Glenda Jackson
Glenda Jackson’s performance is anything but wrong. However, it is somewhat surprising that she received the Best Actress award in 1974. She played British Queens and rendered subtle house art movies that were all well done, so what was it earned for? A romantic comedy at BEST, which is forgetful. It’s worse, for Ellen Burstyn The Exorcist, and for Joanne Woodward The Winter Dreams, for Summer Wishes.
Glenda Jackson
Al Pacino
This isn’t an incredible hit on Al Pacino’s skills. Yet you think you’re looking at a different star if you would look at The Godfather Part II and Scent of a Woman back again. The groundbreaking actor has become a grumbling performer who missed the layering act. The Academy made a sick joke with Pacino by giving him and not his other job a lifetime achievement award.
Al Pacino
Mary Pickford
Mary Pickford, remember? You do. Her role in the film Coquette was highly criticized. However, she was America’s Sweetheart in the 1920s. Nevertheless, in 1928 she still won the Best Actress award. Some thought that she prevailed over other stars, but Pickford fought hard for the honor. She had Academy members in her house for tea, and it didn’t matter; she was a founding charter member of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Science.
Mary Pickford
Coming up: why some film buffs believe Tom Hanks shouldn’t have won
Rex Harrison
Rex Harrison was a good performer. But in 1965, his performance in My Fair Lady did not deserve the Best Actor at the Oscars. The best performance was BY FAR Peter Sellers, who played THREE different characters in Dr. Strangelove: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Bomb. It’s nothing personal to Mr. Harrison, who I’m sure is quite a fellow, but it’s just wrong.
Rex Harrison
Argo
Looking back, Argo’s Oscar campaign is bizarre. Ben Affleck, snubbed for a Best Director nomination, was somehow “due,” so the Academy gave him the Best Picture award. Not that the 2012 class wasn’t successful. What about Lincoln? Love? Beast of the Southern Wild? Bueller? Is anybody listening from the Academy? Surprisingly, that year a middlebrow drama like “Argo” took the top prize.
Argo
Gwenyth Paltrow
The 1998 Academy Awards had multiple surprising winners. Maybe none more than Gwenyth Paltrow winning Best Actress over Elizabeth’s much more worthy rival Cate Blanchett. Okay, I must admit, that year’s Saving Private Ryan snub was hard to swallow too. It’s generally agreed that Paltrow won the Oscar because Harvey Weinstein was extremely aggressive in his award campaign.
Gwenyth Paltrow
Cuba Gooding Jr.
Cuba Gooding Jr is an example of an actor who won an Oscar and then almost instantly dropped off the earth’s face. He snagged a Best Support Actor award for Jerry Maguire’s performance in 1996. The year he defeated Edward Norton in Primal Fear and William H. Macy in Fargo, both of whom have no Oscar to their name. It may be a controversial view, but an Oscar’s wasted.
Cuba Gooding Jr.
We’ll learn more about Tom Hanks’ Oscar wins soon!
Renée Zellweger
Renée Zellweger was in the memory of the Academy, the sweetheart of the early 2000s. In 2002-2004, she was nominated for three consecutive years. Awarded Best Supporting Actress for her work in Cold Mountain movie. While it’s fair to say that she was the most amusing part of an otherwise bloated script, she could not have been an Oscar nominee for her cartoon performance. Holly Hunter had apologized for her involvement in Thirteen that year.
Renée Zellweger
Jon Voight
Jon Voight once was a very talented actor, and at the end of his career, he finished making himself paycheck. Yet he previously received the Best Actor Award in 1978 for his role in the Coming Home; war drama. And, let’s not neglect the fact that the Deer Hunter won the same year for Robert De Niro. Voight was merely good in the over-sentimental film.
