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14. 2003: Lord of The Rings And Not Much Else

The worst for 2004 was that it bested in badness the year that had just preceded it. In 2003, the Best Picture nominees were Return of the King, Lost In Translation, Master and Commander, Mystic River, and Seabiscuit. The eventual winner is a modern technical masterpiece, and I do think that Mystic River is one of the best crime dramas ever.

But, with apologies to what I know is a passionate contingency, Lost in Translation was trite in its quirkiness, Seabiscuit epitomized everything that’s clichéd about sports/triumph over adversity movies, and Master and Commander was as memorable as this year’s panned In the Heart of the Sea.

And there was not much that the Academy could have done to improve the lineup. Sure, City of God and 21 Grams would have helped, but when you have acting nominations for Cold Mountain, Pirates of the Caribbean, and Something’s Gotta Give, you know not even the snobby Academy members took this year seriously in any way. And if you need any additional proof of the weakness of the year, look no further than to Return of the King’s record-breaking clean sweep of the 11 Oscars it was nominated for. No one else deserved statuettes that year, it seems.

Good movies come and go in waves, it seems, because, as we shall see, the bad 2003-2004 years followed two very strong years.

13. 2011: The Artist Flattens Flat Competition

Also pretty forgettable was the slate in the first year of the sliding Best Picture nominees experiment (where there are anywhere between five and 10 nominees). The anointed nine were The Artist, Hugo, The Descendants,Moneyball, The Help, The Tree of Life, War Horse, Midnight in Paris, and Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. Most of these movies are, to be kind, divisive at the least. The Artist is an anthropomorphism of itself, collapsing under the weight of the own expectations it set up. There are flashes of brilliance in Sorkin’s Moneyball script, touching sentimentality in Scorsese’s Hugo, and comedic freshness in the performances in The Help. There is also a rekindling of brilliance in Woody Allen’s Midnight in Paris script.

But even Spielberg wet the bed with the disjointed War Horse, I’m simply not a fan of Mallick’s megalomaniac approach as in The Tree of Life, and as you can see from my commentary on, for example, Sideways, I’ll never be a fan of a movie like The Descendants. And Extremely Loud is the lowest-rated Best Picture nominee in two decades.

Adding to the insult is the fact that the Academy left at least three worthy contenders on the table - Bridesmaids, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy and The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo all deserved spots on the list if you ask me - and this was definitely not one of their proudest moments.

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