Best Picture Oscar Nominated Movies

We already have a page that looks at all of the Best Picture Oscar Winning Movies, this page shows all the movies that got nominated for a Best Picture Oscar but did not win.   Originally I thought this was going to be an easy page to do…..boy was I wrong….it literally took all weekend.   It might have taken awhile….but I think this is a pretty cool page.  There are over 440 movies on the following table.  Every single one of the movies earned a Best Picture Oscar nomination…but did not win the big prize.

Best Picture Oscar Nominated Movies Can Be Ranked 6 Ways In The Table Below

The really cool thing about ther table is that it is “user-sortable”. Rank the movies anyway you want.

  • Sort Best Picture Oscar Nominated Movies by star of the movie
  • Sort Best Picture Oscar Nominated Movies by adjusted domestic box office grosses using current movie ticket cost
  • Sort Best Picture Oscar Nominated Movies by critic reviews and audiences voting.  60% rating or higher should indicate a good movie.
  • Sort by how many Oscar® nominations and how many Oscar® wins each Best Picture Oscar Nominated Moviesreceived.
  • Sort Best Picture Oscar Nominated Movies by Ultimate Movie Rankings (UMR) Score.  UMR Score puts box office, reviews and awards into a mathematical equation and gives each movie a score.  The ceiling to earn points for box office is $200 million…once a movie passes that mark it stops earning points in that category.
  • You can use the search button to sort by year

The following is the conversation that got this page done. 

The setting:  Cogerson and WoC are driving to a storage place on Friday morning.

WoC:  Do you remember the code to get through the gate at the storage place?

Cogerson:  Yep….It is A Streetcar Named Desire and Kramer vs Kramer.

WoC:  What are you talking about?

Cogerson:  The code is the year A Streetcar Named Desire won the Best Picture Oscar winner and the year Kramer vs Kramer won the Best Picture Oscar….the years 1951 and 1979……5179.

WoC:  You are so strange sometimes!

Cogerson:  Hey….it helps me remember things.  (Silence as Cogerson thinks) Now that I think about it….A Streetcar Named Desire did NOT win the Best Picture Oscar.  (Silence as Cogerson is thinking) I must be getting old…because I do not remember which movie DID win for movies made in 1951.  (WoC googles 1951 Oscar winners)

Cogerson:  Hmmmm….what won that year?  1950s winners? Let’s see From Here To Eternity and Marty  came later.  All About Eve was 1950.   An American in Paris?  The Greatest Show On Earth?  I think it’s The Greatest Show On Earth.

WoC:   It was not The Greatest Show On Earth.  The five movies that got a Best Picture nomination were A Streetcar Named Desire, A Place In The Sun, Decision Before Dawn, Quo Vadis and An American In Paris.

Cogerson: – Well….I did mention  An American In Paris.   Did you say Showdown Before Sunset got a Best Picture Oscar nomination?

WoC:   Not Showdown Before Sunset….it was called Decision Before Dawn.

Cogerson:   I have never heard of that movie.  That might be one of the most surprising movies to earn a Best Picture Oscar nomination.  (Cogerson thinking again)  Hmmmm….that might make a  good UMR page.

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24 thoughts on “Best Picture Oscar Nominated Movies”

  1. great list. love it. yea cogerson. yea UMR, yea WoC.
    I saw 99 of top 100, 94 of second hundred, 96 of third hundred, 79 of 4th hundred. over half of last 48.. this was mostly thanks to UMR. I have ,with much concentrated effort, seen about 930 out of top 1000 UMR movies which bottoms out at a ranking of 94.5 . 94.5 includes top 300 on this best picture nominees without wins list. you may find this incredible top 1000 on site index under UMR research, under UMR top 500(oops).. it is sortable and can list top 1000 reviewed or top 1000 box office or top 1000 Oscar nominations. I even use it to get top 1000 UMR with no Oscar nomination. awesome.

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  2. I had my computer cleaned and reprogrammed when my Google Chrome came up with garbled words. I now have Internet Explorer which unfortunately freezes with these pages that have huge tables. Therefore, I am unable to give you a total number of films seen. I imagine that I have seen most if not all of the nominees from the Studio System era.

    Favourite Best Picture Nominees In No Order Include:

    The Wizard of Oz
    42nd Street
    Top Hat
    The Awful Truth
    To Kill a Mockingbird
    The Adventures of Robin Hood
    Ninotchka,
    Wuthering Heights
    The Ox-Bow Incident
    Double Indemnity
    Sunset Blvd
    High Noon
    Roman Holiday
    Mister Roberts
    Doctor Strangelove
    The Sound of Music
    Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid

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    1. Added:

      I went through an article on another site about the “Bet Losers” one title of each year to help me make up my list and discussing other nominees. It didn’t include The Guns of Navarone. The Guns of Navarone should have been on my list as it is my favourite movie of all time! I tried counting seen films up to the top 100. I believe I have seen 75 of the top 100. The highest rated film I have seen is Dr. Zhivago.

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      1. Hey Flora….The Guns of Navarone is an awesome movie. You, me, Steve, Steve’s dad, my dad and so many others would include that among their favorite movies. It was one of Peck’s biggest box office hits. 75 of the Top 100….a pretty good percentage. Lots of great movies in the Top 100. Dr. Z is an all-time classic that has been among the biggest box office hits of all-time since it first got released. Great music and great shooting locations. Sir Lean hits another home run. Good feedback.

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    2. Hey Flora…..sorry you are having some computer issues. Hopefully we will not be doing to many of these massive pages. Seen all of your favorites. With Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Double Indemnity, Mister Roberts, The Adventures of Robin Hood, To Kill A Mockingbird, The Awful Truth and The Wizard of Oz being amongst my favorites as well. Good feedback….thanks for battling your computer to get this comment completed.

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  3. An interesting topic Bruce and I think we’ve discussed before which films we wished had won Best Picture and the wrong film won etc Saving Private Ryan vs Shakespeare in Love comes quickly to mind.

    Looking at the top rated on the chart, not sure Boyhood deserves to be in such company but than I haven’t seen it. A type of film that doesn’t appeal to me. I haven’t seen Whiplash or The Pianist either.

    Citizen Kane losing to How Green Was My Valley must have cheesed off legions of film buffs I’m sure but back then John Ford’s film was better liked than Kane by moviegoers. Kane’s repution grew in the late 50s and 60s when it was suddenly heralded ‘greatest movie of all time’ by the more serious European film buffs and Americans too.

    Bob is showing his age here with his personal list of films that shouldn’t have been nominated for Best Picture – Star Wars and Raiders among them, two of my all time favorites. Heck I couldn’t watch any Woody Allen movies after Star Wars lost to Annie Hall. And I know the thought of Raiders losing to Chariots of Fire still raises Bruce’s hackles. 🙂

    But I do agree with Bob on Brando and Mutiny on the Bounty, a very underrated performance, probably my favorite of Brando’s and that includes The Godfather.

    It’s been years since I saw Desiree so I can’t comment on Brando’s Napoleon until I watch it again.

    2001 A Space Odyssey should have won in 1968, it wasn’t even in nominated for Best Picture. Oliver! was the big winner that year.

    Psycho should have been nominated for 1960. Hitchcock’s horror masterpiece.

    More chat later. Vote Up!

    Reply

    1. “But I do agree with Bob on Brando and Mutiny on the Bounty, a very underrated performance, probably my favorite of Brando’s and that includes The Godfather.”

      STEVE “Your face I may forget but your kindness – never!”

      Form your own opinion of Desiree if you get the chance again and don’t be poisoned against the movie by Hirsch and his great pal Cthulhu Cogerson.

      I’ll return your Bounty favour by agreeing with you [genuinely I stress] about Psycho.

      About your reference to my “ showing my age” be careful that you don’t land in the soup The Work Horse as site owner with the politically correct crowd for discriminating over ageism.

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      1. Hey Bob….I guess the line has been drawn in the sand about Brando’s Desiree….you and Joel on opposite ends…..me trying to find the movie to watch so I can pick my side. As for your concerns about “ageism”…..don’t worry……we will always allow our elders a chance to speak their wisdom…even though we do not always agree with them…lol.

