These Films Should Have Won "Best Picture," Rotten Tomatoes Says

[Silvershock]

2000s:
4. I never understood why Crash gets so much hate? I mean what is wrong with the movie that people says it was undeserved? Anyway I personally would have prefered Munich.

Ho-boy, you pushed my nuclear button there. I loathe Crash. That it got any kind of recognition beyond a "Can you believe this shit?" award is fucking astonishing to me. It's one of the least subtle movies I've ever seen in my life, and I'm including shit like Reefer Madness and Birdemic. The dialogue is DREADFUL. Every other line is some racist blah-blah schtick, jarring against how people talk in the real world and sticking out in every conversation to such a degree that you're painfully aware of the film's preaching. As I've often described it, it's like the director took a baseball bat, carved the word "racism" into it, and spent 90 minutes beating you around the head with it. Well, not 90 minutes for me. I turned it off because I just couldn't stand another minute of that trash.

You just know the Academy only gave that movie any attention because it was a "message" movie, and oooh so brave for talking about a subject everyone was already talking about (you know, only a mere decade and change since LA was on fire). Even on IMDB, where the crappiest films can find a pretentious masturbatory fanbase to claim their brilliance, the featured review for Crash is one calling it a preachy mess.

 

[Mr_Spanky]

Its rotten tomatoes though. just like the name says, that site is rotten and if you use it youll get poisoned.

Hold on... How Green Was My Valley beat Citizen Kane? The only explanation is that the academy was on drugs. Like, all of them. That's all that can be said.

P.S. Thanks

I have never seen "How Green Was My Valley", but im willing to believe that. Citizen Kane on the other hand i have seen (last year). Was serverely unimpressed. Yes, at the time techniques used was revolutionary, but as a movie it is a boring dredge of a film. I wouldnt even go as far as to consider it mediocre.

Boom. So much boom. I so despise the attitude that "because it was considered great then it must be great now". I have no doubt that back in the days when CK was made it was something that could hold an entire audeince in thrall. But now? No.

It's the whole "standing on the shoulders of giants" principle. Of course CK was a pioneer in its field and brilliant for its time. - and worthy of respect. But to pretend that no one has taken what they did and built upon it and made it more in the years that have passed since?

That's just dumb.

If you doubt it just try and imagine Peter Jackson's LotR with CK techniques and CK tech.

It's not just animals that are subject to evolution.

 

[K12]

I think that it's a bit of an unfair advantage to RT for many of the older films because all the votes happened way after the fact, hindsight is a big advantage. With this century's winners it's a mixed bag. I prefer the Oscar choice with some and the RT score for others, generally more populist choices which is what you'd expect. And some years both have the wrong answer (*cough* wolf of wall street *cough*)

Was anyone else surprised that neither "Star Wars" nor "The Empire Strikes back" won the RT award for their years?

 

[Grampy_bone]

It's not accurate to proclaim movie critic opinions to be the "true" measure of a film's quality; for that you would have to check ticket sales, but then a Transformers movie would probably win and we can't have that.

Critics are infamous for picking unwatchable stinkers and--in recent times--"message pictures" which are supposed to contain important social and moral lessons. Critics don't pay for their tickets so they're less invested in making sure they enjoy themselves, and they have their critical reputation to consider. No critic wants to be that one lone voice championing a movie that the others say is bad, or vice versa; you can be the one critic bashing an important and socially protected "message picture." That would be racist! There's also a strong pressure to criticize anything too popular. A lot of this list is just the critics telling people they don't know what's good. LA Confidential may be a more interesting movie to a jaded critic but most people would much rather watch Titanic.

There's also the effect of general marketing and anti-marketing. Everyone knew Citizen Kane was about William Randolph Hearst and there would be hell to pay if it won. Meanwhile some filmmakers and studios are savvy at canvasing Academy voters and persuading them to vote for oddballs, which is what happened with Shakespeare in Love.

 

[Souplex]

Men in Black is objectively the greatest movie ever. Not my favorite movie (Pacific Rim) mind you, this has nothing to do with opinion.
Men in Black has 0 Oscars.
Thus the Oscars have no justification for their continued existence.

 

[Ihateregistering1]

2000s:
4. I never understood why Crash gets so much hate? I mean what is wrong with the movie that people says it was undeserved? Anyway I personally would have prefered Munich.

Ho-boy, you pushed my nuclear button there. I loathe Crash. That it got any kind of recognition beyond a "Can you believe this shit?" award is fucking astonishing to me. It's one of the least subtle movies I've ever seen in my life, and I'm including shit like Reefer Madness and Birdemic. The dialogue is DREADFUL. Every other line is some racist blah-blah schtick, jarring against how people talk in the real world and sticking out in every conversation to such a degree that you're painfully aware of the film's preaching. As I've often described it, it's like the director took a baseball bat, carved the word "racism" into it, and spent 90 minutes beating you around the head with it. Well, not 90 minutes for me. I turned it off because I just couldn't stand another minute of that trash.

You just know the Academy only gave that movie any attention because it was a "message" movie, and oooh so brave for talking about a subject everyone was already talking about (you know, only a mere decade and change since LA was on fire). Even on IMDB, where the crappiest films can find a pretentious masturbatory fanbase to claim their brilliance, the featured review for Crash is one calling it a preachy mess.

Agreed, I thought "Crash" was terrible. It was about as subtle as an avalanche and even less entertaining.

I also thought it was funny that the movie takes place in Los Angeles, a city with a metro population of 13 million people and covering 500 square miles, and yet the same people would continuously just happen to run into one another.

