The 16 Best Picture Winners That Never, Ever Should Have Gotten An Oscar

Mel Gibson as William Wallace in "Braveheart" (Credit: Paramount Pictures) It can’t be repeated strongly and frequently enough: The Academy Awards are a goddamned scam. Every year, shiny, gold statues are awarded to shiny, gold people by shiny, gold people not truly for excellence, but for being somehow, in some way “Oscar worthy™.” Quite often, this worthiness is determined not so much by the technical or artistic merits of a performance or work, but through a complex matrix of concerns native only to Hollywood; whether an actor is liked by his or her peers; whether a director is sufficiently deferential to the glory that is the industry; whether a film strives for quality without doing so in a way that makes other films look bad; whether its producers throw good parties; whether it’s winsomely British.