Jon Voight
Jennifer Hudson
Jennifer Hudson’s 2007 Best Supporting Actress performance in Dreamgirls remains one of the most head-scratching moments in recent Oscars history. It wasn’t a bad performance, but it wasn’t that good either. The entire film is focused on her singing ability, and she is told nothing about a dramatic performance. The more deserving Cate Blanchett, in Notes on a Scandal and Abigail Breslin in Little Miss Sunshine, gave her the nod.
Jennifer Hudson
Roberto Benigni
Not that a comedy winning an Oscar is wrong, but there’s something wrong about a comedy winning an Oscar. Roberto Benigni had a friendly, humorous on-screen appearance in Life Is Beautiful. Although his success is very forgettable and even a little sappy compared to some other nominees. Beating Tom Hanks in Saving Private Ryan is one of the worst robberies ever.
Roberto Benigni
Cher
Yeah, she’s an icon. Yeah, she’s unique. She was nominated for her appearance in the 1983 film Silkwood, and then Moonstruck won the 1987 Best Actress Award. These roles were fun but showed her experience in the acting realm was very limited. Her win was doubtful. She’s one of STILL’s few Oscar winners not to be considered as a professional actress despite taking home the most significant award.
Cher
Coming up: Tom Hanks isn’t beloved by EVERYBODY…
Jean Dujardin
It was a stacked category success year. In 2011, George Clooney, Gary Oldman, and Brad Pitt lost to Jean Dujardin in The Artist. He was charming and entertaining. Yet, most people saw him as the category’s weakest. The Academy had a soft spot for that year’s old-fashioned sultry story. I suppose they can’t get it right every year, or any year.
Jean Dujardin
Mira Sorvino
Just a few short years into her career, in Woody Allen’s 1995 movie Mighty Aphrodite, Mira Sorvino scooped an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress. She’s done nothing worthwhile since. Since then, she’s acted in 20 critical duds of films, and her performance in the movie was good, but Oscar-worthy? Her career history says what you need to know. Hindsight is twenty-twenty.
Mira Sorvino
A Beautiful Mind
Nobody claims Ron Howard isn’t one of the company’s best directors. He’s extremely reliable, and while his film A Beautiful Mind was good, it didn’t win the 2002 Best Picture Award OR Best Director Award. Sorry, Ronny, but David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive was also nominated for Best Picture, and Lynch for Best Director. He would have been a much smarter choice, and it would have honored one of the Academy’s best filmmakers continually snubbed.
A Beautiful Mind
Tom Hanks
Tom Hanks took home some Academy awards for Philadelphia movie in 1993, and then again for Forrest Gump in’ 94. Some people say he stole the much deserved gold hardware from John Travolta in Pulp Fiction and Morgan Freeman in Shawshank Redemption. Forrest Gump was a big success, but it’s hard to look at those other two performances and believe he would have run away with the Best Actor trophy. Some of Hanks’ biggest fans agree.
Tom Hanks
Avatar
There’s no other way to see Avatar through an animated lens. According to Academy rules, if the animation is used in 75% of the film’s running time, a studio can submit any movie as an animated film. Yet Avatar wasn’t viewed as an animated film because much of it took place in a world created by CGI, with characters generated by CGI and motion capture technology. They won Best Cinematography at the 2010 Oscars, which is accused of making something digitally before the screen.
Avatar
Click
Okay, while it didn’t win the 2006 Oscar for Best Makeup, it’s funny that Click was also nominated first. This has the dubious distinction of being the First film to nominate Adam Sandler for Oscar. It’s a sci-fi comedy that has Sandler playing an overworked dad who neglects his family and does so even more until he gets a remote that lets him go quickly through life as he wants.
Click
Art Carney
You can’t declare Art Carney as a mediocre actor. That’s why writing this is a challenge, but you have to call a spade a spade. The Academy made the wrong decision by selecting Carney in Harry and Tonto. It’s a good movie, but it stops being perfect. The suggestion that this year’s Godfather Part II beat Al Pacino seems at best blasphemous.
