Hundreds of movies are made in a calendar year, including some really good ones, but the Academy can’t nominate all of them for the Best Picture award. Ten movies are nominated each year, a fixed field that began with the 2022 ceremony. Before 2009 (from 1944-2008), only 5 movies used to get the nomination each year. The Academy has a tough job of separating the good from the great, but still, in the past, there have been instances when some great movies were somewhat harshly left out of the Oscar nominations for the Best Picture category. So here we list the top 15 iconic movies that never got an Oscar Nomination For Best Picture:
15. Heat (1995)
Al Pacino and Robert De Niro share coffee, and for a brief moment, you nearly forget that one man is tasked with sending the other to prison. Michael Mann lets them have room to speak. Their mutual respect makes the pursuit even more painful to watch, because you know neither man will yield when they cross paths again.
De Niro portrays Neil McCauley, a thief who keeps his personal life as stripped-down as possible. Pacino’s detective, Vincent Hanna, has a domestic life coming undone. The film spends enough time with both men to make their decisions carry real emotional weight. Then the bank heist erupts onto the streets, with gunfire loud enough to make you recoil.
Not one Oscar nomination. Even in a year that brought us Braveheart and Apollo 13, that feels like a glaring omission. The coffee scene alone makes a compelling argument for the performances.
14. Se7en (1995)
David Fincher turns this city into a damp, battered place that feels impossible to leave. Two detectives pursue a murderer who models his crimes on the seven deadly sins. Morgan Freeman’s Somerset has witnessed enough to make him want to leave the force. Brad Pitt’s Mills still believes he can rush in and set everything right, a dangerous instinct in this film.
The ending receives most of the attention, but Freeman gives you reasons to care well before the final stretch. Notice how exhausted Somerset looks when Mills mistakes his caution for cowardice.
The Academy honored the film with a single nomination: Film Editing. It was well deserved, although the lack of a Best Picture nod still hurts. A thriller this bleak was never destined to be an effortless crowd pleaser, and Fincher does not attempt to sweeten it for the audience.
13. The Matrix (1999)
Before Neo has even discovered the truth about his life, Trinity runs up a wall and leaves a roomful of cops scrambling. The Matrix grabs your attention from the very start. The Wachowskis turn a computer hacker’s pursuit of answers into a compelling reason to doubt everything you think you see.
Keanu Reeves gives Neo exactly the right degree of uncertainty. You feel his astonishment as Morpheus reveals what the world has become, and then take pleasure in watching him learn to fight back. The action remains grounded by clear stakes, even when characters begin bending rules that most films treat as unbreakable.
It took home all four Oscars for which it was nominated: Film Editing, Sound, Sound Effects Editing, and Visual Effects. Best Picture was not one of those nominations. For a film whose ideas give its action so much power, recognition for the entire work would have been fitting.
12. Nightcrawler (2014)
Jake Gyllenhaal’s Lou Bloom speaks like someone who has spent his entire life studying advice about getting ahead at work. Then the real work begins. He cruises through Los Angeles after dark, records the aftermath of crimes, and sells the footage to local television news stations. Lou quickly realizes that someone else’s worse night can translate into a better payday for him. Rene Russo portrays the news director who keeps purchasing, and her conversations about what will sell rank among the film’s most repulsive scenes.
Dan Gilroy uses Lou’s courteous demeanor to make his behavior seem even more despicable. You keep hoping someone will finally refuse to do business with him. The film earned a single Oscar nomination, recognizing Gilroy’s Original Screenplay. Gyllenhaal was also absent from the acting lineup, making this snub especially difficult to accept. His vacant gaze unsettles you more deeply than most screen villains can with a weapon.
11. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004)
Paying to erase an ex seems appealing until the happy memories begin disappearing too. Joel discovers that midway through a procedure he has already agreed to undergo. Jim Carrey portrays him as a timid, wounded man who wants the pain erased, only to realize what else he is about to surrender.
Michel Gondry turns that loss into something both surreal and sorrowful. As Joel tries to hide Clementine, played by Kate Winslet, in corners of his mind where she cannot be discovered, the rooms begin collapsing around him. Some of those memories are embarrassing. Others are beautiful. It is easy to understand why he would want to preserve them even after the breakup.
The film won Original Screenplay, while Winslet earned a Best Actress nomination. That created space to celebrate the writing and her performance while still excluding the film from Best Picture. Few screen romances capture the little things people miss about one another with such authenticity.
10. The Truman Show (1998)
Truman Burbank lives in a pleasant house with a wife who constantly discovers odd opportunities to promote a product. His entire existence is a television program. He alone remains unaware, and Jim Carrey makes his gradual discovery of the truth both humorous and heartbreaking. Every unsettling encounter gives him one more reason to question the people he has trusted for years.
Peter Weir received a nomination for directing. Ed Harris earned a Supporting Actor nomination, while Andrew Niccol was nominated for Original Screenplay. The Academy nevertheless excluded The Truman Show from Best Picture, just as it left Carrey out of Best Actor.
