4. Life Is Beautiful
Life is Beautiful has to be admired for managing to make a comedy out of the Holocaust as Jerry Lewis tried - and failed - to do with The Day the Clown Cried, but did the film really deserve its countless Oscar nominations, specifically a Best Actor win for lead Roberto Benigni, who has done basically nothing of merit since? The film has Benigni playing Italian Jew Guido, who ends up in a German concentration camp during WW2, and tries to hide the atrocities of the war by putting on a clown act to everyone around him. While many found the idea affecting, in trying to make the best of a terrible situation, the idea can't help but feel a little tacky and tasteless in terms of execution. It doesn't help that Benigni's performance is more troublingly irritating than genuinely affecting, and the overarching feeling that camp inmates didn't have time to play silly buggers can't help but cloud our opinion of the film for every second we're watching it. Still, it is loved by a lot of people, so maybe we just need to grow a heart.