My picks: The worst Best Picture nominees.
by Senator_Ivan_Alec | created - 29 Oct 2020 | updated - 13 Oct 2021 | PublicNominees, that in my opinion, are the worst of the Best.
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1. Viva Villa! (1934)
Passed | 115 min | Biography, Western
After enacting revenge on the overseer who murdered his father, Pancho Villa becomes a bandit, earning the respect of the poor by brutally attacking the wealthy.
Directors: Jack Conway, Howard Hawks, William A. Wellman | Stars: Wallace Beery, Fay Wray, Leo Carrillo, Donald Cook
Votes: 1,568 | Gross: $1.11M
A dated bore.
2. One Night of Love (1934)
Passed | 84 min | Comedy, Music, Romance
Mary Barrett is an aspiring Opera singer who is taken under the wings of a famous operatic maestro, Guilio Monterverdi. After spending endless working hours together and arguing, their ... See full summary »
Director: Victor Schertzinger | Stars: Grace Moore, Tullio Carminati, Lyle Talbot, Mona Barrie
Votes: 747
A rom-com set in the world of opera.
3. In Old Arizona (1928)
Passed | 95 min | Drama, Western
A charming, happy-go-lucky bandit in old Arizona plays cat-and-mouse with the sheriff trying to catch him while he romances a local beauty.
Directors: Irving Cummings, Raoul Walsh | Stars: Edmund Lowe, Warner Baxter, Dorothy Burgess, Henry Armetta
Votes: 1,292 | Gross: $2.83M
Old is the key. I'm sure it was old even in 1929.
4. She Done Him Wrong (1933)
Passed | 66 min | Comedy, Drama, History
In the Gay Nineties, a seductive nightclub singer contends with several suitors, including a jealous escaped convict and a handsome temperance league member.
Director: Lowell Sherman | Stars: Mae West, Cary Grant, Owen Moore, Gilbert Roland
Votes: 7,032 | Gross: $4.80M
Is it a musical? A crime film? A comedy? Something, for sure: a mess.
5. The Broadway Melody (1929)
Passed | 100 min | Drama, Musical, Romance
A pair of sisters from the vaudeville circuit try to make it big time on Broadway, but matters of the heart complicate the attempt.
Director: Harry Beaumont | Stars: Bessie Love, Anita Page, Charles King, Eddie Kane
Votes: 7,996 | Gross: $6.12M
Bessie Love is great in this one, but otherwise...
6. Three Coins in the Fountain (1954)
Approved | 102 min | Drama, Romance
Three American women working in Rome, Italy share a spacious apartment and the desire to find love and marriage. Each one experiences a few bumps in her journey to romance.
Director: Jean Negulesco | Stars: Clifton Webb, Dorothy McGuire, Jean Peters, Louis Jourdan
Votes: 3,757
A movie better than "Rear Window", according to the Academy.
7. Cimarron (1931)
Passed | 123 min | Drama, Western
A newspaper editor settles in an Oklahoma boom town with his reluctant wife at the end of the nineteenth century.
Director: Wesley Ruggles | Stars: Richard Dix, Irene Dunne, Estelle Taylor, Nance O'Neil
Votes: 6,918
"Cimarron" is epic, long and tedious.
8. Anthony Adverse (1936)
Passed | 141 min | Adventure, Drama, Romance
In 18th-century Italy, an orphan's debt to the man who raised him threatens to separate him forever from the woman he loves.
Directors: Mervyn LeRoy, Michael Curtiz | Stars: Fredric March, Olivia de Havilland, Donald Woods, Anita Louise
Votes: 2,025
The acting is great, but this is all style and no substance.
9. In Old Chicago (1938)
Passed | 95 min | Action, Drama, Musical
The O'Leary brothers--honest Jack and roguish Dion--become powerful figures, and eventually rivals, in Chicago on the eve of its Great Fire.
Director: Henry King | Stars: Tyrone Power, Alice Faye, Don Ameche, Alice Brady
Votes: 2,629
That "In Old"-somewhere in the U.S.-thing doesn't work for me, it seems.
10. The Turning Point (1977)
PG | 119 min | Drama, Music, Romance
When her daughter joins a ballet company, a former dancer is forced to confront her long-ago decision to give up the stage to have a family.
Director: Herbert Ross | Stars: Anne Bancroft, Shirley MacLaine, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Tom Skerritt
Votes: 5,172 | Gross: $33.60M
Let's dance... put in some handkerchiefs and sing the sentimental blues all the way to the Oscars. 11 nominations, didn't win a single one.
11. Doctor Dolittle (1967)
Approved | 152 min | Adventure, Comedy, Family
After the animal communicating veterinarian goes too far for his clientele, he and his friends escape their hometown to the sea in search of the Great Pink Sea Snail.
Director: Richard Fleischer | Stars: Rex Harrison, Samantha Eggar, Anthony Newley, Richard Attenborough
Votes: 10,253 | Gross: $13.52M
The stories about the making of this film would make one great movie. The movie itself? No.
12. Hello, Dolly! (1969)
G | 146 min | Adventure, Comedy, Musical
Matchmaker Dolly Levi travels to Yonkers to find a partner for "half-a-millionaire" Horace Vandergelder, convincing his niece, his niece's intended, and his two clerks to travel to New York City along the way.
Director: Gene Kelly | Stars: Barbra Streisand, Walter Matthau, Michael Crawford, Marianne McAndrew
Votes: 16,948 | Gross: $7.24M
Co-star Walter Matthau said of the great Babs: "I have more talent in my smallest fart than she does in her entire body". Fart jokes are funny. This movie is no fart.
13. The Reader (2008)
R | 124 min | Drama, Mystery, Romance
Post-WWII Germany: Nearly a decade after his affair with an older woman came to a mysterious end, law student Michael Berg re-encounters his former lover as she defends herself in a war-crime trial.
Director: Stephen Daldry | Stars: Kate Winslet, Ralph Fiennes, Bruno Ganz, Jeanette Hain
Votes: 259,561 | Gross: $34.19M
"...I've noticed that if you do a film about the Holocaust - guaranteed Oscar!"
14. Ivanhoe (1952)
Approved | 106 min | Adventure, Drama, Romance
A knight seeks to free the captive King Richard and put him back on the throne.
Director: Richard Thorpe | Stars: Robert Taylor, Elizabeth Taylor, Joan Fontaine, George Sanders
Votes: 10,216
Not even the great, drunk scene-stealer George Sanders could save this infantil Disney-rip off.
15. Mutiny on the Bounty (1962)
Not Rated | 178 min | Adventure, Drama, History
In 1787, British ship Bounty leaves Portsmouth to bring a cargo of bread-fruit from Tahiti but the savage on-board conditions imposed by Captain Bligh trigger a mutiny led by officer Fletcher Christian.
Directors: Lewis Milestone, Carol Reed, George Seaton | Stars: Marlon Brando, Trevor Howard, Richard Harris, Hugh Griffith
Votes: 17,853 | Gross: $13.68M
"I coulda had class. I coulda been a contender. I coulda been somebody, instead of a bomb, which is what I am. All 178 minutes of me."
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