Top 10 Least Favorite Oscar Nominated Films

Top 10 Least Favorite Oscar Nominated Films

The Oscars are coming up very soon, that means I’m in the mood to discuss all things Oscars and award shows. So today I’m going to be talking about my 10 least favorite movies nominated for an Oscar. 

10. Suicide Squad (2016): This is one that people sometimes forget was actually Oscar nominated becuase the film’s reputation hasn’t been great. It’s often criticized as bottom tier DC and a big disappointment. But the film was actually very profitable in theaters and was Oscar nominated. This is actually the only DCEU film to be nominated for an Oscar. It wasn’t just nominated for an Oscar it actually won an Oscar. This film won best makeup and hairstyling which is pretty incredible. Regardless of what you think about the film, it’s actually a very deserving win but the makeup for the characters looks incredible. I’ll say this, I don’t think the film is as bad as much of a train wreck as people say it is. I think it’s a totally watchable film that’s also kind of a dud. The film’s production is out there and infamously this was a big victim of WB not knowing what they wanted to do with the DCEU. This isn’t the film that David Ayer set out to make. You watch the first trailers for the movie and it’s not at all like the finished film we got in August 2016. This is also the film that launched Margot Robbie to the A-list. She had a breakout role in The Wolf of Wall Street, but everybody has known who Margot Robbie is since this film came out. It’s not a great movie but it’s actually kind of important in several regards. 

9. Batman Forever: This is another interesting one because I think Batman Forever is one of the ultimate examples of a film’s reputation being hurt by its sequel. I don’t think Batman Forever is a great top tier film but I think Batman and Robin hurt how big of a hit this movie was. It made a lot of money, it grossed more than Batman Returns. I think the excitement for the film came from Jim Carrey’s Riddler who was on top of the world when this movie came out. It also got nominated for three Oscars including cinematography and two sound categories. It didn’t win any of them but three Oscar nominations for a film with 41% on Rotten Tomatoes is pretty impressive. The sound nominations don’t bother me too much, it’s a big expensive blockbuster so the sound nominations make enough sense. Although I’ve never watched the movie focusing on the sound. Cinematography is a bit of an interesting nomination, because I don’t hear anybody talking about the cinematography or the look of the film. 

8. The Princess Bride: This is one of my movie hot takes, I’ve never been a fan of The Princess Bride. I’ve seen the film several times a year and it has never connected with me at all. Sure, the film is iconic and filled with memorable quotes and lines but that doesn’t make the movie good. It’s a film that I feel is beloved because it’s iconic, but if it wasn’t as iconic as it was I don’t think the film would be held in such high regard. The film was nominated for best original song which is a bit stranger because I don’t remember their being a song written for this film. So that nomination seems a bit odd to me. I don’t know, this movie has never worked for me. I actually like a lot of Rob Reiner films like A Few Good Men and When Harry Met Sally, of the ones I’ve seen, The Princess Bride is easily the weakest of the bunch. I actually almost got to meet Cary Elwes back in September for a special screening of the film. I didn’t end up meeting him because of the timing and things. But it would’ve been so awkward to meet him in an environment that’s meant to celebrate a movie of his that I don’t like. 

7. JoJo Rabbit: The film where I started to put a little bit of a pause on Taika Waititi as a director. I loved Thor Ragnarok, that is a top tier Marvel and gave the Thor franchise a much needed boost of energy. He follows that up with JoJo Rabbit, which wins him an Oscar and all sorts of awards. I watched the film after the ceremony and I didn’t like this film at all. I find something so flawed with the fundamental concept of doing this spoof on Hitler and WWII. Them trying to make Hitler this Looney Tunes type character is kind of gross to me. Sam Rockwell was like the only redeeming quality about the film, everything else I couldn’t connect with it. I love Scarlett Johansson but her accent sounded terrible. I didn’t buy it at all. I didn’t get emotional at the sad parts because the movie was too focused on being this laugh out loud comedy. The fact that this movie won best adapted screenplay over Little Women and Joker is baffling to me. Some of the other movies on the list are nominated for sound categories that I can understand. JoJo Rabbit getting multiple nominations and even winning an Oscar is insane to me. 

6. Anora: The last film to win best picture at the Oscars and this was one of my biggest hot takes of the last several years. I didn’t like Anora and I legitimately didn’t get the hype for this film at all. I was a bit late to see this movie and I heard from so many people that it’s one of the best films of 2024 and it was tied with Deadpool & Wolverine as the funniest film of 2024. For me, I watched a movie that was overly long, unfunny, and simply annoying. Like Jojo Rabbit, I couldn’t buy into the central concept of the film. The film wants you to connect with these characters and their relationship but they’re totally stupid characters that got married before they should’ve and so immaturely. So I couldn’t buy into the central relationship of the film which is a BIG problem. Also, when the film turns into a chase to find the finance the writing becomes so poor where the fact they didn’t go to the strip club first pissed me off because it was the most obvious place. The film could’ve been 20-30 minutes shorter had the characters been smarter. The fact that Mikey Madison won the Oscar for Demi Moore for The Substance is baffling to me. Heck, Emilia Pérez was a more deserving winner than this film. 