Art Carney
Robert Donat
Robert Donat’s 1939 success in Goodbye, Mr. Chips, fails to withstand the time test. There’s no flame, there’s no fire or pull. But, you know what sparked a movie? Do you know what success shot in 1939? Clark Gable’s profound work in Gone with the Wind. It was the time test, and that year Clark would have been paid for it.
Robert Donat
John Wayne
Look, True Grit is a classic, nobody argues. But not every classic requires an actor to win an Oscar undeservingly. There’s no famous John Wayne. It’s not that he’s not professional. However, missing depth or realism makes the film look strained. Let’s not forget that Dustin Hoffman was in Midnight Cowboy in 1969, which was even more worthy and snubbed.
John Wayne
Rocky
Rocky’s very classic movie. A sappy boxing movie starring Sylvester Stallone. Yet, like most entries in this series, it’s always all about who DIDN’T win this year’s Oscars. In 1977, Taxi Driver, All President’s Men, and Network won Best Picture. Sure, Rocky’s motivating, but also cliché. The Best Picture and Director award is entirely undeserved.
Rocky
Crash
I think it’s pretty safe to claim that the worst winner of the 21st century is probably 2004’s Crash. It’s a weepy drama about how bad racism is. It has the beauty of the transportation network in New York City and won Oscars for editing and screenplay somehow. The film producer, Paul Haggis, didn’t even think it deserved the honor. He said in an interview, “was it year’s best film? I don’t think so.”
Crash
Gary Oldman
Gary Oldman won an Oscar. Most people are pleased with the legendary actor and think he played a perfect Winston Churchill portrayal in The Darkest Hour. Every day, he spent hours in the makeup chair studying the hell out of character. Yet, writing the script, coupled with his shout-y performance, gives us a heavier-handed Churchill depiction. It doesn’t suit when you put the performance to Daniel Kaluuya’s in Get Out or Daniel Day-Lewis’s in Phantom Thread.
Gary Oldman
Richard Dreyfuss
It was the year Woody Allen gave the cinematic gem, Annie Hall, which still lingers around. Meanwhile, in 1977, Neil Simon produced a sweet, contradictory romantic comedy called The Goodbye Girl that seems painfully predictable and boring. Richard Dreyfuss’ performance as the neurotic want tobe-actor Elliot is painfully overacting and is not entirely understood even with some bright moments. The expression on Richard Burton’s face when he learned he lost his final Oscar attempt was painful.
Richard Dreyfuss
Paul Scofield
A Man for All Seasons was a favorite in 1966, collecting six Oscars. Scofield’s win isn’t troubling because of his performance, although he was incredibly restrained and subliminal even with stunningly bland film speeches, but because he beat one of Richard Burton’s most exceptional performances. Burton’s role in Virginia Woolf’s Who’s Afraid movie? That was even more memorable and influential in film history.
Paul Scofield
Halle Berry
It is more interesting than an undeserving Oscar. Halle Berry became Monster’s Ball’s first black woman to win the Best Actress Oscar in 2002. Eight color women have since been nominated in the Best Actress category, but none of them have succeeded. She came out and said she felt she broke boundaries, but now she admits that winning meant nothing to Hollywood.
Halle Berry
The Hurt Locker
Whoever says The Hurt Locker is a lousy movie comes from a disingenuous location. It’s a good film. Indeed, it would not even be on this list if it were to be nominated another year. Yet, when the Hurt Locker was able to beat out for Best Picture, it just doesn’t sit well. It’s hard to reconcile that it was able to beat out Avatar, District 9, Inglorious Basterds, and Up. All of those movies are somewhat groundbreaking in their genres.
The Hurt Locker
Sandra Bullock
Sandra Bullock’s funny, charming, and comfortable to cheer for, but she didn’t deserve an Oscar for her role in The Blind Side. Also, the film’s director, Michael Oher, wasn’t a fan. It’s a fun movie, great for 10 years down the road on TV. Honestly, it’s the ideal TV movie. Yet, the academy agreed that the story it told was a success they wanted to honor.
