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.
Critics were cool toward this 1988 adaptation of the Anne Tyler novel about a grieving father who is emotionally rescued by a dog trainer (Geena Davis). The San Francisco Chronicle called it a "ho-hum-er." But the film landed with the Academy, where it notched an Oscar win for Davis, among four overall nominations.
“I found Tourist hell to sit through.” —Pauline Kael, The New Yorker
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