9 Films Designed To Win Oscars That Failed Miserably

Pick a year, any year, and there's a pretty solid guarantee that an "issue" film will make the Best Picture list. Be it Precious, Milk, Selma, a film attempting to bring attention to a social problem. Some of them are painful, pretentious, undeserved of any attention that couldn't be summed up by pundits on a 24-hour cable news network. Others are well-stated, be it blunt or subtle, and never let the social injustices explored overtake the narrative or characters.

Alan Parker's Mississippi Burning was that kind of a film. Based upon the murders of three civil rights workers in the South by politicians and police linked to the Ku Klux Klan, the film plays out like a simple police procedural with a hardline Gene Hackman partnered with a naive Willem Dafoe. It garnered seven Oscar nominations, snagging one for Best Cinematography.

Parker's other major "issue" film was met with derision, ridicule and audiences throwing popcorn at the screen in the closing minutes. This time trying to take a stand against the death penalty, The Life of David Gale finds Kevin Spacey's college professor accused of murdering and raping a close friend. Sitting on death row with days left before his execution, Gale tells his story to a journalist (Kate Winslet). He had spent his career devoted to fighting the death penalty and, ironically, he was now on the list.

Alas, to prove a point, the film's final minutes reveal evidence of Gale's innocence as he is executed. Turns out his friend committed suicide and he manufactures evidence to frame himself. The main difference between Gale and Mississippi Burning is that there's no truth behind any of it. It's just a silly twist meant to be shocking and poignant. In actuality, however, even Pay It Forward had more subtlety.