The best movies to lose Best Picture at the Oscars

Star Wars changed the course of movie history. It turned blockbusters into high art, taking the formula that Spielberg invented and blowing it out of the water. With this space adventure, movies became the biggest form of entertainment on the planet. Of course, the Academy saw things differently, giving the award to the safe (if incredibly witty) Annie Hall. 

Lady Bird just can't catch a break. Her mom doesn't understand her, her boyfriend is gay, and the kids at school think she's a weirdo. Oh, and she lost to some slimy merman at the Oscars. Greta Gerwig's debut is one of the great movies about a girl overcoming adversity, which she does with a sense of humor. 

Daniel Day-Lewis drinks more than just milkshakes in this three-hour epic. He drinks in the scenery in one of the most iconic performances of all time. His oilman may not have struck gold at the Oscars, but in this 2000s classic, he strikes oil. 

Have you ever heard of a movie called How Green Was My Valley? If you have, it's probably because it beat Citizen Kane at the Oscars. In the biggest snub in Oscar history, a movie that no one has even seen beat out The Best Movie of All Time (according to many). 

Billy Wilder and co-writer Raymond Chandler wrote the noir playbook with this tale of an insurance agent, a femme fatale, and the scheme they embark on together. Of course, there had been other noirs before this, particularly in the '30s when gangsters ruled the cinema. But this was the very first "modern noir." 

Once upon a time in Hollywood, the Academy gave the Oscar to the safest choice. The award would go to a Bing Crosby musical instead of a classic noir or a John Ford drama instead of an Orson Welles classic. But in 2019, they gave the award to a movie from South Korea that was not the safest choice. Too bad the safest choice was the right option. No one will talk about Parasite 20 years from now; they will all talk about Tarantino's joyride through Los Angeles. 

The Academy has been getting it wrong since Day 1. The first-ever Best Picture winner could have gone to Murnau's Sunrise, one of the greatest silent films ever made. Instead, it went to a movie about pilots in World War II. 

This is starting to sound like a hit piece against the Academy, which I don't want. It's not easy choosing between movies like Sunset Boulevard and All About Eve. Two of the best dramas ever, I can't imagine having to fill out a ballot with only one of these options. That said, it's hard to bet against Billy Wilder. 

The Academy seems to think movies are only made in America. I mean, did they not watch Grand Illusion? How is it that the best war movie ever made gets beat out by a film we haven't even seen? 

It's a matchup that could have been a boxing match. It's a duel that sees John Ford, George Cukor, Charlie Chaplin, and Alfred Hitchcock trade blows for Best Picture. The winner was Hitchcock, whose Rebecca made him a household name in America. But it would have been nice to see Chaplin take the belt for his satire on World War II. 

Quick history lesson: Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger are a directing team from Britain who made some of the best films of all time, even though most people don't know who they are. They are a huge influence on Scorsese, Anderson, Lucas, and Denis and are known for films that feel like daydreams come to life. They are in charge of classics like Black Narcissus, A Matter of Life and Death, and The Red Shoes, the story of a ballet dancer who lost to Hamlet at the Oscars. Now that we got that out the way, feel free to dive into their work on The Criterion Channel. 

Remember what won Best Picture in 2015? I'm not going to tell you, but I bet you remember another film from 2015 pretty well. Mad Max: Fury Road is one of the most memorable films this century, a sequel to George Miller's post-apocalyptic classic. 

There have been a lot of snubs in Oscar history. So many that we've written an entire list about them. But some of these snubs live in the memory of movie fans forever (who can forget the Citizen Kane blunder?), and Roma is one of those examples. The fact that Alfonso Cuaron's masterpiece lost to Green Book is still shocking to this day. 

David Lean is known for making big movies. Movies so big they can barely fit on the screen. But before he directed Lawrence of Arabia and Bridge Over River Kwai, he directed smaller movies like Great Expectations. The greatest Dickens adaptation to date, Expectations is one of those movies that was too strange for Academy voters at the time, who didn't see the power in Lean's oddball choices.

Yeah, this one's not a good look. How the Academy thought Dances With Wolves was better than Goodfellas is still one of life's great mysteries. 

1997 wasn't a who's who at the Oscars; it was a who are you ? Even Billy Crystal made a joke about the up-and-coming directors at the show, whom no one had even heard of. The best representation of that was  Fargo, a black comedy from a little-known team called The Coen Brothers.

Apocalypse Now is one of the most important movies ever made, which is why the award went to a little film called Kramer vs. Kramer. Don't get me wrong, Kramer vs. Kramer is one of the best movies about divorce. But this is Apocalypse Now we're talking about! Not many films stand a chance...

Up may not be the best Pixar film, but it was a whole lot better than The Hurt Locker. The early 2010s were when anything based on a true story won Best Picture (Argo, The Hurt Locker), no matter the quality. 

E.T. is one of the most beloved movies out there. A story set in the American suburbs that proved strange things can happen anywhere, E.T. was the highest-grossing movie for decades, which goes to show how powerful Spielberg's magic was in the '80s. Even today, the film glows with an ethereal light. 

Gone with the Wind is a tough one to beat, and we aren't going to give the Academy any flack for choosing it. But it would have been nice to see The Wizard of Oz win Best Picture. After all, it's a movie about the magic of cinema.