E

ighty-five years worth of experience is no guarantee of making the right choice for the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

Every year the organization nominates movies and picks among them the ones it deems worthy of enough cinematic excellence to win one or more of its 24 categories of film prizes, given annually through its Academy Awards ceremony.

Its selections, for a variety of reasons, often end up becoming the subject of widespread criticism. For example, it often favors choices that are out of touch with, and sometimes even in opposition to, popular attitudes.

This year’s Academy Awards, held on Feb. 24, will undoubtedly cause its own fair share of controversy. With these facts in mind, here is a look back at some of the academy’s biggest award selection blunders.

Worst Best Picture

Citizen Kane is universally regarded as one of the greatest movies ever made. It tops list after list of best film rankings. Most casual filmgoers would be surprised to discover that the Orson Welles’ epic did not sweep the Academy Awards. In fact, it only won one of the nine Oscars it received nominations for in 1941. And it lost Best Picture to, here it comes, How Green Was My Valley. What?

Nicholson and Pacino lose to Art Carney

Chances are very likely that you recognize The Godfather II and Chinatown. Odds are equally likely that you’ve never even heard of Harry and Tonto. All three of these were released in 1974. Each got nominations for Best Actor. But rather than Al Pacino or Jack Nicholson winning for their iconic roles as Michael Corleone and Jack Gittes respectively, the academy chose Art Carney, in a role that less than a handful of people can recognize or name.

Too highbrow for superheroes

The biggest movie of 2008 was inarguably The Dark Knight. Aside from making over a billion dollars worldwide, it was critically acclaimed as the greatest superhero film ever made. You would think that this would make it an easy shoo-in for Best Picture.

Well, you would be wrong. It didn’t even get a nomination. The same was also true of Wall-E, another box-office hit and critical darling. On the other hand, The Reader and Frost/Nixon, were among the five nominated that year for Best Picture.

(Dis)honoring legendary directors

What do Robert Altman, Akira Kurosawa, Sam Peckinpah, Ingmar Bergman, Federico Fellini, Orson Welles and Stanley Kubrick have in common, aside from being some of history’s greatest film directors? They are all part of a large list of great filmmakers who have never won an Academy Award for Best Director in their lifetimes. Some, like Peckinpah, never even received a single nomination.

So “bad”, they don’t even deserve a nod

Let’s play a quick mental association game. What comes to mind when you think of gorillas? The original King Kong, obviously. What about comedians? Definitely Charlie Chaplin, with his two-most popular works, City Lights and Modern Times. How about sci-fi horror? Frankenstein, from 1931, should be among them. If you’ve read this far, you probably have already guessed, rightly, that these culture-defining movies never won Oscars. The reality, even worse, is that none of them even received a nomination.