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        1. HI BRUCE “Hey Bob….I guess the line has been drawn in the sand about Brando’s Desiree….you and Joel on opposite ends…..me trying to find the movie to watch so I can pick my side.”

          As always this quote from your 7.52 pm post yesterday is incisive, but may I suggest the following partial amendment-

          “Hey Bob….I guess the line has been drawn in the sand about Brando’s Desiree….you and all-time acting genius Lord Laurence Olivier on one side and Joel on the opposite end…..me trying to find the movie to watch so I can pick my side.”

          [Other regulars should note that I’m not giving away any prizes for guessing which side The Work Horse will come down on if he does eventually catch the movie!]

          To be fair to Hirsch though, although I thought Mr Mumbles’ performance was powerhouse I didn’t like Desiree itself and my objection to Hirsch’s review was the hyperbole that “nobody went to see it’ a sweeping statement that presumably even you wouldn’t defend as you award it a whopping great adjusted domestic gross of $250 million.

          You would appear to reflect considerable accuracy there because in 1954 when both movies came out part of Desiree’s hype was that it had out-grossed the Brando classic On the Waterfront which you give an adjusted domestic gross of $235 million

          Brando’s great performance apart though, Desiree brings to me one other joyful thought involving Dan-like linkage which I’ve mentioned before. Henry Koster directed my Deanna in 6 movies [including 3 Smart Girls and Three Smart Girls grow Up but not Hers to Hold the 3rd in the trilogy] and it was he who directed Desiree so off-set he arranged for the Great Mumbler and the retired Little Miss Fixit of the movies, on a visit to Hollywood, to meet over dinner at Koster’s home. By all accounts they got on well together with [unusually!] no reported hanky-panky from Mr Mumbles.

          Take care.

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          1. Hey Bob…one day I will get the chance to see “your” Deanna in Three Smart Girls. My movie watching is way down this year…but should still end up with an average of one movie a day for the year. Lots of nice “nuggets of trivia” on your comment.. As for the new addition to my comment….ok….Sir Larry is on your side….lol.

    2. Hey Steve….thanks for checking out this massive 400 plus movie page. You are so correct…..when Chariots of Fire beat Raiders of the Lost Ark I was so miffed…..still….resent Chariots to this day….even though I now realize Raiders did not have a chance of actually winning. Good to know you felt the same way about Annie Hall and Star Wars.

      Boyhood is a good movie but not a great movie…the gimmick of making a movie over 14 years is more impressive than the final movie…in my opinion. As for Citizen Kane…..it did not have a chance of winning….Hearst pretty much had the entire Hollywood crowd against Welles….heck they even booed whenever Citizen Kane was announced during the ceremony.

      Brando’s performance has some fans…..but it also has lots of others who do not think so highly of it….as for me….I thought it was an ok performance…..but not in my Top 5 Brando performances.

      Somehow 2001 A Space Odyssey got a nomination in the database…..so it will be off this page the next time the website updates from the database. Good catch. I agree Psycho should have been one of the 5 movies to get a Best Picture nomination. Good stuff as always.

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  4. Opinions will I’m sure differ considerably among your viewers, with guys like Steve willing to argue for his own ‘pets’ until the cows come home. However for what it’s worth in Part 2 are a few of my own selections of the ones that at least deserved an outright win, though I do not have the skills of a Master to determine the actual winners that these ‘losers’ should replace. However whatever one’s opinion the painstaking compilation of this comprehensive and absorbing list is a highly worthwhile exercise – so “Voted Up!”

    Also useful if the material was readily available would be a list of stars who never got Oscar love for certain movies but maybe should have done so, at least with hindsight, for example in my own order of preference

    1/Brando’s Napoleon in 1954’s Desiree “Possibly the most underrated historical performance ever” [Lord Olivier – sorry Joel in THAT company you’re “just another guy around here!”]

