Best Non-Oscar Winners, No. 8


Recently I chronicled my favorite Best Picture Winners since 1970. Now, for the next 8 weeks, I'll be sharing my 10 favorite films that fell short of Best Picture despite being nominees since 1990.

8. L.A. Confidential (1997)
Starring: Russell Crowe, Guy Pearce, Kim Basinger, James Cromwell, and Kevin Spacey
Director: Curtis Hanson
About: "Some men get the world. Others get ex-hookers and a trip to Arizona." That was one of the last lines of "L.A. Confidential," an excellent film released in the late 1990s and based on the novel from James Elroy. It's a gritty film noir that features some great performances and a great third act resolution. I loved this film when I saw it the first time, and I still think it was the best of the films nominated for Best Picture in its group. But it didn't win that prize. "As Good as it Gets," "Good Will Hunting" and "The Full Monty" were all nominated for Best Picture, but it was "Titanic" that won the top prize. It's an excellent technical film and achievement with some great performances, too, but I prefer "L.A. Confidential." However, that's not as shocking a final result as at least one film on this list got — but we'll get to that later. It can be a little hard to talk about "L.A. Confidential" right now because of one of its stars — Spacey — whose personal behavior came out in the last year and has changed the way we think about him. And that's right. There's no excuse for what he did. And it was because of that I hedged when considering it for this list. But this is a good movie, with good performances, and it felt disingenuous to leave it off the list. It's one of my favorites and I think one of the 10 best films for this list.
Rating: R for strong violence and language, and for sexuality.

Top 10:
10. Fargo (1996)
9. Whiplash (2014)

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