15 Oscar-Baiting Films That Hilariously Failed To Win

14. Conviction

A tale about a woman (Hilary Swank) putting herself through law school in order to save her brother (Sam Rockwell) who was wrongfully convicted of murder, Conviction has all the makings of an emotionally intense, Oscar-primed experience. To be fair to the movie, though it was far from the best of 2010, Conviction was a straight-forward movie that hit the right emotional beats and benefited from strong work from Swank and Rockwell, though this didn't prove to be enough to scoop a single Oscar nod. The movie did get a nomination from SAG and a few other lesser awards shows, but given the pre-release expectation that this would be an Oscar frontrunner, its non-performance at the Academy Awards was a huge surprise. It's a perfect example of "close, but no cigar".