    2/Spencer Tracy for 1954’s Broken Lance. It pains me to recommend that one but for example here is Margaret Hinxman [England’s lead film critic for a while in the 1950s] “If Spencer Tracy does not get an Oscar Hollywood is mad!”

    3/Jean-Paul Belmondo [at least in the ‘foreign’ category] for a performance that heralded in the ‘New Wave” style of continental acting in Jean-Luc Godard’s Breathless [A Bout de Souffle].

    4/Brando for the 1962 Mutiny of the Bounty – “And to think they put him down for that.”
    5/Archibald Alexander Leach for Notorious (1946- and indeed for a few others such as Penny Serenade and None but the Lonely Heart for which he was at least nominated. However overall Archie was never one of Oscar’s greatest of loves and overall IMDB credits him with a respectable [for the classic era] 11 awards and 20 noms.

    6/Irish actor Cyril Cusack for a movie-dominating supporting performance in 1966’s I was Happy Here top-starring Sarah Miles.

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    1. NOTE:

      I was too late to apply the edit button in my previous post but –

      The quote about Brando in Mutiny on the Bounty was from Richard Dreyfus.

      I omitted my 7th recommendation – Bruce Willis in The 6th Sense. However Brucie did get a nom from Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror Films USA for that role and overall IMDB credits him with a respectable 22 awards and 38 noms.

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      1. MOVIES I THINK SHOULD HAVE WON
        1/Dr Zhivago-greatest ‘intellectual’ epic film ever for my money
        2/2001-a very mystic film I thought
        3/A Streetcar named Desire-changed American acting forever – and my own life!
        4/Double Indemnity-3 great performances from Fred, Babs and Eddie.
        5/Apocalypse Now- “maybe greatest ever war film” [Orson Welles]
        6/It’s a Wonderful life-even Mr Moore’s Die Hard cannot compete at Xmas With my Jimmy
        7/Three Smart Girls-launched the Durbin era. Little Miss Fixit of movies had arrived!
        8/To Kill a Mockingbird-gave us Atticus whom the AFI designates as the greatest screen hero of all time.

        THESE ARE ONES THAT I FELT SHOULD NOT HAVE GOT EVEN NOMS and perhaps reflect Hollywood tendency to kowtow to hype.
        1/Star Wars A New Hope
        2/Toy Story 3
        3/Raiders of Lost Ark
        4/Dunkirk
        5/Giant
        6/Airport
        7/Towering Inferno
        8/Saving Private Ryan

        FINALLY to be playfully controversial here are ones which would not even have been exhibited let alone nominated had I owned a chain of cinemas like The Tiger
        1/Boys’ Town
        2/Goodbye Mr Chips
        3/A Star is Born 2018
        4/Witness
        5/How the West Was Won
        6/The Green Mile
        7/Captain Philips
        8/Cleopatra [1963]

        NOTES: (1) The work that went into compiling the above massive list and the value of the information itself does in my opinion warrant a detailed response (2) greatest disappointment for me is a humdrum 63% rating for Duke’s masterpiece The Alamo (3) most astute credit on the list – ranking joint top for Review with 95% Hank Fonda’s wonderful 12 Angry Men. Indeed the Top 3 best reviewed are what Variety would call movies “ with brains” in my opinion.

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        1. Interesting picks Bob. Looking at the first list…all good picks for sure….though I have not seen Durbin’s Three Little Girls. The movies that won out on these collections are pretty impressive as well….from The Best Years of Our Lives to Kramer vs Kramer to Lawrence of Arabia.

          Strongly disagree on many of the movies you included on the second list. Granted…I do not think Star Wars, Raiders. Dunkirk, Giant and Toy Story 3 should have one….but those great classic movies should gotten a Best Picture nom.

          Third list…You have some good movies on this list….I loved How The West Was Won, The Green Mile and Witness. I have not seen the most recent version of A Star Is Born…..but lots of people love that movie.

          Glad you like the Top 3 with brains…12 Angry Men is a movie that is always entertaining no matter how many times I have seen. Great feedback.

