These 5 Best Picture Winners Aren’t Really Good Enough (No Matter What Their RT Score Says)

This year’s Oscar race is getting messier as the ceremony date approaches, and now the Best Picture winner might have become a tricky matter to predict.

Brady Corbet’s epic period drama The Brutalist has been long considered the most definite contender for the award, but a couple of recent ceremonies brought Sean Baker’s Anora forward, granting the movie way more chances to get that statuette after all.

Some of the latest discussions have turned out to be a major trigger for many movie lovers, let alone those who pray for Emilia Pérez to leave the ceremony with 0 prizes; however, this isn’t quite news in Hollywood.

Naturally, many of the movies that won in the Best Picture category were critical darling, but never quite managed to appeal to the public. Despite being considered a doubtful contender, those flicks remain Oscar-winning hits with certified fresh Rotten Tomatoes scores.

Shakespeare in Love (1998) — 92% RT

Even with its charming story and captivating atmosphere, Shakespeare in Love remains one of the most overrated Oscar winners decades later.

Many still believe that Steven Spielberg ’s Saving Private Ryan was robbed of its fully deserved Best Picture award when the statuette was all of a sudden given to Shakespeare in Love, following right after Gwyneth Paltrow’s Best Actress win for the same movie.

Though Shakespeare in Love might not be that bad after all, it’s still hard for some to enjoy it without thinking about its status as the best film of 1998 while in fact it’s not.

Argo (2012) — 96% RT

Ben Affleck ’s hit thriller pretty much followed the same pattern, winning the Best Picture award as one of the weakest contenders, but also being an actually good movie.

It’s fair to say that Argo isn’t even an Oscar bait after all, since the Academy is usually very much into somewhat mundane drama rather than action-packed flicks staying away from the true events they claim to be based on.

Still, it doesn’t say anything about Argo that just as good as a thriller movie can be, though the award should’ve gone to someone else.

CODA (2021) — 94% RT

Though the movie came as a refreshing addition to the Oscars ’ race back in 2022, CODA’s win in the Best Picture category felt like something wrong, especially considering other strong contenders like Denis Villeneuve’s Dune, Jane Champion’s The Power of the Dog or Steven Spielberg’s West Side Story who were also on the list.

CODA is still a groundbreaking story and probably one of the best movies of 2021; it’s a solid watch for all kinds of audiences, yet its Oscar win remains a questionable matter.

West Side Story (1961) — 92% RT

Still considered one of the best musical movies of all time, West Side Story might in fact be one thanks to its actors’ phenomenal performances and visuals that stun the viewers even more than 60 years later, though it’s still pretty obvious that the movie does belong only to its time and hasn’t really aged well.

From a very unlikely romance to omnipresent and endless talks about racial tensions, all those issues might’ve not influenced West Side Story’s status as a solid Oscar contender, but they did exclude it from the list of films that remain relevant decades later.

All The King’s Man (1949) — 97% RT

It might be the movie’s politically oriented and relatively slow-paced plot that’s to blame, but All The King’s Man was forgotten way more quickly than most of the other famous Oscar contenders from the 1940s.

Despite that, the movie is still a masterpiece of its genre which, just like with some others, the Academy usually doesn’t cross its paths with, but sometimes can still make an exception.

Additionally, All The King’s Man provided a story so powerful that it actually received a modern version with Sean Penn and Jude Law as the leads, though it still failed to garner the audiences’ attention.