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.
The second Stephen Daldry movie on this list, this 2008 drama about an affair between an ex-Nazi concentration camp guard (best actress winner Kate Winslet) and a German teen (David Kross) was called "the shallowest 'serious' film ... reeling this year" by Film Threat. With Harvey Weinstein's Miramax in full-on Oscar mode, however, The Reader was rewarded with five total nominations.
“The Reader feels weighty, all right; but it's an unsatisfying kind of weight.” —Stephanie Zacharek, Salon