Is 'Gran Torino' the best film ever shut out of the Oscars? (part one)

February 18, 5:46 PMAtlanta Movies ExaminerRyan McNally

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When the 2009 Oscar nominations were announced, Gran Torino was conspicuously absent. Touted as a major contender in the Best Actor race, a potential player in Best Screenplay and Best Song, and a long shot for Best Picture or Director, it got no love. Given the film’s strong box office and Clint Eastwood’s high standing within the Academy, the snub was a surprise.

More importantly, as I was researching my article on whether The Dark Knight is the best film ever shut out of the Best Picture race, Gran Torino popped up among the decade's best films not to score a Best Picture nomination. The difference between Gran Torino and most of the other films on the list, though, was that Gran Torino was completely snubbed by the Academy.

Regardless of whether you hold the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences in high regard or feel the organization is the scourge of society, it usually finds a way to acknowledge a great film somewhere amidst its Oscar nominations. Action or sci-fi flicks, for example, score in the technical categories, while the quirky indies get a screenplay nomination. When all else fails, there's always Best Sound Effects Editing (see: Fight Club).

Which brings us to the question: Is Gran Torino the best film ever shut out of the Oscars?

Rather than examining personal opinion, this article will focus on specific metrics in an attempt to calculate the best movies that the Academy told, in its own special way, to get off its lawn. Admittedly, there are limitations to this statistical approach, but it’s still an excellent place to get the argument started.

OK, so how does Gran Torino measure up? Let’s begin with user ratings among IMDB visitors, focusing only on narrative-based U.S. films. (I love foreign films and documentaries as much as anyone, but these movies face additional hurdles to getting an Oscar nomination, so we’ll leave them out of this discussion.) According to the IMDB, Gran Torino is currently ranked the fourth greatest film of all-time to be snubbed by the Oscars (it should be noted that scores skew higher toward more recent films, however) and is the highest-rated film in the last decade within that group. The five highest-rated films to get the Academy’s cold shoulder are as follows:

43) Paths of Glory (1958)
55) The Shining (1980)
70) Reservoir Dogs (1992)
82) Gran Torino (2008)
90) Sin City (2005)

Given its age, the classic war pic Paths of Glory can place a pretty good claim to being the strongest movie to get shunned by Oscar. It’s also fascinating that the top two movies are both Stanley Kubrick films. And not only was The Shining shut out by the Academy, it was nominated for two Razzies. Huh? Regardless of your opinion of The Shining, it ain’t Norbit.

Now let’s look at the American Film Institute’s “100 Years … 100 Movies—10th Anniversary Edition” to see what films from that list were left in the cold by the estimable Academy. The top five are:

11) City Lights (1931)
12) The Searchers (1956)
41) King Kong (1933)
60) Duck Soup (1933)
61) Sullivan’s Travels (1941)

It's an interesting snubee list, with all of the films being 50-plus years old (hey, maybe the Academy's getting better at doing this Oscar thing). The real head-scratcher is The Searchers. Director John Ford’s work on this landmark western was recognized by the Directors Guild, but he failed to garner an Oscar nomination for Best Director, leaving the film empty-handed.

Looking at the lists above and Gran Torino’s spot in cinematic history, it’s safe to say that even the most ardent GT fans would admit it’s too early to stake a claim for Gran Torino. Give it 50 years and see if people are still discussing its greatness, as they are with Paths of Glory and The Searchers.

But just because it’s too early to rank Gran Torino’s spot in film history doesn’t mean we can’t compare it to movies from the last decade. Using IMDB, as well as Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic—two Web sites that measure a film’s critical response—we’ll look at the best and the brightest movies that the Academy forgot about when it come time to announce its Oscar nominations.

Read how Gran Torino measures up in Is Gran Torino the best film ever shut out of the Oscars? (part two).