“Thelma & Louise” (1991)
When a film can land six nominations in major categories (two in Best Actress for Susan Sarandon and Geena Davis, Screenplay, Director, Cinematography and Editing — and exactly what else is there in a movie apart from the writing, shooting, editing, direction and performances?) and not land a Best Picture nod, something seems amiss. And with Ridley Scott’s first Director nomination (he’s fielding his fourth at the moment for “The Martian“) coming for this still terrific story of empowerment and female friendship, that ultimately won Callie Khouri the original screenplay Oscar, we could have expected at least a nomination there. But obviously the field that year was just too strong, right? Well, not so much. We’ll grant that “The Silence of the Lambs” was a very worthy winner, and “Beauty and the Beast” a pleasant surprise as the first animated film ever to pick up a Best Picture nod. And “JFK,” for all its faults, is a thrillingly well-made piece of entertainment. But that the epochal and yes, genuinely important “Thelma & Louise,” could have been edged out by blatant vanity projects like Warren Beatty‘s “Bugsy” and Barbra Streisand’s “The Prince of Tides” just goes to prove the Academy’s myopic adoration of actors-turned-power-players-turned-directors, even when their projects are not that good.
“The Truman Show” (1998)
Peter Weir‘s surprising, moving, thoughtful film, based on Andrew Niccol‘s clever script, has a sci-fi premise that feels like it was quickly overtaken in those stakes by fact: the unstoppable rise of reality TV, the omnipresence of CCTV, the ubiquity of social media, the emergence of the selfie and the YouTube diary and the revelation that yes, our governments are basically spying on everything we do. Which makes it seem even more of a missed opportunity that it did not get the industry recognition it should have, especially in a year when the terminally drippy “Shakespeare in Love,” the weakest of that year’s field by some distance (“Life is Beautiful,” “Saving Private Ryan,” “Elizabeth” and “The Thin Red Line” being the other nominees) won Best Picture. But despite picking up nods for Director, Screenplay and Supporting Actor for Ed Harris, and for giving us our first pre-“Man on the Moon” proof that Jim Carrey could do more than gurn and pratfall, “The Truman Show” was shut out of all the other categories, and went home empty handed. Which is a great shame because now it looks less like a wildly imaginative work of science fiction and more like a handy manual suggesting how to negotiate this over-recorded world of ours and still retain some semblance of humanity.
“Magnolia” (1999)
It’s become almost fashionable to diss Paul Thomas Anderson‘s magnificent “Magnolia,” whether in the context of the rest of his output, or because its serious, straight-on attempt to contend with some Major Issues seems retrospectively sophomoric. Even PTA himself jumped on the bandwagon recently, telling Marc Maron he now thinks it’s “way too fucking long.” But wherever you land in that debate (and this writer will defend its sprawling, indulgent brilliance to the death) it is a remarkable oversight that a film so ostensibly in the Academy’s wheelhouse should have made such a poor showing. Only getting three nods (Tom Cruise for Supporting Actor, Original Screenplay and Best Song) and winning none (even Aimee Mann‘s “Save Me” was beaten out by Phil Collins‘ forgettable “Tarzan” song) the film is the kind of Altman-esque ensemble that the Academy tends to admire, sometimes clodhoppingly, as in the case of “Crash,” which won Best Picture four years later. Arguably, it’s a more restrained, choral version of the #whitepeoplesproblems film that won in 2000 — “American Beauty.” And while “The Insider” deserved its slot, as probably did “The Sixth Sense” it’s inarguably better than the “The Green Mile” and “The Cider House Rules” that rounded out the category that year.
“City of God” (2002)
When “City of God” picked up four Oscar nominations at the 2004 Academy Awards — and four major ones too: Director, Screenplay, Cinematography and Editing — it seemed like quite a coup for a foreign-language film. Especially considering Fernando Meirelles and Katia Lund‘s film had been Brazil’s official submission for the Foreign Language Oscar in 2002 and hadn’t been nominated (that year’s statue went to “Nowhere in Africa,” and no, us neither.) Following its U.S. release, however, it rocketed to the top of critics lists and did surprisingly good arthouse business for such a grittily violent, confrontational film about Brazilian street kids and gang warfare in the favelas. So it already beat all sorts of odds getting where it did, but when you think of the enduring brilliance of its energetic, explosive filmmaking and its insightful, angry, passionate expose of these marginalized, poverty-and crime-blighted lives, and you note that that year the actual Best Picture nominees included the comparatively wan “Lost in Translation,” the fun but hardly high art “Master and Commander,” the dour “Mystic River” and the formulaic “Seabiscuit,” even if it never had a chance against ultimate winner “The Return of the King,” “City of God” actually seems hard done by.
“Pan’s Labyrinth” (2006)
It truly is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a foreign-language film to win Best Picture (none ever has, though 3 prior winners were partially in a language other than English), but of all the films that could possibly ever have managed this quasi-mystical, fantastical feat,Guillermo Del Toro‘s achingly mystical, fantastical film could have been the one. Not only was that year one of the flimsiest in the history of the Best Picture category (“The Departed” won, with “Babel,’ “Letters from Iwo Jima,” “Little Miss Sunshine” and “The Queen” rounding out the lackluster pack) but “Pan’s Labyrinth” represents a heady cocktail of elements that the Academy traditionally appreciates. The story of a girl growing up during the Spanish Civil War who discovers an underworld realm as full of beauty and cruelty as reality outside, it has a child protagonist, a real-world historical, war-torn backdrop and after the record-breaking Oscar run of “Return of the King” just a few years before, even its fantasy elements could have been seen as a boon rather than a handicap. In the event, the film picked up six nominations, winning three (Cinematography, Art Direction, Makeup), but didn’t even take home the Foreign Language Oscar, which went instead to the excellent but more traditional “The Lives of Others.”
Honorable Mentions: Obviously we could go on forever here, so were trying to keep the list to a manageable length. But among the more notable Best Picture-free movies that we couldn’t find room for are Ernst Lubitsch’s “To Be Or Not To Be” in 1942 (nominated only for Best Score), Howard Hawks’ great 1948 Western “Red River” (two nominations, for Motion Picture Story and Film Editing), James Dean vehicle “Rebel Without A Cause” in 1955 (three nods, including Acting nominations for Sal Mineo andNatalie Wood, plus it won the Best Film BAFTA), Billy Wilder’s 1959 comedy classic “Some Like It Hot” (six nominations, but no Best Picture despite winning the Golden Globe and the DGA Award), and Polanski’s “Rosemary’s Baby” in 1968 (two nominations, including a win for Supporting Actress Ruth Gordon).
More recently, there were also Steven Spielberg’s “Close Encounters Of The Third Kind” in 1977 (eight nominations, including Best Director and a cinematography win for Vilmos Zsigmond), Paul Thomas Anderson’s “Boogie Nights” (three nominations, including Screenplay for the director) and Atom Egoyan’s “The Sweet Hereafter” (which saw the Canadian helmer nominated for Best Director and Adapted Screenplay), both in 1997,Cameron Crowe’s 2000 rock memoir “Almost Famous” (which won a Screenplay Oscar along with three further nominations) and, most recently,Christopher Nolan’s superhero epic “The Dark Knight” (eight nods in total). And, as we said, all of that excludes movies films that were nominated for no Oscars altogether, including “Bringing Up Baby,” “Groundhog Day,” “Heat,” “Night Of The Hunter,” “The Searchers” and “The Shining.”