Greatest Movies That Should've Won an Oscar

“The Shawshank Redemption” is currently the top rated movie on IMDb with a rating of 9.3 out of 10 with nearly 2.2 million users having submitted their scores. The drama about two imprisoned men was a hit upon its release and received seven Oscar nominations in 1995, including one for Best Picture. It lost all of them, with Best Picture going to “Forrest Gump.”

Produced by MGM during Hollywood’s big studio golden age, “Singin’ in the Rain” is considered to be one of the greatest movie musicals of all time. Yet despite the involvement of MGM and star Gene Kelly, the film did not receive much critical acclaim upon its release. It was nominated for two Oscars in 1953, including Best Musical Score, which ultimately was awarded to Alfred Newman’s scoring of the movie “With a Song in My Heart.”

While box office earnings are not necessarily a deciding factor in Oscars wins, extremely popular films that make a lot of money often do well at the awards. Nine of the 10 top grossing movies of all time, when adjusting for inflation, have won at least one Oscar, including the original 1977 “Star Wars.” However, “Star Wars: Episode VII – The Force Awakens,” which is the 11th top grossing movie of all time won no awards. The movie — which finds characters Finn, Rey, and others in the Resistance searching for Luke Skywalker — received five nominations, including Best Achievement in Visual Effects.

Martin Scorsese graphically depicted urban decay and alienation in “Taxi Driver,” about a seething, mentally unstable New York City cabbie who erupts in violence. It is famous for Robert De Niro’s confrontational line “You talking’ to me?” The film helped make Jodie Foster a star and solidified Scorsese’s reputation as a visionary director. The searing film has a Rotten Tomatoes Freshness rating among critics of 97% and a 93% rating among audiences. “Taxi Driver” was nominated for four Academy Awards but failed to win any in a competitive year that included Oscar-winning films “Rocky,” “All the President’s Men,” and “Network.”

The stylish and creepy film that paired ghoulish icons Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi for the first time is about Satan worshippers in Hungary. The early horror classic has an 88% Freshness rating among Rotten Tomatoes critics, though audiences were a little more off-put, and just 70% liked it. Horror films have not received many Oscar nominations over the years, and this one didn’t either. “It Happened One Night” dominated the Academy Awards in 1935, and “The Thin Man” also won Oscars.