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 1999 prison drama, starring Tom Hanks and then-newcomer (and best supporting actor nominee) Michael Clarke Duncan, went into Oscar night with four nominations. But critics, who'd rallied behind filmmaker Frank Darabont's earlier The Shawshank Redemption, weren't necessarily cheering it on. Film.com called The Green Mile "a case of severe overreaching."
“Three hours of overstatement and schmaltz.” —Edward Guthmann, San Francisco Chronicle