Worst

A look back through the Academy Awards history shows that, in general, the Academy doesn’t make too many egregious mistakes. We all love to talk about Oscar snubs, and movies and performances that we think should have won, but even though they are far from perfect, usually the Academy doesn't nominate many truly bad movies. There are times, however, when the Academy goes off the rails. This is our list of the worst movies that have been nominated for Oscars. (Image credit: Warner Bros. / DC)Batman Forever (1995)For…

Republicans in North Carolina have selected Mark Robinson as their nominee in the swing state’s 2024 gubernatorial race. Robinson — the state’s first Black lieutenant governor, who will now face Democratic Attorney General Josh Stein in the general election — has a richer history of bigoted commentary than any major-party political candidate in recent memory. He has leveled truly vile attacks against Muslims, Jews, women, and the LGBTQ community, while pushing a torrent of conspiracy theories about everything from…

Get our free weekly email for all the latest cinematic news from our film critic Clarisse LoughreyGet our The Life Cinematic email for freeNothing brings together Oscar fans quite like complaining about the Oscars. The nature of the annual competition fuels entirely pointless animosity – who should have won, who got cruelly overlooked, and why Jamie Lee Curtis absolutely didn’t deserve her Academy Award last year. In some people’s opinion, anyway.Sometimes, though, the most unpopular Oscar wins in history – the ones that…

Denis Villeneuve’s movie adaptations of Frank Herbert’s seminal sci-fi novel, Dune, has become a cultural and commercial hit. That’s big for Team Hollywood, but I still have a hard time believing that Dune has done more for movies than it has for video games — so long as you ignore the kerfuffle over whether it influenced Star Wars. Even though the Dune games are far from occupying our most vivid memories of the real-time strategy boom of the ’90s, the whole genre owes its existence to this series. Also, there’s more to…

The term ‘superhero game’ used to be a bad word in gaming circles, at least up till the mid-2000s. Before, superhero games were only tangentially related to the superheroes they were portraying. Batman would have him doing street races (huh?), Superman would be flying through hoops (why?), or various generic beat-em-ups (boring!). There were a few good games, but those were few and far between.But things are very different now with gamers eagerly awaiting superhero titles. A lot of the credit falls to Rocksteady Studios.…

Get our free weekly email for all the latest cinematic news from our film critic Clarisse LoughreyGet our The Life Cinematic email for freeTo win a Best Picture Oscar, a film has to have something about it.Only 94 films in history have been given this award. They’re not voted on by the eccentric members of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, who pick the Golden Globes, or by specialist groups of critics, but by the roughly 10,000 members of the Academy. That is to say, the choice is made by distinguished figures from…

Get our free weekly email for all the latest cinematic news from our film critic Clarisse LoughreyGet our The Life Cinematic email for freeHow do you follow an Oscars night like last year’s?Amid all the unscripted Will Smith dramatics at the 2022 Academy Awards, it was easy to overlook the well-received performance from the ceremony’s three hosts: Regina Hall, Amy Schumer and Wanda Sykes. This year, producers will surely be hoping for a more subdued night, with Jimmy Kimmel set to compere the event.It’s no wonder that…

If you ask people, “What’s your go-to nuclear post-apocalyptic story?” Most will probably say Fallout; the action role-playing franchise that has been around for more than two decades and is now considered one of the most influential game series of all time. Fallout is one of those massively successful and recognizable names that had very humble beginnings. It may not be as dramatic a tale as two broke programmers grinding in sweat and tears, day and night, to come up with an era-defining masterpiece, but that first game…

Hainikoye hits Accept and a young woman greets him in Hausa, a gravelly language spoken across West Africa’s Sahel region. She has three new cows, and wants to know: Does he have advice on getting them through the lean season? Hainikoye—a twentysomething agronomist who has “followed animals,” as Sahelians refer to herding, since he first learned to walk—opens an interface on his laptop and clicks on her village in southern Niger, where humped zebu roam the dipping hills and dried-up valleys that demarcate the northern…

For better or for worse, the Oscars are responsible for some of the biggest pop culture moments around the world (including the infamous slap from the 2022 Oscars). We’re more connected than we’ve ever been in our current internet age, but as most of us participate in our own nice online communities, monoculture moments like the Academy Awards are few and far between. While less viewers tune in to watch the ceremony in the streaming era, the memes and social commentary that stem from the awards show prove the Oscars are…