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 is the first best picture-winner on this list. The 1988 road-trip drama about a selfish man (Tom Cruise) tasked with the care of his long-lost autistic brother (Dustin Hoffman) was popular among audiences and Oscar voters, who showered it with four big wins, including trophies for Hoffman and director Barry Levinson. But some critics remained unmoved. The New Yorker's Pauline Kael called it "wet kitsch."
“Though it's well directed, written and performed, Rain Main still slips irreversibly into the so-what category.” —Dave Kehr, Chicago Tribune
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