Best/Worst Oscar Winners for Best Picture

[GringoTex]

Pick the five best and fives worst movies that have won the Oscar for Best Picture. A list of winners can be found at http://chevy.imdb.com/Sections/Awards/Academy_Awards_USA/

Five Best:

Rebecca (1940)
Best Years of Our Lives (1946)
All About Eve (1950)
The Godfather II (1974)
Unforgiven (1992)


Five Worst:

Cimarron (1931)
Around the World in Eighty Days (1956)
Oliver! (1968)
Driving Miss Daisy (1989)
American Beauty (1999)

[Alberto]

Five Best:
Casablanca
Godfather Part II
Patton
Bridge on the River Kwai
Dances with Wolves/One flew over the Cuckoo's Nest

Five Worst:
Oliver
The Deer Hunter
Gladiator
Wings
Broaday Melody (1929)

[obie]

Five worst, all in no particular order:
Forrest Gump
Gladiator
Titanic
Dances With Wolves
Driving Miss Daisy

I've never seen Oliver!, though I know that many critics consider it a terrible choice.

Five best:
Casablanca
Ben-Hur
On The Waterfront
The Best Years Of Our Lives
Amadeus (personal fave)

[Nobby]

Best:

Midnight Cowboy
Casablanca
Bridge on the River Kwai
Ben-Hur
The French Connection

I've not seen The Godfather series.

Worst:

Titanic
Forest Gump
Oliver!
The Greatest Show on Earth
Gone With The Wind

I've not seen Driving Miss Daisy, Dances With Wolves, Cimmarron or Broadway Melody.

[Ted Cikowski]

worst: Titanic

[PSU92]

Best:
Chariots of Fire
Casablanca
Patton
West Side Story
Bridge on The River Kwai


Worst:
Titanic
Forest Gump
Driving Miss Daisy
Kramer vs Kramer
Greatest Show on Earth

[Ghost]

Best:

Godfather Part II (1974)
Lawrence of Arabia (1962)
Unforgiven (1992)
Schindler's List (despite its problems) (1994)
The Godfather (1972)

Worst:(Keep in mind that I don't go around renting the truly heinous older films.So ths is obviously skewed. )

Greatest Show on Earth (1952)
Gladiator (2000)
American Beauty (1999)
Rain Man (1988)
Gone Wth the Wind (1939)

IT's interesting to see the other lists and note some of the popular choices. Forrest Gump is far from a great film, but I would say it's a decent, entertaining film. I hate the popular belief that it's a great film more than the film itself. I don't think that Driving Miss Daisy is a bad film either --- just not a really good, with the addtional offense of winning over other more worthy choices -- DO the Right Thing and Drugstore Cowboy come to mind.

In looking at the list, there's a lot more disappointment than I expected.

[CrazyF.C.]

I dont know much, but I do know that Gladiator and Titanic sucked.

[DoctorJones24]

I'm not sure I've ever watched a "Best Picture" winner and thought, "Man, that sucked!" They DO tend to be popular, pleasurable movies. Granted, rarely, if ever, has a winner been a truly daring or creative work of art. But Hollywood really isn't about that, and the Oscar's are about Hollywood celebrating Hollywood. That's why it's always seemed a bit silly to me to get very bent when a given film is "robbed" by the Academy.

Anyway, awards are a notoriously poor measure of any artwork's lasting impact. Few Nobel prize winning authors are mainstays in the canon, and the it's even more extreme in other media.

Nontheless, my favs and least favs from the list:

Favs:
Annie Hall
Casablanca
Bridge on River Kwai
Last Emperor
Chariots of Fire


Least Favs:
A Beautiful Mind
The Greatest Show on Earth
Out of Africa
Rocky
Silence of the Lambs

[amerifolklegend]

Top Five:
1) Lawrence of Arabia
2) The Godfather
3) Gone With the Wind
4) Annie Hall
5) One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest


Bottom Five:
69) Out of Africa
70) Terms of Endearment
71) Titanic
72) Chariots of Fire
73) Dances With Wolves

[Unorthodox Yank]

Well, i cant really say, but i know that forrest gump and rain man would DEFINITLEY not be on my "worst" list.

I LOVE both those movies.

[condor11]

worst
gone with the wind
ben hur
casablanca
titanic
gladiator

best
forrest gump
Platoon
schidlers list
thats about it i dont really like oscar winning movies

[folha]

best:
All Quiet on the Western Front (1930)
Bridge on the River Kwai, The (1957)
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975)
Annie Hall (1977)
Amadeus (1984)

worst:
Gladiator (2000)
Shakespeare in Love (1998)
Titanic (1997)
English Patient, The (1996)
Braveheart (1995)
Schindler's List (1993)
Last Emperor, The (1987)

---
OK, it's more than five in my worst list but I think they somehow are equally bad, I cannot just pick five. And I haven't seen some of the worst many others mentioned, so I can't decide.
One thing, does that show Oscar are getting worse in the '90s?

[dearprudence]

I find it really hard to come up with a 5 best or 5 worst Oscars list, for one reason: who was the competition? I mean, if it was a year that the movies really sucked, then maybe the winner WAS the best that year.

On the other hand, I once saw a list of the movies that came out in 1939, and I'm amazed that they just awarded one Oscar!

[Col Mustard]

Best

Godfather Pt2
In The Heat of The Night
The Apartment
The French Connection
Annie Hall


Worst

Titanic
Gladiator
Braveheart
West Side Story
Oliver

[GringoTex]

The following films have made both a best list and a worst list:

Silence of the Lambs
Gone With the Wind
Forrest Gump
Dances with Wolves
West Side Story
Casablanca (what is there to hate in this movie?)
Schindler's List (ditto?)
The Last Emperor


Personally, I think the first half of GWTW is a great movie, the second half a lousy one.

[whirlwind]

Best:
Patton
Silence of the Lambs
Amadeus
Lawrence of Arabia
Gandhi

Worst:
Dances with Wolves
American Beauty
Rain Man
Terms of Endearment
Titanic
can't judge any of the films pre-1970.

Best Films Not To Win An Oscar For Best Picture:
The Sixth Sense
Pulp Fiction
Goodfellas
Lord of the Rings: Fellowship
Dead Poets Society

[cosmosRIP]

Top 5
Unforgiven
The Silence of the Lambs
The Godfather
The French Connection
Midnight Cowboy

Bottom 5
Gladiator
The English Patient
Forrest Gump
Dances With Wolves
Terms of Endearment

[Ted Cikowski]

why exactly do you people have American Beauty on the worst list?

[Unorthodox Yank]

Originally posted by whirlwind
[B]

Best Films Not To Win An Oscar For Best Picture:

Pulp Fiction
B]

A-************ING-MEN!

I wish theres was some sort of way they coulve splitted the oscar in 2 and given half to forrest gump, and half to pulp fiction.