LA Confidential may be a more interesting movie to a jaded critic but most people would much rather watch Titanic.

We must run in different crowds: everyone I know would watch LA Confidential over Titanic any day of the week.

 

[flying_whimsy]

I remember being really pissed off at the academy when Up not only didn't win, but wasn't even nominated for picture of the year. I made a point to learn how the oscar process works after, and I have since stopped giving it any consideration.

It is all a sham, just like mpaa ratings.

 

[4Aces]

RT's pro ratings have been getting wilder lately, and a lot of questionable sources are being compiled. It is almost as if they are trying to compete with Metacritic (aka shillfactory).

 

[C14N]

I remember being really pissed off at the academy when Up not only didn't win, but wasn't even nominated for picture of the year. I made a point to learn how the oscar process works after, and I have since stopped giving it any consideration.

It is all a sham, just like mpaa ratings.

Em, Up WAS nominated. It was considered a huge achievement too. It was only the second animated film to ever be nominated. How did you miss that?

Anyway this list is kind of dumb. Rotten Tomatoes scores are good for figuring out whether a movie is worth watching or not, they're not good at all for judging one film against another, especially when it comes to old movies where many of the reviews are retrospective ones written when the film is already considered a classic (like with Citizen Kane).

 

[C14N]

It's not accurate to proclaim movie critic opinions to be the "true" measure of a film's quality; for that you would have to check ticket sales, but then a Transformers movie would probably win and we can't have that.

Critics are infamous for picking unwatchable stinkers and--in recent times--"message pictures" which are supposed to contain important social and moral lessons. Critics don't pay for their tickets so they're less invested in making sure they enjoy themselves, and they have their critical reputation to consider. No critic wants to be that one lone voice championing a movie that the others say is bad, or vice versa; you can be the one critic bashing an important and socially protected "message picture." That would be racist! There's also a strong pressure to criticize anything too popular. A lot of this list is just the critics telling people they don't know what's good. LA Confidential may be a more interesting movie to a jaded critic but most people would much rather watch Titanic.

There's also the effect of general marketing and anti-marketing. Everyone knew Citizen Kane was about William Randolph Hearst and there would be hell to pay if it won. Meanwhile some filmmakers and studios are savvy at canvasing Academy voters and persuading them to vote for oddballs, which is what happened with Shakespeare in Love.

That's such a load of totally unsubstantiated bullshit that I can't even begin to imagine which bull's ass you managed to pull it out of.

 

[the December King]

I'm sorry, but the internet is objectively wrong on a few of these. The Crying Game over Unforgiven? Fuck that, Unforgiven is the best western not part of the Fistful of Dollars series. I'll disown my firstborn if they say otherwise. And ET, really? That movie was probably overrated at the time, I finally got around to seeing it recently and damn, its really not that good. Might be the weakest Spielberg movie I've seen, and I've seen AI. Not that the Academy was right that year with Gandhi, but saying ET is just way wronger.

Also, not to diss Annie Hall, but how the fuck does it have a higher rating on Rotten Tomatoes than Star Wars? If it were imdb I could believe it but Rotten Tomatoes works on a recommended/not recommended dichotomy.

I second eeeeverything MarsAtlas has said here.

I personally think that Unforgiven is not only the best western outside of the Fistfull of Dollars series, but it was the LAST western (though I haven't seen The Hateful Eight yet, and may be wrong)

 

[Vykrel]

this really isnt accurate. i remember this being posted on Reddit several days ago and i will point out what was pointed out then: this data only uses the Tomatometer, which is not a good indicator. for example, it says that Brooklyn is the highest-rated Best Picture nominee because 98% of the reviewers gave it a positive review.

in actuality, Brooklyn is not the highest-rated of the nominees. the person who came up with these results needs to redo them, but use the average rating for each film, rather than the Tomatometer score. when looking at the average scores, you will find that Brooklyn has a score of 8.5, while Mad Max: Fury Road, with its lower 97% approval rating, has a slightly higher average score of 8.6, as does Room. Spotlight has an even higher score than those, with an 8.9. this puts Brooklyn in 4th place among the Best Picture nominees.

and if you combine both the Tomatometer score and the average rating, which RT does with their "Top 100 Movies of the Year" lists, you will find that Mad Max: Fury Road is the highest-rated film of the year, on Rotten Tomatoes. on this list, Brooklyn is put in 4th, though it is actually in 3rd, since Selma appears on the list as a 2015 release, even though it came out last year.

 

[rgrekejin]

I'm sorry, but the internet is objectively wrong on a few of these. The Crying Game over Unforgiven? Fuck that, Unforgiven is the best western not part of the Fistful of Dollars series. I'll disown my firstborn if they say otherwise. And ET, really? That movie was probably overrated at the time, I finally got around to seeing it recently and damn, its really not that good. Might be the weakest Spielberg movie I've seen, and I've seen AI. Not that the Academy was right that year with Gandhi, but saying ET is just way wronger.

Also, not to diss Annie Hall, but how the fuck does it have a higher rating on Rotten Tomatoes than Star Wars? If it were imdb I could believe it but Rotten Tomatoes works on a recommended/not recommended dichotomy.

I second eeeeverything MarsAtlas has said here.

I personally think that Unforgiven is not only the best western outside of the Fistfull of Dollars series, but it was the LAST western (though I haven't seen The Hateful Eight yet, and may be wrong)

I second everything The December King has said here, and thereby MarsAtlas' motion is carried. And as much as I love the Man with No Name series, I'd actually go one step further and say that I actually thought Unforgiven was a little bit better than any of the movies in it.