15 Oscar-Baiting Films That Hilariously Failed To Win

12. The Iron Lady

To be fair to The Iron Lady, it was nominated for 2 Oscars and won both of them (Meryl Streep for Best Actress and Best Makeup), but when production began, the Weinsteins were no doubt hoping for a bigger push in meatier categories like Best Picture, Best Director and Best Screenplay. Given the period subject matter, major controversy surrounding Margaret Thatcher, and another Meryl Streep performance (who, if August: Osage County is any indication, can now be nominated for just about anything), it seemed like an Oscar slam dunk. So, what went wrong? For starters, the movie just isn't very good: it focuses far too much on bizarre asides in which Maggie speaks to an apparition of her dead husband Dennis, and skirts around the more contentious issues of Thatcher's active years, such as the sinking of the Belgrano and the miner's strike. So awful was the film, in fact, that it's a shock Streep still managed to win Best Actress, in what is easily one of her noblest failures: she's clearly up to the job, but the script is flat-out terrible.