8 Terrible Films That Somehow Won The Best Picture Oscar

5. Shakespeare In Love

Year: 1998 Fellow Nominees: The Thin Red Line, Saving Private Ryan, Elizabeth, Life is Beautiful Winning in a much stronger field, Shakespeare in Love serves as one of the very worst Best Picture winners of recent years, inexplicably beating out two huge, brilliant war movies from two of the greatest directors of all time: Steven Spielberg's Saving Private Ryan, which won the director his second Best Director Oscar on the night, and Terrence Malick's The Thin Red Line, one of the most transcendent war pictures ever released. Nominated for a staggering thirteen Academy Awards, Shakespeare in Love is the joint-second most nominated film in history, sitting only behind All About Eve and Titanic, which both received fourteen nods to hold the top-spot. John Madden's film won seven of its categories, most notably for its actresses, Gwyneth Paltrow (Lead) and Judi Dench (Supporting), the latter of whom was on screen for roughly eight minutes. Madden, a distinctly average director whose last film was the sequel to The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, was thankfully not presented with a statuette (though he was nominated), an act that would've surely taken the p*ss to another level considering what Speilberg and Malick had been up to in the same time.