9 Films Designed To Win Oscars That Failed Miserably

Though writer/director Robert Benton's filmography is fairly sparse, it carries a lot of weight - with wins in both categories for Kramer vs. Kramer and nominations for Bonnie and Clyde and the underrated Paul Newman sleeper Nobody's Fool. Benton's pedigree, combined with a novel from Pulitzer Prize winner Phillip Roth, felt like a sure thing.

Instead, that combination gave birth to The Human Stain, a laughably melodramatic, woefully miscast film. Whatever brutally earnest points Roth's novel hammered home about race in America is largely overshadowed by the big reveal: Anthony Hopkins is a black man that has been passing and a white Jewish professor.

So yes, independently, Hopkins, Benton and Roth are often brilliant within their own medium. But them in a blender, and what you get is basically the scene in Silver Streak in which Gene Wilder tries to pass for black without any of the comic undertones.