8 Of The All-Time Best Academy Award Losers

On one level, the Academy Awards can have an enormous effect selecting which movies or singular movie will be designated as the most prestigious films from a single year. However, it's also possible that they're simply a reflection of opinions that have already been formed about the best films of the year, and when the Oscar pick for Best Picture disagrees too much with the popular and critical opinion, it gets swept aside. Driving Miss Daisy, for example, isn't exactly hailed as a lasting contribution to the history of cinema. Meanwhile two movies that weren't even nominated, Spike Lee's Do the Right Thing and Woody Allen's Crimes and Misdemeanors, are considered two of the greatest of their decade at the least, despite Oscar's lack of recognition.

Darren Ruecker

Published: Feb 22, 2013 04:00 pm

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1) The Shawshank Redemption

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The internet has decided that The Shawshank Redemption is the best movie of all time. Or at least, IMDb users have voted it as their favorite. And yet, it couldn’t even get enough votes from the Academy to win a single award, most notably the Best Picture award which went to Forrest Gump. Needless to say, Shawshank has done pretty well for itself, partially because Ted Turner bought its rights for ridiculously cheap and so it played endlessly on his TV channels, but also in large part because it’s just an excellent movie.

Forrest Gump is a fine film in itself, with some pretty seamless and impressive technological work, and a fantastical style that is a lot of fun and packs an emotional punch. Tom Hanks has a tendency to do that. I don’t know many people who would argue it’s better than Shawshank though, or Pulp Fiction for that matter. The friendship of Andy and Red is the driving force behind the affection people have for Shawshank, the patriarchal gentleness of Morgan Freeman combined with the quiet menace of Tim Robbins providing a memorable dynamic that you can’t help but root for. Forrest may still have legs, but Shawshank has outpaced it in the race for the hearts and minds of the public since losing out at the Oscars.