Scratching your noggin over the Oscar love for The Reader? How did those dastardly has-been Weinstein brothers budge The Dark Knight(if you’re a whiny fanboy) or The Wrestler(if you’re a whiny film snob) out of a deserving Best Picture nomination with a movie no one seems to care for? Well it’s not the first time the Weinsteins have pulled off such a feat. Yet, nor are they the only Hollywood salesmen to ram a film into the Oscar race.
It’s hard to imagine Oscar without some sort of surprise. Sometimes it’s for the better sometimes it is just plain astonishing and almost seems to be done simply to say, “Hey, we’re the Academy, we do what we want.” Every year they sprinkle their categories with nominations that leave a lot of folks wondering just how the hell that happened and I have come up with my personal list of some of the most bewildering and occasionally surprising, Best Picture nominees of the last 40 years or so.
Not all of these selections are awful films (actually one choice is arguably my favorite film of all time). Sometimes a nomination is surprising because it bucks the normal serious-than-thou tone the Academy Awards tries to put forth. While other times it so egregiously satisfies that tone. Be that as it may, the majority of the following movies are utter WTF? nominations; films caught up in an unworthy avalanche of popular buzz that carried them to Oscar night, after which and only a few years later we now begin to ask, “Are you kidding me? THAT was an Oscar nominee?”
After you have taken a look at my top ten be sure to add your own list and discuss in the comments below.
Controversy, I am sure, right off the bat, but before you start slinging the hate I’m probably a bigger Star Wars fan than you. I don’t feel the need to list my credentials, but trust me when I say I love those wars in the stars. I grin with nerdy glee when thinking about the fact Star Wars was nominated for Best Picture. It’s great entertainment. Yet, let’s look at this objectively.
You have a Buck Rogers throwback full of laser swords, ray guns, aliens, robots and a villain who looks like a kicked-in garbage can painted black. Then add corny dialogue and some weak acting befitting of the genre it’s paying homage to. However, it’s not that Star Wars is a less than stellar accomplishment such as the rest of films on this list. No no no. But rather the movie — in all of its goofy Saturday matinee B-film glory — doesn’t congeal with the stodgy image of the Academy Awards. It’s just weird to think of a movie featuring a gay robot and an 8-foot teddy bear as a serious Oscar contender. It’s bewildering in a good way. It’s sort of like imagining a Best Picture nom for a movie about a dude dressed up as a rubber bat who battles a killer clown. Wouldn’t it be great to see a film like that get an Oscar some day?
What should have been a more likely Sci-fi Oscar nominee instead: Close Encounters of the Third Kind
People — well if you could actually consider movie geeks “people” — love passing turgid gas in the general direction of Shakespeare in Love because it ruined their Oscar pools (it was a decade ago, get over it — Spielberg has). Shakespeare in Love is a feathery pillow that somehow won the brick contest. It’s not a bad film by any means, just a light-weight one. And the disgust heard in people’s voices when speaking about the movie isn’t so much directed at the film itself as much as it is towards the idea that Shakespeare in Lovesymbolizes the unashamed corruptibility of the Academy Awards. The Weinsteins bought this Oscar and they did not shy away from admitting it.
A romantic-comedy centering around a playwright that should have been nominated instead: Rushmore
Fatal Attraction buried the needle on the pop-culture ballyhoo meter when released. Across the country, men limped out of theaters cradling their nuts and renewing their marriage vows on the sidewalks with their wives. Feminists bashed the film for depicting a confident, successful woman as a lunatic and a poor cook of rabbit stew. And anyone with a few clumps of working grey matter saw the film for what it is: a trashy, shallow thriller at best.
A sexually-charged thriller that should have been nominated instead: No Way Out