5. Alien 3: This is one of the biggest sequel drops of all time, Aliens is a classic sci-fi horror action film from James Cameron. Alien 3 is a disaster of a project that has one of the most fascinating backstories of all time. Basically, the producers knew they wanted to make a third film but they started filming without a completed script. So in order to get the movie they just hired a random director to get the movie done. Who did they hire? They got David “FREAKIN” Fincher to direct an Alien movie and wasted all of his talents. To be fair, this was his directorial debut so he wasn’t a name. But it’s funny to look back and go they hired David Fincher as a director in order to get Alien 3 made. That’s crazy to me and so funny in retrospect. Credit where credit is due, this movie was nominated for best visual effects and the visual effects are pretty good. It’s a David Fincher film so it looks great and there are some cool sequences here and there. But overall, this film is a mess because nobody knew what they wanted Alien 3 to be. I’m not mad that it’s one nomination is visual effects because it is deserving of that. 

4. The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies: I’m not sure how many franchises can say this, but every single entry in the Middle Earth franchise was nominated for at least one Oscar. None of the Hobbit movies won any Oscars but they were all nominated. To me easily the weakest film of the Hobbit franchise and Middle Earth in general is Battle of the Five Armies. To me, this is the entry in the trilogy that feels the most stretched out. What’s so bizarre about this film is that the “battle of the five armies” in the book is like two pages. So they took two pages of a book and converted it into a nearly 3 hour long film so everything feels stretched out. There’s so much meaningless fluff in here that exists purely so the film can have a lengthy runtime. Beyond that, there’s a lot of action and it looks very expensive, it also feels like visual noise. There’s a scene with Legolas climbing this bridge as it’s falling and it feels like a video game. There’s not much about this film that works so it’s easily on the list. With that said, the film was nominated for best sound editing and the sound design is pretty good. There’s plenty of big expensive shots with lots of sound in the background so it makes enough soon. Good nomination? Yes. Bad movie? Also yes. 

3. Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones: This is a place holder entry for the Star Wars franchise. I went back and forth on putting either Attack of the Clones or Rise of Skywalker on the list. These are my two least favorite Star Wars films and I don’t know which one is worse. For right now, I’m putting Attack of the Clones on this list. I just find this to be a bit of a mess of a movie. This is easily the least focused film of the prequel trilogy. Both of the other films have a clearer goal and objective of what our heroes are trying to do. This film spends a good portion of its run time focusing on the romance between Anakin and Padme but it’s some of the least interesting stuff in the prequels. The dialogue is atrocious. You do not buy into their chemistry whatsoever. The film is also a murder mystery investigation but it lacks the intrigue because the audience already knows who’s behind all of it from the very beginning. George Lucas also made some very weird decisions here with the over reliance on CGI and less on practical sets. Scenes that should be simple and straight forward don’t look great. Weirdly enough the CGI is what this film was nominated for which is crazy. It’s also one of the few movies to be nominated for both an Oscar and Razzie nominations the same year. 

2. Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen: The Michael Bay Transformers films are an interesting bunch. Where the 2007 original is a pretty solid blockbuster with likeable characters and plenty of cool action. After that, all of the Michael Bay Transformers movies didn’t capture the magic of that film. Revenge of the Fallen is one of the worst entries in the franchise. Why is that? Well the simple answer for that is this film was in pre-production during the writer’s strike. During this time, Bay worked with visual effects and storyboard artists to create several action set pieces. And then after the strikes ended the writers had to write the film based around the already established action set pieces. So the plot of the film makes no sense, characters randomly show up in places with no explanation whatsoever. There’s so much juvenile humor in here that’s cringy, especially with John Turturro’s character. There’s also multiple humping jokes that don’t belong in a Transformers movie whatsoever. The over sexualization of Megan Fox in the movie gets a bit weird and creepy. With that said, the film was nominated for best sound mixing. It’s another big and example film, so that nomination makes enough sense to me. 

1. The Boss Baby: This is one of the most bizarre animated feature nominations of all time. The Boss Baby is nobody’s favorite animated movie, nobody is even proclaiming this as one of DreamWorks’ best films. But somehow it got nominated for best animated feature which is bizarre to me. What’s even weirder is that it got in over The LEGO Batman Movie and Captain Underpants: The First Epic Movie, both of those movies are 10x better than The Boss Baby. Even Despicable Me 3 is a more deserving nomination than this film. The film tries to explore similar themes and ideas as Toy Story but without the wit and creativity of what made that film an animated classic. Where it goes in the back half of the film with the ideas it explores are way too complex for any children to understand that it’s just bizarre. Overall, this is a bizarre entry in DreamWorks canon who has put out some great movies that are creative and imaginative, and The Boss Baby tries to be one of those but utterly falls at it. One of the worst animated movies of all time in my mind and the film LEAST deserving of an Oscar nomination.