Oscar Best Picture nominees that should have won but didn't

Tootsie should have beaten Gandhi.....

Hello Dolly should have won over Midnight Cowboy.

La La Land over Moonlight

L.A. Confidential was better than Titanic

High Noon, 12 Angry Men, E.T., Star Wars, To Kill a Mockingbird, Mary Poppins, The Last Picture Show, The Grapes of Wrath, The Wizard of Oz... all nominated but didn't win Best Picture. Psycho (1960) was not even nominated for Best Picture but could have won if nominated.

Saving Private Ryan should have won over Shakespeare in Love.

Brokeback Mountain seems like most obvious choice.

EEAAO should have won and did.

Citizen Kane

The Color Purple

Anything should have won over that shitty asian laundromat movie.

Do the Right Thing should've been nominated and should've won, especially over Driving F**king Miss Daisy. R3, Moonlight deserved to win over La La Land. The inconvenient truth that people don't want to admit to is that La La Land is a LOUSY musical: forgettable songs, mediocre singing and dancing and wrongheaded direction. Don't get me wrong, Damien Chazelle is a talented young filmmaker and I like him but he made the mistake modern young filmmakers make which is that he choreographed the camera too much. In a musical, the camera needs to be where it should be to capture what the dancers are doing and it should get there without drawing attention to itself. Chazelle has the camere swish panning and zipping between cars and flying over one set into another and the dancing gets overshadowed. Admit it, you can't remember a single dance step or combination in that whole movie, and when was the last time you hummed one of the songs from it. No, Moonlight is an excellent version of the sort of story it is supposed to be: a character study/coming-of-age. Whereas La La Land is a very poor version of the type of movie it is supposed to be.

Best picture? Best nasty!

I know it's all subjective but anyone who thinks the truly puerile Scent of a Woman was worthy of any kind of award is an idiot with awful taste in films.

R2 You’re insane. That’s one of the few times the BP category got it right.

If we’re limiting ourselves to picking only from officially nominees (because the list would be a mile long if it was for which movies of the year should have won). The should have beens:

1937: The Awful Truth

1938: Grand Illusion

1941: Citizen Kane

1942: The Magnificent Ambersons

1944: Double Indemnity

1945: Mildred Pierce

1948: The Red Shoes

1951: A Streetcar Named Desire

1952: The Quiet Man (or High Noon)

1956: Giant

1957: Witness for the Prosecution

1963: Cancel the show. No one.

1964: Dr. Strangelove

1966: Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

1967: The Graduate (or Bonnie and Clyde)

1968: The Lion in Winter. But honestly, none.

1970: Five Easy Pieces

1971: The Last Picture Show

1973: The Exorcist (or Cries and Whispers or American Graffiti)

1975: Nashville (or Dog Day Afternoon)

1976: Taxi Driver (or Network)

1979: All That Jazz

1981: Atlantic City

1982: Tootsie

1985: Prizzi’s Honor, but honestly none.

1986: Hannah and Her Sisters

1987: Broadcast News

1988: Dangerous Liaisons

1989: Dead Poets Society, but honestly, none.

1990: Goodfellas

1993: The Piano (we would be spared of Power of the Dog today)

1994: Pulp Fiction

1995: None.

1996: Fargo

1998: The Thin Red Line

1999: The Insider

2001: In the Bedroom

2002: The Pianist

2004: None.

2005: Brokeback Mountain

2008: None.

2009: A Serious Man.

2010: The Social Network

2011: None.

2012: Amour.

2013: The Wolf of Wall Street

2014: The Grand Budapest Hotel

2015: Mad Max: Fury Road

2017: Phantom Thread

2018: The Favourite

2020: The Father

2021: Licorice Pizza

A handful of years had an equally great winner and other contenders - 1939, 1950, 1980, 1983, etc.

I love Tootsie but The Verdict should have won Best Picture. I have nothing against Kingsley. He's a fine actor. But Ghandi was boring and nothing he was doing on screen was making it less so.