Sandra Bullock
Tom Hooper
Given what many critics say, a movie can be perfect without well-directed. The King’s Speech was a successful film, but not because Tom Hooper was the producer. The film was the 2010 Oscar winner, and maybe rightly so, but Tom Hooper didn’t deserve his award. A great director could boost his material, but at best, the directors seemed uninspiring. He beat the Black Swan director Darren Aronofskie and the True Grit film Coen Brothers.
Tom Hooper
John Ford
It is one of the oldest additions to the list, one of the most significant errors in the Oscars. In the 30s and 40s, John Ford was an acclaimed director, and in the year Orson Welles pulled out Citizen Kane in How Green Was My Valley he was Oscar. Also, if you think Citizen Kane is an over-valued film, you can’t argue that it’s one of the best movies ever.
John Ford
Christopher Plummer
It is an excellent scenario if you want to highlight the academy’s ridiculousness and some of its actions, Christopher Plummer is a talented director, but received an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor in Beginners’ 2010. His performance was excellent, but he was the lead actor. For the entire movie, he was mostly the on show. There seemed to be no point in putting him in the category of “supporting actor.”
Christopher Plummer
Dances With Wolves
Let’s make this fun activity called “name one scene from Dances With Wolves that stands out to you” 10 times out of 10. You’ll lose this game. It’s a decent film, but it’s borderline blasphemous because it pulled Goodfellas out for Best Picture at the 1990 Oscars. The work of Martin Scorsese is almost fine. The dialogue was sharp and the result was outstanding. Kevin Costner glared at the camera at the academy, and that’s why Dances With Wolves won.
Dances With Wolves
Tim Robbins
The 2003 Oscars were a crazy contest to win Best Supporting Actor. Some critics claim that there is a debate over who was not nominated for the award after Peter Sarsgaard was curiously absent in Shattered Glass. Nevertheless, the award was finally won by Tim Robbins at Mystic River. It would appear that Robbins was the winner of the prize clean-up of Mystic River that year. Nobody stops to notice that Robbins didn’t do well in this film.
Tim Robbins
Kim Basinger
The year was 1997, and Titanic took the world of cinema totally, and the academy sought to award another film prizes. They settled on Kim Basinger, who received the award for her appearance in L.A Confidential, a good film for Best Supporting Actress. But with their selection, the Academy missed the mark. The time passes by just gets more explicit. Julianne Moore in Boogie Nights would have won the award.
Kim Basinger
Geoffrey Rush
It is quite fair to say that, after being robbed for his role in Jerry Maguire, Tom Cruise has stopped attempting to win Oscars. Geoffrey Rush was awarded the Oscar for Best Actor in the film Shine. In the movie, Rush wasn’t bad but almost looked like that year’s most corrupt, Oscar-bait film. It is well known that Oscars never win romantic comedies, and if Tom Cruise could get them out, he would have been the standard-bearer of the genre.
Geoffrey Rush
A Beautiful Mind
A Beautiful Mind has its devoted followers, but it is much closer to the splendor of The Lord of the Rings with all the requisite reverence, namely, the Fellowship of the Ring. Indeed, you can note that LOTR was beaten for Best Picture by a Beautiful Mind. The academy realized the great mistake they had made by not giving LOTR the Oscar, and just two years later, they got redressed. In 2003, they finally gave the show an Oscar, but it should have already been one.
A Beautiful Mind
Cliff Robertson
Alright, you probably were underwhelmed, you’re not alone if you saw the flick Charly. It is an amazingly lousy film attempting to represent a person with a mental illness who, after a treatment, transforms into a genius. Robertson’s success often seemed cruel and overwhelming. That makes this victory even harder for Robertson is the fact that Peter O’Toole delivered a legendary show at The Lion in Winter.
Cliff Robertson