10 great films from this century that didn’t win a single Oscar

Christopher Nolan’s breakthrough film Memento signaled the arrival of a director to watch. An intricately crafted story told in reverse, it centers on a guy (or a Guy, as in Guy Pearce) with no short-term memory who sets out to solve the mystery of his wife’s murder and his own condition. Like this year’s Oscar favorite Oppenheimer, the narrative is delineated by scenes shot in black and white and color. It received wide acclaim, and was nominated for Best Original Screenplay and Best Film Editing, but lost both (to Gosford Park and Black Hawk Down, respectively). Nolan was subsequently nominated for his screenplay for Inception and for directing Dunkirk, but didn’t win those either. As of today, he still doesn’t have an Oscar to his name, but we bet that’s going to change very soon.

The Oscars are becoming more global each year and starting to consider foreign-language films outside of the one category dedicated to them. It’s a refreshing trend, but it comes too late to give this masterpiece from director Wong Kar-wai the recognition it deserves. In The Mood For Love is an intoxicating love story set in Hong Kong in the 1960s. Tony Leung and Maggie Cheung play neighbors drawn together after they discover their spouses are having an affair. The film lives in the details: a nod, a look, a breath, a brush as they pass on the stairs. If the Academy had been more open to the incredible work coming from overseas at the turn of the millennium, this gorgeous production might have been a real contender.

Originally intended as a TV pilot, David Lynch went back to the cutting room, added a few scenes and many layers of meaning, and released Mulholland Drive as a theatrical feature. Sublimely surreal and told through the language of dreams, it defies conventional interpretation. Naomi Watts, Laura Elena Harring, Justin Theroux, and more represent different aspects of Hollywood dreams turned into nightmares. But to put the film through any kind of hefty examination is missing the point, and the pleasure of letting it wash over you. Which seems to have been the case for a lot of Academy voters.

Love him or hate him, you can’t deny that Wes Anderson has developed a filmmaking style that’s immediately recognizable as his own. With each new film he pushes it a little further, until we get a film like last year’s star-studded (and Oscar-snubbed) Asteroid City, which feels almost like a parody of a Wes Anderson film rather than the genuine article. But when he made The Royal Tenenbaums, his third film after Bottle Rocket and Rushmore, he was still a fresh and exciting voice on the scene. The film was widely praised for its dry humor, memorable characters, and terrific performances, but none of that acclaim translated to Oscar gold. With no wins for any of his other past films except The Grand Budapest Hotel (and even that only won in the technical categories; Anderson himself didn’t take home any trophies), it seems like his only hope for an Oscar might be his short film “The Wonderful Story Of Henry Sugar,” which was nominated this year for Best Live Action Short.

Martin Scorsese may experience a bit of deja vu this year if Killers Of The Flower Moon underperforms this year. The esteemed director can already claim two of the biggest Oscar fails in history. The first came in 2003, when Gangs Of New York was nominated in 10 categories, including Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Actor for Daniel Day-Lewis, but didn’t win a single one. Chicago was the big winner that night, with six Oscars (it was nominated for 13), followed by The Pianist with three. It’s hard to say what contributed to the lack of a statue, beyond pointing out that he’d been making films for three decades, including some now considered to be the best of all time, before he was named Best Director for The Departed. That just goes to show that the Academy doesn’t always get it right.

Like Gangs Of New York, the Coen brothers’ Western remake True Grit received 10 Oscar nominations, and lost in all 10 categories. The story of 14-year-old Mattie (a breakout role for young Hailee Steinfeld) who hires a Federal Marshal (Jeff Bridges at his grittiest) to bring her father’s killer to justice, the film is a gorgeous crowd pleaser. It just couldn’t please Oscar voters, who were more taken with The King’s Speech that year (they never can seem to resist a period biopic). The Coens, being the gentlemen they are, took it all in stride. “Ten seems like an awful lot,” they said in an interview after the nominations were announced. “We don’t want to take anyone else’s.” Turns out that wasn’t something they had to worry about.

Even with The Holdovers receiving five Oscar nominations this year, Alexander Payne’s most nominated film is still 2013's Nebraska, which earned six, including Best Picture and Best Director. The broody, black-and-white film stars Bruce Dern as a cranky old guy who goes on a road trip through the Midwest with his son, played by a deceptively affable Will Forte. The film also received two acting nominations for its cast. Working on an Alexander Payne film seems to be a pretty good path to an Oscar nomination. Nine of his actors have been nominated in the performance categories, but just like Payne, none of them went on to win, either.

Despite critical acclaim and loads of nominations from other awards-giving bodies, May December was almost completely shut out of the Oscars, earning just one nod for Best Original Screenplay. That must have been a familiar feeling for director Todd Haynes. It’s fair to say that his work is an acquired taste—one that still hasn’t grown on the Academy. He’s only been nominated once in the past, for his original screenplay for Far From Heaven (which also didn’t win any Oscars). In 2016, Carol, a holiday love story between two women, was nominated for six Oscars, none of which was Best Picture or Best Director. It lost in all six categories anyway, but the slight did help raise awareness of the Academy’s notorious blind spots.

A win for Best Costume Design is the only thing that kept Greta Gerwig’s Little Women off of this list—because a statue is a statue—but her earlier project as writer-director, Lady Bird, didn’t even make it that far. It received four nominations, including Best Picture and Best Director, which is more than can be said for Gerwig’s most recent film, Barbie, but no wins. 2018 wasn’t Gerwig’s year, and despite a strong showing for Barbie, 2024 might not be either, but she’s still got plenty of time and a promising career ahead of her. We wouldn’t be at all surprised to see her finally on the podium someday in the near future.

Scorsese does it again, and by “again” we mean earning 10 Oscar nominations without winning any of them. After accomplishing this illustrious achievement in 2003 with Gangs Of New York, Scorsese had to go through it once more with The Irishman. Maybe it’s because the director is so prolific and so respected that the Academy feels like they have to honor him whenever he makes a film, but when it comes down to it, they tend to find other projects more worthy of recognition. In 2020 it was Parasite, which took home Best Picture, Best Director, Best Original Screenplay, and a bunch of others. Will Scorsese’s Killers Of The Flower Moon once again be lapped by other projects with more favorable buzz, like Oppenheimer and Poor Things? We’ll have to tune in on Sunday night to see.