The seven worst best pictures ever

Inspired by Huffington Post’s “Nine Worst Movies Ever Made,” I thought it would be fun to shine a spotlight on the worst films that have won an Academy Award for Best Picture.

I thought it would be easy to find nine, but I was wrong. Turns out I just haven’t seen that many films. (As much as I wanted to include Forrest Gump on this list, I figured it wouldn’t be fair, since I haven’t actually seen the movie.)

1. Ben Hur (1959). Although elevated by the inclusion of just enough gay subtext to drive Charlton Heston batshit-homophobic-crazy for the rest of his natural life, Ben Hur was little more than the product of some Hollywood execs’ high concept bull session: “You know, a Jesus film! Like The Greatest Story Ever Told — but with sweaty shirtless galley slaves, and gladiators, and chariot races!” Oh, my. Of course, I’d have to put a Charlton Heston movie on my list, since everything the guy ever did was execrable. Yes, even Planet of the Apes.

2. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975), the film that gave electroconvulsive therapy a bad name. I’m not sure if this was the first formulaic soul-uplifter to win Best Picture, but it’s the earliest one I saw. Why is there even a market for Indomitability of the Human Spirit movies? Cinema should be about fun, about escapism. This was not a fun movie.

3. Terms of Endearment (1983). What the hell was this one about, anyway? I remember one of my college English teachers remarking about the failure of narrative in this one. Of the writing she said, “Guess if you’re really stuck how to end the thing, just give one of your main characters a terminal illness.” And to think, this one beat out The Dresser and The Right Stuff, both superior movies.

4. Silence of the Lambs (1991). Anthony Hopkins and Jodie Foster go mano a womano to see who, with some fava beans and a nice chianti, can chew the most scenery, while director Jonathan Demme, who for heart-string tugging out-yanks the otherwise peerless Steven Spielberg (see Philadelphia), plays the whole thing as if this were, you know, a work of serious art, rather than exploitative grindhouse fare. I mean . . . Silence of the Lambs, really? Is that the best you could do, Academy? Admittedly, it didn’t have much competition (umm . . . Prince of Tides?) But jeez.

5. Braveheart (1995). I liked this one up until the gratuitously violent execution scene near the end, in which Mel Gibson gets strangled with his own intestines while his balls are cut off and shoved up his nostrils really really fast so that he doesn’t die first from the raging fire beneath him being stoked with his dismembered arms and legs. Or something like that.

6. Titanic (1997). That the Academy could give this one its prime plum and deny The Poseidon Adventure so much as a nomination is a travesty of justice. Poseidon even had the requisite martyr (Gene Hackman) Hollywood loves so well. What, was it the lack of a love story? Jack Albertson and Shelley Winters not photogenic enough for you?

7. No Country for Old Men (2007). I like me some Coen Brothers movies. But this one? They couldn’t have acknowledged Barton Fink or Miller’s Crossing or Fargo? No, they had to pick the CB’s way-too-faithful adaptation of what a lot of folks regard as Cormac McCarthy’s crappiest novel. I’ll admit that Javier Bardem does a great Anton Chigurh, and it’s hard for me to dislike anything with Tommy Lee Jones in it, but I do dislike this film. I didn’t like the book and I didn’t like the movie. I’ll admit to hypocrisy here, since earlier I ragged on Hollywood for constantly elevating saccharine works of soul-redemption, and here at last was a movie all about the ugliness of the human spirit. But let’s just say they went a wee bit overboard in striking the balance.

D.

Walnut, March 7, 2010. Category: At the movies.

About Walnut

View all posts by Walnut