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12. 2009: The Hurt Locker Wins in First Year of Expanded Race

In 2009, the Academy expanded the Best Picture field to ten nominees for the first time since the 1940s, forever altering Oscar history. In that first fateful year, also the first and only time a woman won Best Director, the chilling The Hurt Locker asserted itself over the groundbreaking and most successful movie of all time, Avatar, while leaving in the dust other worthy contenders from District 9 to Precious, Up, and Inglourious Basterds. Rounding the field of ten were An Education, Up in the Air, The Blind Side, and A Serious Man. I actually find that bottom five list to be somewhat weak, which is why I’m not enamored with this year and have placed it so low on the list.

Still, the year does show the Academy doing what it rarely does - recognizing themes and topics across a broad spectrum. In that first year of the expansion, each member was allowed to submit up to 10 nominees for Best Picture. Inevitably, or at least so the theory goes, this led to a more searching look for nominees. Thus, you have a war movie, a futuristic allegory of Apartheid, an animated movie, a spaghetti “western” about World War II, a quirky Coen Brothers movie, three movies aimed squarely at a female audience (one of them an unapologetic racial analysis), and a gutsy, innovative sci-fi movie with groundbreaking technology.

It’s somewhat unfortunate that the expansion came in a relatively weak year, because this arguably scared this Academy into requiring only five Best Picture votes of its members, allowing them to be once more insular in their picks. But, when you consider that the only viable contenders not nominated for Best Picture that year were Crazy Heart, Invictus, and The Last Station, it is clear why the first year of the expansion is near the bottom of the last 15 years.

11. 2005: Crash Delivers The Biggest Modern Upset

The year when Crash took Best Picture is infamously remembered as a bad movie winning, as it ousted the beloved Brokeback Mountain. Crash is perhaps the worst winner in this list of 15, but the rest of its lineup is nothing to sneeze at. On top of Brokeback you have Good Night, and Good Luck, Capote, and Munich. That year, Ang Lee won Best Director, but Crash took home the top prize.

Brokeback is a groundbreaking movie in its own right, and its presence alone moves the strength of the year up by several notches. Also great is Good Night, the first black-and-white nominee since Schindler’s List, a sort of mix between Spotlight and Bridge of Spies this year, and unabashedly political at a time when its politics were not in vogue. Munich, a much better turn for Spielberg (and his first of four and counting straight Best Picture nominees) than the later War Horse, is a difficult but intense portrayal of a tragedy. The year could have also had The Constant Gardner, Syriana, Memoirs of a Geisha, and Transamerica as credible nominees.

Still, overall, the win for Crash does taint the entire year, and leaves it much lower on the list than otherwise would have been.

Part 2 of 3 will be coming soon.

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