors to undergo a full range of emotions. However, its effervescent nature speaks to a toxic issue at the heart of Green Book, which egregiously manipulated history by embellishing the level of guardianship Tony had over Don. Farrelly, a luminary comedy director with misguided dramatic undercurrents in his film, treats the story as a triumphant human breakthrough in race relations in America. Critically speaking, the broad characterization of Italian-American and Black people forces the movie to hammer down obvious points about inclusion in the segregated South, and turns the thorny subject into a fairy tale.
5
‘Around the World in 80 Days’ (1956)
A grave disservice to French adventure novelist Jules Verne, Around the World in 80 Days helps explain the rise of New Hollywood and gradual collapse of the studio system in classic Hollywood. One of the more perplexing, forgotten Best Picture winners in history, the farcical adventure comedy epic, directed by Michael Anderson, was the nadir of Hollywood’s reliance on boisterous, grand, spectacle-driven musicals and adventure sagas to draw audiences in rather than story and character. Just because you’re insisting that we’re having a good time doesn’t mean we actually are watching this film.
If there’s one thing you can’t knock Around the World in 80 Days for, it’s the grandeur and old-school Hollywood magic that the film is echoing throughout its 182-minute runtime, which features prologue narration by Edward R. Murrow, cameo appearances by Noël Coward and Buster Keaton, and starring roles by David Niven and Shirley MacLaine. After something as shallow as this arrived and confusingly won the hearts and minds of Oscar voters, prospective filmmakers knew something was off in the art form. Blinded by the source material and A-list status of its cast and production value, Around the World in 80 Days tricks you into thinking you’re experiencing a joyous journey that thrives in every genre. However, the filmmakers forget to make this legitimately fun.
4
‘Oliver!’ (1968)
The G-rated musical Oliver! won Best Picture in 1969. The next year, the gritty X-rated crime drama Midnight Cowboy took the prize, undoubtedly the starkest contrast between Best Picture winners in history. While the latter signaled the dawn of a new era, the former was a desperate genre retread begging to be put out to pasture. Loosely adapted from Charles Dickens‘ classic novel, Carol Reed‘s film was misbegotten from the start, and it painted a dire image of the musical genre that hindered its popularity in the decades since its release.
Carol Reed has made plenty of remarkable films, including the masterful noir, The Third Man, but he didn’t have his fastball when directing Oliver!, a film undeserving of its exclamation point. At the very least, the 1968 studio song-and-dance show about an orphan who runs away from home to join a group of boys headed by the renowned pickpocket thief, the Artful Dodger (Jack Wild), has the backdrop of a formative Dickensian text that elevates the narrative scope. Although the film tries its hardest to be whimsical and quietly profound, Oliver! mostly just rings hollow, and it generally fails as a musical extravaganza, leaving no memorable songs or sequences in its wake. Family-oriented stories can have credibility, but throughout most of its interminable runtime, the film doesn’t treat the audience with respect and sophistication, and a musical adaptation of Dickens’ work warrants something grander.
3
‘The Greatest Show on Earth’ (1952)
It may have captured the imagination of a young Steven Spielberg, as depicted in his semi-autobiographical film, The Fabelmans, but the director might be alone on this one. For most, The Greatest Show on Earth speaks to everything wrong with the Academy Awards, stigmas that still linger with the voting body since its release in 1952. A bloated circus spectacle filled to the brim with major names and directed by an old legend, Cecil B. DeMille, this Best Picture win was a true example of Hollywood gaslighting.
DeMille, who embodied Hollywood as a dream machine and a place of infinite wonder, did not produce his best work with The Greatest Show on Earth, despite what its star-studded cast might indicate, which includes Charlton Heston, Jimmy Stewart, Betty Hutton, and Gloria Grahame. The Oscars appeared to have honored the idea of the film rather than its execution, as the movie has all the right pieces, but nothing coalesces into a satisfying product. Save for the train crash sequence that haunted Spielberg as a child, The Greatest Show on Earth is merely a disjointed montage of circus action and wooden melodrama. If there was any movie worthy of the top prize in 1952, especially one about the magic and euphoria of putting on a show, it would be Singin’ in the Rain, which wasn’t even nominated in the category.
2
‘Driving Miss Daisy’ (1989)
When it comes to movies about race in America, the Oscars should be your least trusted source for recommendations, especially in the Best Picture department. The Academy of yesteryear can be defined by its 1989 decisions, where it crowned Driving Miss Daisy, a white-guilt fantasy trip, and infamously snubbed Do the Right Thing, a blazing, confrontational, and urgent portrait of simmering racial tensions. This road-trip dramedy by Bruce Beresford is a pleasant enough watch, but its breezy entertainment value tells you everything you need to know about its treatment of serious issues.
Starring Jessica Tandy and Morgan Freeman, playing the titular elderly Jewish widow and her chauffeur, respectively, Driving Miss Daisy follows this pair over many years in the American South and their gradually evolving relationship. The effervescent charm between Daisy Werthan (Tandy) and Hoke Colburn (Freeman) is undeniable, and the innate chemistry between these great actors will put a smile on your face at some point, but there’s something corrupt about the feel-good mentality of the film. Driving Miss Daisy appealed to the older members of the Academy who believed they were heroic allies of the Black community, and Beresford’s film, based on a play by its screenwriter, Alfred Uhry, naively treats racism as a simple misunderstanding between races, and not an institutional rot within society. The Academy had a long way to go before it finally honored something as groundbreaking as Moonlight.
1
‘Crash’ (2005)
The poster child for terrible Oscar decisions—a film so derided by many that it set a low standard for all controversial Best Picture winners to measure themselves up against. “At least it’s not Crash,” is a faint praise award to any questionable BP honoree in the last 20 years since Paul Haggis‘ ensemble social issues drama robbed Brokeback Mountain for the Academy’s top prize. All the Academy’s glaring issues, from their shortsighted view of important topics and woeful abilities to stay in touch with the current moment, are woven into Crash.
Crash tricked Oscar voters into believing that its commentary was anything but empty noise.
Not to be confused with David Cronenberg‘s far superior 1996 film, Crash, centered around intersecting stories involving racial tension between civilians and law enforcement in Los Angeles, aspired to reach profound heights, but it failed to construct any nuanced or fresh takes on race relations in America. A movie that carries itself as if it “ended racism,” Crash tricked Oscar voters into believing that its commentary was anything but empty noise. Despite its stacked cast filled with admittedly strong performances by Sandra Bullock, Don Cheadle, Michael Peña, Thandiwe Newton, and Matt Dillon, Haggis’ script and direction fail to craft a cohesive and satisfying narrative, with each scene playing out as individual chapters conveying class and racial dilemmas with the broadest stroke imaginable. For some, the film is too heavy-handed, while for others, it’s easy to argue that it doesn’t lean hard enough into societal racism. In other words, Crash is a movie designed to be liked by nobody.
- Release Date
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May 6, 2005
- Runtime
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112 minutes
- Director
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Paul Haggis
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Sandra Bullock
Jean Cabot
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Thomas Butt
Almontather Rassoul
