Worst Best Pictures of All Time

Not the best of these sorts of lists, but at least it brings the topic up to the present:
******************************************************************
Ten Worst Oscar Best Pictures of All Time

10) Ordinary People

Robert Redford has directed some great movies. Besides his other nominated films like Quiz Show, I also like The Horse Whisperer. Maybe we have this Best Picture winner to thank for giving him the confidence to keep stepping behind the camera, but it couldn’t have been for its own merits. I mean, a family death drama is so obvious. In the year of Raging Bull, The Elephant Man and the unnominated The Empire Strikes Back, we say no. Even though Donald Sutherland always rules.

9) Shakespeare In Love

I always thought this just got the generic costume drama award. It’s cute, and a tiny bit literate (though it’s not that highbrow to make Romeo and Juliet references), but it's still just your standard romance. If you still have fond memories of it, just remember that it beat Saving Private Ryan and Life is Beautiful, and that Joseph Fiennes is now on a failing TV show.

8) Around The World In 80 Days

This movie makes everyone’s list of the worst Best Picture winners, so it would be irresponsible to leave it off mine. The overlong three hour Jules Verne adaptation seems an unusual choice at all. Guess it’s the costumes and the literary cred. I actually like the Jackie Chan version that came out in 2004. Sammo Hung as Wong Fei-Hung and a fight on the Statue of Liberty’s head, that’s some good stuff.

7) How Green Was My Valley

In 1941, this sprawling coal miner epic must have seemed like solid Oscar bait. Back then, they might have thought that competing nominee Citizen Kane was just a technical gimmick that wouldn’t be remembered as technique moved on. They couldn’t have known that it would become the go-to study in film schools for generations. And I don’t think Citizen Kane is the most moving or emotional movie of all time either, but history and the A.F.I. have definitely spoken on this one.

6) Rebecca

I know, it’s blasphemy to say anything negative about the master, Alfred Hitchcock, but his one Best Picture winner is the one that never worked for me. It’s such a slow, boring marital drama where nothing happens. When Olivier finally reveals the big twist, it’s less of an “ah-ha!” and more of a “Why didn’t you just say so to begin with?”

5) Crash

I actually think Crash was a perfectly good story about ensembles intersecting and ironic things happening. I just think the idea that it “tackled” racism was preposterous. Its idea that L.A. is racist because we drive cars is childish. Also, making every story have racism in it is as unrealistic as telling a story with no racism in it. They should have just told entertaining dramatic stories and not been so proud of themselves.

4) Chariots Of Fire

Yes, I’m putting the “classic” sports movie with the landmark score on this list. Maybe I’m a product of the modern age (I’m no fan of MTV editing though), but this movie is boring. I’ll pretend that watching people run is exciting if that’s the "gripping" subject material, but it’s mainly about talking about running. Shin splints are more exciting.

3) Forrest Gump

I actually liked Forrest Gump when it first came out. It was never better than Pulp Fiction, Shawshank Redemption or Quiz Show, which it beat (man, 1994 was a great year for movies), but it certainly seemed like a fine mainstream choice. Well, watch it again and from today’s perspective it doesn’t hold up at all. In a post 9/11 world, some not-full-retard telling strangers about how his childhood girlfriend got molested just seems creepy. Now that the presidential visual effects are nothing special, the movie’s not really about anything.

2) The English Patient

This one always pissed me off. Just make it long and put it in the desert and it’s a Best Picture, right? I resent that. I also resent that people rave about this film’s cinematography. What, they pointed the camera at the desert and it was pretty? This was probably the beginning of the end for Best Picture credibility, as most of this list was inspired by recent winners. We had to struggle to go back before the ‘90s.

1) A Beautiful Mind

This is just the most blatant case of let’s do a movie about somebody with a disease and win awards for it. Now, the real John Nash triumphed over amazing adversity and his wife was a warrior. Just don’t get all smug about how likeable his imaginary friends are and how magical the visual connections he sees in newspapers are. FYI: That’s not an enlightening perspective on schizophrenia. It’s just Oscar bait.
******************************************************************

I'll go with the author on Around the World in 80 Days (that's an easy one -- it's always included in these sorts of lists), which is a genuinely bad movie. Not sure about the others -- not that I think they were the best movies or even particularly good choices, but because I'm not convinced they're the worst Best Picture winners ever. But then that depends on how one defines "worst." Is it based on the inherent merits of the film itself, or is it based on the contention that there were other films that should have been given the award instead. How Green Was My Valley is a good, if flawed, film, but it's a terrible choice considering that it was up against Citizen Kane for the 1941 Academy Award (not to mention The Maltese Falcon and The Little Foxes). On the other hand, Oliver! wasn't a terribly distinguished movie, but 1968 was a pretty weak year for movies, and it might have been the best of an undistinguished lot of nominees that year.

So, what is your pick for the worst best movies of all time?