Oscars 2024: Our favourite worst and unpopular wins of all time

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Nothing brings collectively Oscar followers fairly like complaining in regards to the Oscars. The nature of the annual competitors fuels completely pointless animosity – who ought to have received, who acquired cruelly ignored, and why Jamie Lee Curtis completely didn’t deserve her Academy Award final 12 months. In some folks’s opinion, anyway.

Sometimes, although, essentially the most unpopular Oscar wins in historical past – those that are inclined to at all times crop up on “What were the voters smoking?” lists – have their followers. Some folks to at the present time nonetheless actually love CODA, the little-seen and not-very-good weepie that received Best Picture in 2022. I have no idea these folks. You in all probability don’t know them, both. But I’ve been promised that they exist.

Anyway, to rejoice this weekend’s Oscars, in any other case generally known as the supply room for a raft of new issues to complain about, The Independent’s tradition desk has picked their favourite deeply unpopular wins from Academy Award historical past.

And should you’re the (alleged) one who loves CODA, as we couldn’t discover anybody inside the partitions of The Independent keen to go on the file with that, drop us a message within the remark part under. Don’t be shy!

Marisa Tomei for My Cousin Vinny in 1993 – as chosen by Louis Chilton

Marisa Tomei received the Best Supporting Actress award in 1993 for her flip as Joe Pesci’s spunky youthful girlfriend within the sensible authorized comedy My Cousin Vinny. At the time, it was thought to be a stunning – and, to many, completely egregious – determination, with a spiteful city fable claiming that her identify had been learn out by mistake. This was at all times nonsense, of course, however time has been very type to Tomei’s seriocomic efficiency. Boasting what is perhaps cinema’s most spectacular wardrobe and a Brooklyn accent so thick it might cease an elephant rifle – Tomei is fascinating.

Suicide Squad for Best Makeup and Hairstyling in 2017 – as chosen by Kevin E G Perry

There was a lot grousing when Alessandro Bertolazzi, Giorgio Gregorini and Christopher Nelson took house the Best Makeup and Hairstyling Oscar in 2017 for his or her work on David Ayer’s Suicide Squad. Some of this was right down to bickering between DC and Marvel followers – on the time Marvel was nonetheless a pair of years away from profitable its first Oscars for Black Panther. Mostly, although, it was as a result of Ayer’s muddled, forgettable motion romp simply wasn’t excellent. Do what was good although? The hair and make-up in it!

Bertolazzi, Gregorini and Nelson did exceptional work bringing larger-than-life characters off of DC’s comedian guide pages and into the bodily world. In Margot Robbie’s Harley Quinn, in addition they created an indelible mixture of styling and make-up that spawned one million Halloween costumes and will nonetheless be being recreated by followers for many years to come back. You can’t say that about A Man Called Ove.

Anthony Hopkins for The Father in 2021 – as chosen by Jacob Stolworthy

In 2021, everybody thought the Best Actor race was sewn up. Chadwick Boseman had posthumously received a spread of awards for his position in Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom – Oscar producers have been so sure of a victory for the Black Panther star, who died of most cancers eight months earlier than, that they shifted the class structure in a considerably shameless try to create an emotional footnote to the ceremony.

This backfired when Anthony Hopkins’s identify was learn out as a substitute of Boseman’s – an anti-climax for a lot of, heightened by the very fact Hopkins was not there to gather the award. But the Academy set Hopkins up for a fall – ever since, a story has existed that the 86-year-old star was an undeserving recipient; the other is true.

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In The Father, Hopkins delivered a probably career-best efficiency, matching the punch he packed in a profession full of highlights. His position as an aged man dwelling with dementia is undeniably up there together with his malevolent Hannibal Lecter in The Silence of the Lambs (1991), for which he additionally received an Oscar, and the loyal butler Mr Stevens within the Kazuo Ishiguro adaptation The Remains of the Day (1993). While it will have been heartwarming to see Boseman honoured, the hasty expectations laid on by the Academy did each him and Hopkins soiled, robbing every of the respect they deserved.

Chicago for Best Picture in 2003 – as chosen by Jessie Thompson

You might argue that Rob Marshall’s 2002 movie adaptation of Chicago is just too full of bizarre hairpieces, black eyeliner and sequins. You might say that – and you’d be proper. You might additionally argue {that a} foolish, camp story of jazz broads murdering their sleazy husbands shouldn’t have received finest image over Gangs of New York, The Pianist, The Hours, and the (admittedly interminable) second Lord of the Rings movie. There, I’ve to say, you’d be improper. Musicals could seem trivial among the many Important with a capital-I movies that often win Oscars, however Chicago does what it units out to do completely. It’s an infinitely rewatchable tackle the musical that’s kitsch however stylish, full of large, roaring numbers, plotted like a real crime podcast. Best Picture? It had it coming.

American Beauty for Best Picture in 2000 – as chosen by Adam White

Yes, I do know saying you like American Beauty might get you placed on some type of dodgy register. But can everybody sit back about it a bit? Back in 2000, when Sam Mendes’s suburban satire dominated that 12 months’s Oscars, American Beauty was thought of wildly subversive, a daring anomaly poking enjoyable at marital ennui, psychological sickness and dysfunctional sexuality.

That its visible playfulness (Those roses! That plastic bag!) and predatory white male, woe-is-me stuff has lengthy fallen out of favour – to not point out the Kevin Spacey of it all – doesn’t imply that it’s not an incredible film within the context of its launch. Annette Bening, enjoying a bored housewife on the cusp of whole breakdown, is sensational right here, likewise Chris Cooper as a closeted dad. Wes Bentley, Thora Birch and Mena Suvari – enjoying excessive schoolers swept up within the miseries of their dad and mom – all deserved higher careers than those they ended up having. And, bear in mind, American Beauty was HUGE. Can you imagine it made greater than $350m (£274m) worldwide? What a time capsule, in additional methods than one.

Renée Zellweger for Judy in 2020 – as chosen by Adam White

It’s not onerous to see why Renée Zellweger’s second Oscar win has been misplaced to time. The 2020 Oscars occurred inside weeks of the world grinding to a standstill. And even with all of us largely housebound as a consequence of Covid, few used the pandemic as an excuse to look at Judy, Zellweger’s middle-of-the-road, speedily forgotten Judy Garland biopic. But her work in it doesn’t warrant the bum’s rush, nor its affiliation with a heap of spackle-and-veneers performances that tediously received Oscars round this time, from Gary Oldman as Winston Churchill in Darkest Hour, to Rami Malek’s Freddie Mercury in Bohemian Rhapsody. Indeed, I like Zellweger’s work right here – it’s technically astute but by no means mannered, an echo of Garland greater than stiff impersonator pastiche. And coming 16 years after her final win for Cold Mountain – together with a five-year interval the place she didn’t act at all – Zellweger’s victory felt like a deserved homecoming for a one-time Oscar staple.