3. Quiz Show
Year: 1994 Fellow Nominees: Pulp Fiction, Forrest Gump, The Shawshank Redemption, Four Weddings and a Funeral The year that Pulp Fiction was robbed (though in hindsight a film like that was never likely to win) of an Academy Award by the mawkish if enjoyable Forrest Gump, was also the year that saw Quiz Show nominated for Best Picture. The fourth directorial effort by actor, Robert Redford, Quiz Show is far and away his best film as a director (even if he did win a Best Director Oscar for Ordinary People in 1981), with Redford helming a movie that investigates a potentially fixed popular game show. Quiz Show is both a pure entertainment and too something deeper, something a little more akin to an examination of America's public image in the face of increasing moral panic. It's expertly handled, inventively constructed, and handsome to boot. Nominated for four Oscars overall (inc. for Redford as director and a Supporting Actor nod for the legendary Paul Scofield), Quiz Show finished the night empty handed, but it remains that it would've made a far more deserving winner than any nominee here bar perhaps Tarantino's inimitable Pulp Fiction.