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          1. I BRUCE Thanks for all your comprehensive multi-feed-backs to my own posts. Interesting that you a Doyen of the movies have not seen Deanna’s 1936 Three Smart Girls. However there are actual outright winning Classics that I have never seen so I’ll not be too hard on you this time! – and anyway you gave us a very sound individual page on Ms Durbin and I’ll always be grateful to you for that.

            Three Smart Girls though is a ‘collector’s item’ because its success seems to have set in stone the Durbin screen persona. In her movies she nearly always played a precocious teenager/later young woman who was a kind of busybody who fixed other people’s problems and for example n 1945’s Lady on a Train took it upon herself to even solve a murder on the train!

            The sequels to the 1936 film are Three Smart Girls Grow Up 1939 and Hers to Hold 1943 in which she, at the time between real-life husbands, had an off-screen affair with the [married] greatest American actor of all time according to Welles – his pal Joe Cotten, so at least one of those Smart Girls had certainly grown up! [Fellow thespians on the set of Hers to Hold have remarked that Deanna could hardly keep her eyes off co-star Cotten during shooting]

            In Three Smart Girls 1936 Deanna plots to get her divorced parents back together. Indeed she gave that persona as one of the reasons for her premature early retirement “The highest paid star with the worst material. I couldn’t go on playing Little Miss Fixit forever!”

            I have conceded that I don’t have the skills [or conceit!] to definitively determine which movies should be excluded from the Oscar lists to make way for my own choices so I would probably be reduced to either (i) closing my eyes and sticking a pin in the lists of those that had succeeded or more likely (ii) pulling out at random a few of the Hirschhorn 4 star related movies that had made the successful lists. Indeed with his own praise Hirsch may well have cost some poor sod or movie an Oscar. “We’re not selecting THAT one. HE always gets it wrong!”

            Anyway once again my sincerest congratulations and compliments on producing another mega-comprehensive list which will be of enormous value to any movie buff interested in the subject concerned.

          2. I too was surprised to read Bob didn’t like How the West Was Won, never expected that admission. He never said anything negative about it before, when reviewing my videos. Plus it stars some of his favorite actors – Widmark, Stewart, Fonda, Wayne and Peck! Fantastic photography, great vistas, superb music by Newman, what’s not to like? Bob?

      2. No problem Bob Roy…..especially since you are giving Bruce some good kudos for his performance in The Sixth Sense. I was going to re-watch that one with my 12 year old…when I discovered that DVD/Blu-Ray is no longer in my collection. I suspect one of those Cogerson kids borrowed it….and never brought it back. I feel so empty living in a house that does not have The Sixth Sense in it….lol.

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    2. Hey Bob. Thanks for checking out this massive page. 447 movies (2001:A Space Odyssey…will soon be off the page….as it did not get a Best Picture nomination). I would say the biggest “mistakes” the Oscar people made would be Forrest Gump over Pulp Fiction, Shakespeare in Love over Saving Private Ryan and Chariots of Fire over Raiders of the Lost Ark (ok…the kid in me made me type that one…lol).

      Mentioning performances that did not get a nomination would be an entirely different….but very interesting page. I liked reading all of your suggestions from Brando to Brando. At least Mutiny on the Bounty has a spot on this page. As for Cary Grant…..I have always thought his performance in The Philadelphia Story was his best….sadly it was overshadowed by Stewart and Hepburn. I agree Jean-Paul Belmondo was very impressive in Breathless. Good stuff.

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  5. Yes this page is massive….but I enjoyed reading it after I finally got it completed.

    1. I have seen 375 or 83.70% of these Oscar nominated Best Picture candidates.
    2. Seen 154 of the first 155 movies. My only miss? #98 Shanghai Express
    3. 99 of the first 100 have been seen by me.
    4. 184 of the Top 200 have been seen by me……or 84 of the second 100.
    5. Seen 78 movies that finished 201 to 300.
    6. Seen 78 movies that finished 301 to 400.
    7. Saw 35 of the movies that finished 401 to 448.
    8. And….after messing with these movies all weekend…..I feel very positive that Decision Before Dawn is indeed one of the most surprising movies to earn a Best Picture Oscar nomination.

    Reply

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