The Best Movies Never Nominated for a Single Oscar

by Jason Dietz, Metacritic Features Editor – February 4, 2020

Last updated: January 24, 2023

Judging from the complaints that pour in each year, the Academy gets many things wrong—including, with surprising regularity, completely ignoring some of each year's most acclaimed films. In the gallery above, you can find the 30 highest-scoring films since 2000 that did not receive any Oscar nominations (in any category). They are ranked by Metascore, but all of these films scored 89 or higher—suggesting massive critical acclaim.

Note that documentaries are excluded (since there are fewer opportunities for those films to receive nominations). Also excluded are movies that qualified for Emmys rather than Oscars (such as the Small Axe films).

Additional content by Keith Kimbell

24 of 38 photo by Elevation Pictures / Cannes

92 #12 (tie): Memoria

A co-winner of the third-place Jury Prize at Cannes, this 2021 feature from lauded Thai filmmaker Apichatpong Weerasethakul (Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives) finds the director filming outside his native country for the first time. Set in Colombia, the meditative, allegorical Memoria stars Tilda Swinton as a woman obsessed with finding the source of a sound that only she can hear. It's another film with long, slow takes and little action—with an added dose of weirdness—so it's not for everyone. But you can definitely count critics among Memoria's fans. While some reviewers were disappointed in the ending, most found the film to be spellbinding and transcendent.

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