The Lowest-Scoring Best Picture Nominees of the Past 30 Years
As history—and Metascores—show, Academy Award nominations reveal best picture contenders, but not necessarily the best pictures.
We've looked through the best picture Oscar fields of the last 30 years, from the 1989 nominees through the recently announced 2018 field, cross-checked the nominees' Metacritic scores, and ranked the 24 lowest-scoring films, from the bottom to the relative top. Four of these films went on to become best picture winners—but none boasts a Metascore higher than 69.
This 2011 drama assembled Tom Hanks, Sandra Bullock, Max von Sydow, and director Stephen Daldry (Billy Elliot) in the service of a September 11 tale adapted from Jonathan Safran Foer's novel. Though the film looked on paper like a surefire awards-season favorite, critics found it manipulative, and its Oscar hopes were all but shot when it received a best picture nod and a best supporting actor nomination (von Sydow) but nothing else.
“Yes, you may cry, but when tears are milked as they are here, the truer response should be rage.” —Manohla Dargis, The New York Times
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