10 Most Outrageous Oscar Snubs in History: Films That Weren't Nominated for Best Picture

The Searchers (1956)

John Wayne's greatest and psychologically deepest western is pure tumbleweed eye candy. It's also so thematically bold and brutal about what the cost that blind hatred takes on a man's soul that it belongs on any list of the most powerful movies ever made. John Wayne has never been better than he is as Civil War veteran Ethan Edwards, who returns home only to discover that his niece (Natalie Wood) has been kidnapped by Comanches. His quest to find her, fueled by rage, grief, and racism, equals Ahab's in its biblical scale. Meanwhile, director John Ford shoots Monument Valley like a master painter, showing us not only the beauty of the American West but also how the sheer majesty of it makes our demons seem so very small. The Searchers is the alpha and omega of Hollywood westerns and — you guessed it — it was snubbed for Oscar's top prize.

Watch it: The Searchers, on Amazon Prime, Fandango Now, Google Play, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube

Some Like It Hot (1959)

Easily the best comedy of the 1950s, Billy Wilder's loosey-goosey, on-the-lam laughfest stars Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon as a couple of guys who get dolled up in high heels, skirts and oh-so-much makeup as they attempt to flee the mob. Crazy high jinks, gender confusion and some of the greatest comic dialogue ever captured on celluloid ensue. Curtis and Lemmon are as good as good gets as they both manage to find their own happy endings. Curtis gets Marilyn Monroe, and Lemmon gets … Joe E. Brown, who serves up the film's most famous line: “Nobody's perfect.” Well, maybe nobody is. But Some Like It Hot certainly is. The film got six nominations, but not the big one.

Watch it: Some Like It Hot, on Amazon Prime, Fandango Now, Google Play, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube

Psycho (1960)

You could argue that no great director was treated more dismissively by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences than Alfred Hitchcock. Not only did the greatest director of all time never win an Oscar for best director, but many of his most inspired films were never nominated for best picture. Two years after seeing Vertigo get snubbed, fate followed a similar path with this classic shocker about a seemingly nice young man (Anthony Perkins’ Norman Bates) who's hiding some serious skeletons in his closet. Of course, the shower scene is one of the (if not “the") greatest sequences in cinema history. But the performances by Janet Leigh and, of course, Perkins, are terrifyingly good. By killing off his star halfway through the film, Hitchcock made sure that Psycho was revolutionary — unfortunately, maybe too revolutionary for Oscar voters.

Watch it: Psycho, on Amazon Prime, Fandango Now, Google Play, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube

DON'T MISS THIS QUIZ: How Well Do You Know Psycho?

Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977)

Even the greatest science fiction films tend to get the brush-off from the Oscars. After all, neither Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey nor Ridley Scott's Blade Runner received best-picture nominations. But the lack of love for Steven Spielberg's emotionally rich head-trip blockbuster about UFOs, intelligent aliens and a sense of gee-whiz wonder as seen through the eyes of grownups is confounding. Coming on the heels of Jaws, you could make the case that Hollywood still wasn't sure if Spielberg was an artist or just a confectioner of moneymaking thrill rides. But if there was any doubt, then this movie should have won over the skeptics.

Watch it: Close Encounters of the Third Kind, on Amazon Prime, Fandango Now, Google Play, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube

Do the Right Thing (1989)

Still Spike Lee's greatest masterpiece, this vibrant slice of life about the racial fault lines that threaten to crack wide open in one Brooklyn neighborhood on the hottest day of the summer is still as timely as it was 32 years ago. What makes Lee's film so great is that it defiantly refuses to pull its punches and also isn't afraid to choose sides — those final 10 minutes are still devastating. Also every single performance is a gem, from Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee to Danny Aiello and John Turturro to Giancarlo Esposito to Bill Nunn to Lee himself. Looking back, the only explanation for its lack of a best-picture nomination is that this was a third rail too charged for the academy to touch.

Watch it: Do the Right Thing, on Amazon Prime, Fandango Now, Google Play, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube

DON'T MISS THIS: The 5 Best Spike Lee Films You Haven't (Yet) Seen

(Left to right) Morris Chestnut, Cuba Gooding Jr. and Ice Cube

AF archive/Alamy Stock Photo

Boyz N the Hood (1991)

Oscar voters like to be sure that a filmmaker isn't a one-hit wonder before giving him or her too much praise too soon. Or, at least, that's the only reason I can come up with for why John Singleton's blistering directorial debut wasn't nominated for best picture. A howl of anguish from L.A.'s inner city, Boyz N the Hood is a harrowing coming-of-age story about a young Black teen who's surrounded by drugs, gangs and poverty and trying to navigate his way through it all — and do the right thing. But doing the right thing isn't always as easy as it sounds. Cuba Gooding Jr., Laurence Fishburne and Ice Cube give heavyweight performances that tear at your heart and leave you shaking your head.

Watch it: Boyz N the Hood, on Amazon Prime, Fandango Now, Google Play, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube

Heat (1995)

Michael Mann's stylish and sensational crime epic that pits a tenacious, burning-the-candle-at-both-ends cop (Al Pacino) against a calculating, cool-cat master thief (Robert De Niro) is one of the all-time great cat-and-mouse movies. But it's so much more than just cops and robbers. This is underworld opera. Heat is so layered, the subplots are piled on so high, and the cast is so sprawling that it could have easily been a 10-part miniseries had it come out two decades later. Instead, it's merely the best heist film of the ‘90s. The Pacino/De Niro face-off got most of the attention when Mann's movie first came out, but every frame belongs in a museum and every performance belongs in an acting how-to manual. However, the biggest crime in Heat isn't on-screen — it's that it didn't make the cut in that year's best-picture race. The winner instead that year? Braveheart. It's a fine film, but it's no Heat.

Watch it: Heat, on Amazon Prime, Fandango Now, Google Play, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube

Chris Nashawaty, former film critic for Entertainment Weekly, is the author of Caddyshack: The Making of a Hollywood Cinderella Story and a contributor to Esquire, Vanity Fair, The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal.