2014 Oscar Nominees: Their Best (and Worst) Movies!

Leonardo DiCaprio, Matthew McConaughey, Sandra Bullock, Jennifer Lawrence and Meryl Streep haven't made all good movies

By John Boone Jan 16, 2014 10:12 PMTags

The Oscar nominations are officially out! And they're...fine. We're happy for everyone. As we wait to see who takes home awards on the night, let's look back at the nominees' in the Best Actor categories best and worst movies.

Their best movies weren't always "Oscar-worthy." Their worst movies were really bad.

Best Actor:

Christian Bale (nominated for American Hustle)

Best Movie: American Psycho. Because this scene alone is the best work Christian Bale has ever done and is one of the best scenes in any movie ever.

Worst Movie: Reign of Fire. You might think a movie about dragons taking over the world would, at the very least, be exciting (it's not). You might also suspect that there is no way a movie about dragons taking over the world could be good, and you would be correct about that (it's not). Bonus: It also stars fellow Best Actor nominee Matthew McConaughey! Good work, you two!

Leonardo DiCaprio (nominated for The Wolf of Wall Street)

Best Movie: Titanic. Leo—and his film choices—were best when he wasn't chasing Oscar bait. Which is why his earlier films, like Titanic and Romeo + Juliet, rank higher on our list than, say, the mindnumbing pretentiousness of J. Edgar. As for Titanic, it is one of the most epic movies ever. Actually, scratch that: It is the most epic movie ever. 

Worst Movie: The Great Gatsby. It's soooo long and sooooooooo boring.

Bruce Dern (nominated for Nebraska)

DEJ Productions; 20th Century Fox

Best Movie: Monster. It's a hard movie to sit through. So the fact that we not only sat through it, but would do so again (Charlize Theron as a lesbian serial killer? OK!) is a testament to how good this film is.

Worst Movie: Down Periscope. Oh, this was supposed to be funny? This may be one of the more polarizing picks, because a lot of people think Down Periscope is hilarious. We are not one of those people.

Chiwetel Ejiofor (nominated for 12 Years a Slave)

Universal Pictures, Columbia Pictures

Best Movie: Love Actually. Because it's Love Actually.

Worst Movie: 2012. Because it's a bloated, CGI mess.

Matthew McConaughey (nominated for Dallas Buyers Club)

Best Movie: A Time to Kill. It has everything we want from a Matthew McConaughey movie: A sexy young lawyer in the gritty South. Those elements have been mixed and matched throughout his filmography (The Lincoln Lawyer, The Playboy), but this was the original.

Worst Movie: Tiptoes. Just about every rom com McConaughey has done is bad (The Ghosts of Girlfriends Past, Fool's Gold, Failure to Launch, etc.), but we still can't even fathom how Tiptoes even became a real movie. The plot? McConaughey surprises his girlfriend by revealing that his entire family is little people. Yeah, that's a real movie. Watch the trailer here.

Best Actress:

Amy Adams (nominated for American Hustle)

Best Movie: Drop Dead Gorgeous. We almost put Enchanted, because Amy Adams is only in like, two scenes in Drop Dead Gorgeous (she's the cheerleader, if you don't remember). But we have to go with Drop Dead Gorgeous. It's better.

Worst Movie: Leap Year. This movie is one of the reasons rom coms have a bad name. All Adams' character cares about in this movie is her boyfriend proposing. When he doesn't, she travels to Ireland to find him, because in Ireland, women can propose to men on Leap Day. We won't get into the feminism of why this movie is so, so wrong, but just know we hate it. A lot.

Cate Blanchett (nominated for Blue Jasmine)

Paramount Pictures, Sony Pictures Classics

Best Movie: Blue Jasmine. Because the whole movie is Cate Blanchett. And that's a formula you cannot mess up. Hell, we're still thinking about Cate Blanchett in Blue Jasmine and we saw that movie months ago.

Worst Movie: Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. Because in our minds this movie never happened.

Sandra Bullock (nominated for Gravity)


20th Century Fox

Best Movie: Speed, duh. Runner up: Miss Congeniality.

Worst Movie: All About Steve, duh. Runner up: Miss Congeniality 2: Armed & Fabulous.

Judi Dench (nominated for Philomena)

Best Movie: Notes on a Scandal. Could Judi Dench play a crazy, blackmailing manipulator in everything, please?

Worst Movie: Half of the James Bond franchise. Dench has been starring in Bond movies for almost two decades now. Which means, while she's been in some good ones (GoldenEye, Casino Royale), she's also been in a lot of bad ones. The World Is Not Enough was bad. Die Another Day was bad. Quantum of Solace was really bad.

Meryl Streep (nominated for August: Osage County)


Barry Wetcher/Twentieth Century Fox; Universal Pictures

Best Movie: The Devil Wears Prada. Picking Meryl Streep's best movie our version of Sophie's Choice (which is a really good movie starring Meryl Streep!). She is amazing in absolutely everything she does, but we settled on Prada because not only is she absolutely amazing, but it's the most watchable of them all. In so much as every time it is on TV we will watch it. Every single time.

Worst Movie: Mamma Mia! You deserve so, so much better, Meryl.

Best Supporting Actor:

Bradley Cooper (nominated for American Hustle)

Best Movie: Silver Linings Playbook. Coincidentally (or probably not?), it was also the first movie that made us think Bradley Cooper could be a leading man movie star.

Worst Movie: The Hangover Part II. Valentine's Day was horrible, but Cooper's vignette wasn't the worst part of it. On the other hand, everything about Hangover Part II was horrible (mostly just because it was the exact same thing that happened in the first movie, but less funny).

Michael Fassbender (nominated for 12 Years a Slave)


Best Movie: Shame. And not just because he showed his penis.

Worst Movie: Jonah Hex. Honestly, it could have used more penis. Though, we don't even think Fassmember could have saved it. It could have also used a new script. And a new cast. And a new director. Basically, it needed to be not this.

Jonah Hill (nominated for The Wolf of Wall Street)

Columbia Pictures

Best Movie: Superbad. We get that Jonah Hill wants to be a serious actor who is taken very seriously these days, but hey, we like his comedies better. Especially this one. One word: McLovin'.

Worst Movie: Click. This movie was marketed as an Adam Sandler comedy. It was the most traumatic, depressing, soul-crushing movie we have ever seen. And it was bad.

Jared Leto (nominated for Dallas Buyers Club)

Best Movie: Requiem for a Dream. This is the weird-ass Jared Leto we know and love, in an even weirder-ass movie that has haunted us our whole lives (and we mean that in the best possible way).

Worst Movie: Alexander. This is a boring-ass Jared Leto that we didn't know was possible, in an even boring-assier movie that we actually forgot even existed until we started putting together this list.

Barkhad Abdi (nominated for Captain Phillips)


Columbia Pictures

Best Movie: Captain Phillips. It's his only acting credit.

Worst Movie: Captain Phillips. It's his only acting credit.

Best Supporting Actress:

Jennifer Lawrence (nominated for American Hustle)

The Weinstein Company, Relativity Media

Best Movie: Silver Linings Playbook. The chemistry! The dancing! How absolutely, completely nuts everyone in this movie is (including and maybe especially, Lawrence)! It's a rom com, but it's so good that you forget that it's a rom com. Or maybe it just shows that rom coms don't have to suck.

Worst Movie: House at the End of the Street. Thankfully, the two movies premiered at the same time, so no one was paying attention to this crappy horror movie. It's a paycheck!

Lupita Nyong'o (nominated for 12 Years a Slave)


Fox Searchlight Pictures, Universal Pictures

Best Movie: 12 Years a Slave. It had a 50/50 shot of being the best! (Lupita only has two film credits.)

Worst Movie: Non-Stop. It hasn't come out yet, but we have a feeling this one won't be as good as 12 Years a Slave. Liam Neeson plays an Air Marshall trapped on a plane with a serial killer, Lady Mary from Downton Abbey and a very suspicious Julianne Moore. Lupita plays a flight attendant. It looks ridiculous.

Julia Roberts (nominated for August: Osage County)

Best Movie: Erin Brockovich. Pretty Woman may be her most iconic movie, but Brockovich is her best (and hey, she got an Oscar for it! Good for you, Julia!). Erin Brockovich has everything you could want from a movie: Romance, a strong female protagonist, an underdog rising up. And the line, "They're called boobs, Ed." Really, what more could you ask for?

Worst Movie: Ocean's Twelve. Mirror Mirror was bad, but at least Mirror Mirror didn't include a storyline where Julia Robert's character, Tess, had to pretend to be Julia Roberts. WTF was that?

Sally Hawkins (nominated for Blue Jasmine)

Sony Picture Classics

Best Movie: Blue Jasmine. Sally plays the exact opposite of Cate Blanchett's character, a character who is so lovable, but at the same time, who you want to shake and yell, "STOP BEING SO STUPID." And watching the two go head to head is really something.

Worst Movie: All Is Bright. Hawkins' best and worst films were released in the same year. In this one, Paul Giamatti is released from prison and starts selling Christmas trees with his old buddy in crime, Paul Rudd. We would prefer coal.

June Squibb (nominated for Nebraska)

Best Movie: Nebraska. She flashes her vagina at a gravestone of a boy she once dated. Who wouldn't want to watch that movie?

Worst Movie: Atlas Shrugged: Part 1. No one was begging for this adaptation. Part I was rated 11 percent fresh on Rotten Tomatoes. For some reason, they still made Part II, which was rated 5 percent fresh on Rotten Tomatoes. And they're still making Part III, which is coming out sometime this year, whether you like it or not.