Licorice Pizza over CODA; Whiplash over Birdman; Lincoln over Argo; Saving Private Ryan over Shakespeare in Love; Fargo over The English Patient; The Shawshank Redemption over Forrest Gump

[quote]The Shawshank Redemption over Forrest Gump

Wrong. It should have been Pulp Fiction over the execrable Forrest Gump.

R19, you and the OP are wrong, Quiz Show should've won over the overrated, hasn't aged well Pulp Fiction, the admittedly mawkish, execrable Forrest Gump and the soppy, stodgy Shawshank Redemption. Quiz Show contained more insight into America and people than any of the other three. It felt real and had something to say, the others felt artificial and false and ultimately empty.

There Will Be Blood should have won over No Country for Old Men.

[quote]Moonlight deserved to win over La La Land

Did you tune out early after they announced La La Land as best picture before they realized it was a mistake and Moonlight really won? I mean, I love your spirited defense of Moonlight, but it did actually WIN.

R21 I love both of those movies.

R22, r12 was specifically responding to r3's post that LaLa Land should have won (which, based on the signature, I hope was a joke post). That's why the line you quoted was preceded by "R3,". Obviously r12 knows Moonlight won, and was arguing it deserved the win it got.

Lassie

"Vice" should have won Best Picture over "Green Book" (and, btw, Christian Bale should have won Actor in a Leading Role over Rami Malek.)

La La Land over Moonlight. No one remembers the latter except for the mix-up and how La La Land was the believed victor.

1995 - Sense and Sensibility instead of Braveheart

2002 - Moulin Rouge over A Beautiful Mind

2003 - Master And Commander instead of Lord Of The Rings

2005 - Brokeback instead of Crash

2006 - Little Miss Sunshine instead of The Departed

2007 - Atonement instead of No Country For Old Men

2009 - Up instead of The Hurt Locker

2015 - Mad Max: Fury Road or Brooklyn instead of Spotlight

2016 - La La Land instead of Moonlight

2018 - Black Panther instead of Green Book

2020 - Promising Young Woman instead of Nomadland

2021 - Belfast instead of Coda

[quote][R19], you and the OP are wrong, Quiz Show should've won over the overrated, hasn't aged well Pulp Fiction, the admittedly mawkish, execrable Forrest Gump and the soppy, stodgy Shawshank Redemption. Quiz Show contained more insight into America and people than any of the other three. It felt real and had something to say, the others felt artificial and false and ultimately empty.

I see you're one of the message kids.

Just a story won't do.

I expect you'd have voted against GONE WITH THE WIND.

R2 is a conundrum. Go with the super-gay glitz instead of the actual love story between two men?

HELLO, DOLLY! was nominated for Best Picture?

I thought that movie bombed like a lot of those late '60s/early '70s musicals.

A streetcar named Desire over An American in Paris. No one remembers the latter.

R27, Nobody remembers the former AT ALL. La La Land is not a good musical. If the singing, dancing and songs are all mediocre to forgettable, how can it be considered a good musical. I'll never forget the pain of the main character in Moonlight, a young man of color afraid to come out in his community. I'll never remember a single song or note of music from La La Land.

The Killing Fields over Amadeus

Instead of that Vietnam-inflected Jane Fonda/Jon Voight POS:

Psycho would not have won over The Apartment.

[quote]Instead of that Vietnam-inflected Jane Fonda/Jon Voight POS:

The Deer Hunter won Best Picture that year.

Goodfellas over Dances with Wolves

^ Goodfellas should have won not DWW.

Bonnie and Clyde or The Graduate instead of In the Heat of the Night

Seconding R7 and R9

Oscar is a shit show , has been for a long time. Not based on best performance, it's a mixture of a lot of things but it is NOT based on the excellence of the work.

"Balls of Steel: The Helen Lawson Story" should have won over "The Sound of Music"

Tár was definitely a better film than EEAAO, and was carried by a phenomenal performance from DL fave Cate Blanchet. However clearly too intellectually demanding for the average woke academy voter.