9. Memento (2000)
Leonard relies on notes and tattoos to follow a search he cannot retain in his memory. Guy Pearce portrays a man who remembers his earlier life but is unable to create new memories. Christopher Nolan places you in a similar predicament: you repeatedly encounter people whose intentions are unclear, then must decide whether trusting them was a mistake. The color sequences unfold backward, whereas the black-and-white scenes proceed forward. It is an unusual method for telling a crime story, yet it lets every new detail reshape what you believed you had witnessed.
At the 2002 Oscars, Memento received nominations for Film Editing and Original Screenplay. It was not nominated for Best Picture. You can appreciate Nolan’s careful arrangement of the clues, but Pearce also makes Leonard’s fear and fury feel genuine. Each time a fragment of his past slips beyond his grasp, another person is placed at risk.
8. The Dark Knight (2008)
It earned eight Oscar nominations and two wins, yet found no place among the Best Picture nominees. The Dark Knight remains one of the Academy’s most difficult omissions to justify, particularly because Heath Ledger’s Joker did receive the Supporting Actor award. Its other victory came in Sound Editing.
Ledger gives the film a villain capable of making every strategy seem pointless. Christian Bale’s Batman may overpower people in a fight, but that ability offers little protection when the Joker forces him to decide who will suffer. Aaron Eckhart’s Harvey Dent makes those decisions carry consequences that extend beyond the next action sequence. You want Gotham to keep believing in him, even as the pressure steadily mounts.
Christopher Nolan sustains the tension while still making room for the people trapped in the chaos. The pursuit across Gotham is exhilarating. The debate over what Batman should be permitted to do gives you plenty to consider after the film ends. It is fair to call this one of the greatest superhero films, but its absence from that year’s Best Picture lineup still feels unjust.
7. The Prestige (2006)
Christian Bale is one of the most versatile actors in Hollywood, who has starred in almost all kinds of movies and has been acting since he was a kid, giving some lovable performances. His performance in Christopher Nolan’s mystery film The Prestige was no different. The movie shows an epic rivalry between the two British onstage magicians of the late 19th century, Robert Angier and Alfred Borden, played by Hugh Jackman and Christian Bale, respectively.
The film received positive reviews and strong box-office results, and was also nominated for Best Cinematography and Best Art Direction at the Oscars. Even though these types of movies are very popular with the general public, it’s very difficult for them to get serious recognition at the Oscars and the other major awards. The film is also on the IMDb Top 250 list.
6. The Hurricane (1999)
Boxing movies are generally very popular with the Academy Awards, as many of the Oscar winners and nominees have been made about this sport, including the likes of Rocky, Million Dollar Baby, Raging Bull, etc. Norman Jewison’s film The Hurricane is also a biographical film about the former middleweight boxer Rubin “Hurricane” Carter, who spent nearly 20 years in prison after being wrongly convicted of a triple homicide in a bar in Paterson, New Jersey.
Denzel Washington, who played the character of Carter, was brilliant as ever and won the Golden Globe Award for Best Leading Actor and also received an Oscar nomination for the same category for his truly amazing performance. The movie itself has some mixed reviews, as some of the critics termed it a ‘fictionalized’ view of Rubin Carter’s life and the homicide case.
As with Fight Club, this film also would have had no chance against American Beauty even if it had been nominated, but the film nonetheless deserved an Oscar nomination for Best Picture at least.
5. Reservoir Dogs (1992)
Quentin Tarantino is one of the leading film directors in Hollywood, and his crime film Reservoir Dogs, released in 1992, is still regarded as one of his best works as a director. Some movies are so interesting throughout that, as a viewer, you simply don’t want them to finish so early, and this is certainly one of those, with a runtime of only 99 minutes.
The film was a big hit worldwide, and the film magazine Empire named it the “Greatest Independent Film ever made”. Ironically, it didn’t receive any Oscar, Golden Globe, or BAFTA nominations, but is still on the IMDb top 250 list.
1992 was the year in which all five movies that were nominated in the Best Motion Picture-Drama category were also nominated for the Oscars, as no Musical or Comedy movie was nominated. Clint Eastwood’s Western film Unforgiven beat all the other nominees, including Scent of A Woman, in which Al Pacino’s performance was a masterclass.
So, you might ask, at the expense of which film could Reservoir Dogs have filled in for the Best Picture nomination? It should have easily been included at the expense of either Howard’s End or The Crying Game.
4. American Gangster (2007)
Ridley Scott and Russell Crowe have made a total of 5 films together, including Gladiator in 2000, which won 5 Oscars, including the Best Picture award of that year. The biographical crime film ‘American Gangster’ is another brilliant film in which the duo of Scott and Crowe worked together. Denzel Washington was awesome in this movie as he played the character of a criminal, Frank Lucas, who is shown smuggling heroin into the US on American service planes returning from the Vietnam War.
The movie rocked at the box office, yielding over $266 million worldwide, and received two Oscar nominations (Best Supporting Actress and Best Art Direction). However, the Golden Globes treated the film a lot better, nominating it in three major categories: Best Picture, Best Leading Actor (Denzel Washington), and Best Director (Ridley Scott).
