15 Average Oscar Bait Films Elevated By Amazing Performances
8. The Reader
The Reader will probably be remembered as the film that was nominated for Best Picture over The Dark Knight and that really was a travesty. After all, this period drama, which deals with the legacy of the Holocaust (and focuses on, of all things, illiteracy), wasn't hugely popular at the time of its release and is a fairly empty viewing experience overall.
It's given the limited emotional power it has from the trio of great performances by Kate Winslet, David Kross and Ralph Fiennes (as older and younger versions of the same character). This was also the film that finally got Kate Winslet her Oscar and while it's arguable that she should've won for Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, her finest performance, her winning for this was still well-deserved.
It's also amusingly ironic that Winslet won the Oscar for a Holocaust drama, since in her hilarious cameo in Ricky Gervais' Extras (as a meta-fictional version of herself) she's working on a Holocaust drama purely because she's desperate to win an Oscar.