The movie didn’t convert any of the Oscar or Golden Globe nominations into a win because the year 2007 saw some other great movies as well, including No Country for Old Men and Atonement.
So, which movie could have vacated the spot for American Gangster in the Best Picture category? Well, the comedy-drama film Juno is not at all better than American Gangster, but was probably included in the nominations due to its different genre.
This again raises the argument that perhaps the Academy Awards should also have two different categories, like the Golden Globes, which are ‘Drama’ and ‘Musical or Comedy’, for some major awards like Best Picture and Leading Actor/Actress.
The Academy expanded Best Picture to 10 nominees for films released in 2009. The number later varied between 5 and 10 before returning to a fixed field of 10 at the 2022 ceremony. The rules do not reserve places for particular genres.
3. Shutter Island (2010)
It’s very unusual for a super-duper hit film by Martin Scorsese starring iconic actors like Leonardo DiCaprio and Ben Kingsley to miss out on the Academy Award nomination for Best Picture, but their psychological thriller film Shutter Island did fall prey to this cruel injustice in 2010. It’s a topsy-turvy film throughout, and at no point in this film can you predict what’s going to happen next. It was another of Martin Scorsese’s brilliantly directed movies, well supported by a brilliant display of acting from all the actors.
The film grossed nearly $295 million, becoming Scorsese’s highest-grossing film worldwide at the time. Despite its paramount success at the box office, the film wasn’t able to receive a single nomination in any category in the Big 3 film awards, i.e., the Oscars, the Golden Globes, and BAFTA. One of the possible reasons might be that Christopher Nolan’s sci-fi thriller Inception, also starring DiCaprio, was released in the same year as Darren Aronofsky’s psychological thriller Black Swan.
When you compare these two with Shutter Island, then Martin Scorsese’s movie would, unfortunately, have to come second best against either of them. The Academy has no rule limiting Best Picture nominees by genre. Even though Shutter Island, Black Swan, and Inception all have elements of a thriller, there was no requirement to leave out Shutter Island. In any other year, it would have made it to the nominees at least.
2. The Usual Suspects (1995)
Bryan Singer’s American crime thriller The Usual Suspects boosted the career of Kevin Spacey, as his role as Keyser Soze (for which he also won his first Academy Award) in the film is as unforgettable as the movie itself. The line from Keyser Soze:
“The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist”
It is as iconic to this day as it was in 1995.
The film did win two Academy Awards, i.e., Best Supporting Actor for Kevin Spacey and Best Original Screenplay for Christopher McQuarrie. However, apart from these two categories, the film didn’t get any nominations at the Oscars, although it did get a nomination for Best Picture at the BAFTA Awards.
At the box office, it was a huge hit, grossing over $23 million against its $6 million budget. Even though Mel Gibson’s historical war film about the Scottish rebellion led by William Wallace in the 13th century, Braveheart, would have easily and deservedly won the Academy Award for Best Picture in that year anyway, the crew of The Usual Suspects would have at least felt appreciated if they had at least gotten the nomination.
1. Fight Club (1999)
Meet a Brad Pitt fan, and he’ll tell you that even movies like Seven, 12 Monkeys, Legends of the Fall, and The Assassination of Jesse James deserved a nomination for Best Picture. We won’t talk about all of them, but we do firmly believe that David Fincher’s thrilling movie, Fight Club, just belongs to another league.
Edward Norton played the leading role, with Brad Pitt and Helena Bonham Carter playing the supporting roles. The movie is about an insomniac patient who meets a person by the name of Tyler Durden on a flight back home from a business trip.
Both these men later engage in a fistfight outside a bar, which attracts a crowd of men, and they also start joining them day by day; hence, a club by the name of Fight Club is formed. For those who haven’t watched it yet, we won’t spoil it for you by disclosing anything further and leaving the rest for you to enjoy.
The movie underperformed at the North American box office on its initial release, but later found commercial success on home video. It especially attracted males aged 21 and under. It was one of the most controversial films of the ’90s, and many critics believed that it encouraged anti-social behavior because of its male machismo central theme.
The movie divided critics on release and received one Oscar nomination for Best Sound Effects Editing, but none for Best Picture. Brad Pitt’s character of Tyler Durden was voted the greatest movie character of all time by the popular film magazine Empire.
The main reason for not recognizing the film critically may seem reasonable to some extent, but in reality, the film did contain less violence and anti-social propaganda than A Clockwork Orange, which did receive the Oscar nomination for Best Picture at the 1972 ceremony. American Beauty might have won it anyway, but we believe Fight Club deserved a nomination for Best Picture in place of The Cider House Rules.
Honorable Mentions
There are some other popular movies as well that have also been victims of cruel mistreatment by the Oscars:
- American History X (1998)
- Once Upon A Time In America (1984)
- City of God (2002)
In some cases, however, the exclusion seems logical, as with Steven Spielberg’s World War II film ‘Empire of the Sun’ in 1987, which wasn’t included in the Best Picture category, as in the same year, another better (arguably) World War II movie, ‘Hope and Glory ’, was also released.
Feel free to share some more iconic movies that never got Oscar nominations for Best Picture in the comments section below!