'Pan's Labyrinth' courtesy photo | Warner Bros.

By John Serba | jserba@mlive.com

Short-sightedness is one of Oscar’s least endearing traits. He has remarkably poor intuition. He tends to honor films based on fleeting trends and the strength of studio marketing campaigns. And sometimes, voting Academy members wouldn’t recognize a classic movie if it tore away the shower curtain and stabbed them to death.

I recently listed the 20 timeless films that enjoyed a best picture Academy Award nomination, but didn't win. And here, I compile a sister list, of hands-down masterpieces that inexplicably didn't even get nominated. (The alternate title here could be, how many times were Stanley Kubrick and Orson Welles royally screwed?) That's a considerably larger field, so I managed to whittle a list of way too many films down to a lean, mean 30 so we can revel in Oscar's blatant stupidity. Enjoy.

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'2001: A Space Odyssey' (1968)

Considering said year’s nominees features relatively forgettable stuff (“Rachel, Rachel,” “Romeo and Juliet”), it’s an expletive-inducing outrage that Stanley Kubrick’s masterful monolith of cinema was snubbed. It won best visual effects (note: they’re still extraordinary, and more convincing than most modern CGI effects), and earned Kubrick a director nod, but considering what a brilliantly majestic-psychedelic visual feast the movie is, you wonder if Academy members were taking the wrong drugs when they were making nominations. The film’s substantial legacy only adds to the argument. Imagine an alternate 1969 Oscar ceremony where “2001,” “Once Upon a Time in the West” and “Rosemary’s Baby” were all in contention for the best picture trophy – feels kind of utopian, doesn’t it?

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'Badlands' (1973) and 'Days of Heaven' (1978)

Two Terrence Malick treasures, zero best picture nods. Those who blanch at the enigmatic filmmaker’s modern, artsy indulgence should watch (or re-watch) these early works, which are concise, elegant, beautifully photographed, superbly acted narratives bristling with authenticity and emotion. And here, I write the poetic voiceover for Oscar’s biopic: “Lost. In the woods. The forest. Unseen. From all the trees.”

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'City of God' (2002)

The shocking realism of Fernando Mereilles portrait of heavily armed child street gangs in Rio’s favelas is not easily brushed aside or forgotten. Once you watch this picture, it never leaves you. And yet, my experience of that year’s cornball best picture winner, the musical “Chicago,” evaporated years ago. “City of God” is not an easy watch, but it sure is easy to acknowledge its ambition, authenticity, technical brilliance and a dozen other qualities. For us, anyway. Oscar, not so much – especially considering his track record for keeping foreign language films in their little categorical corner.

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'Cool Hand Luke' (1967)

Paul Newman’s finest moment? A tough question, but for my money, yes, it is. The film is probably the finest, most well-written character drama in cinema history, and is one of the creative benchmarks pointing the way to the revolutionary cinema of the 1970s. What we have here is a MAJOR OSCAR FAILURE. Someone go force-feed every Academy member 50 eggs.

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'The Dark Knight' (2008)

Oh no! A comic book movie! It must be for morons and children! The most thematically rich and insightful film of its genre – it may never be surpassed in this aspect – enjoyed a pile of nods and one win in technical categories, and a well-deserved, sadly posthumous supporting actor win for Heath Ledger, whose bone-chillingly evil Joker is a thing to imitate, fear and behold. But in one of the weakest years for best picture nominees in recent history, the Academy just couldn't make room for Christopher Nolan's phenomenal work among snoozers like "The Reader," "Frost/Nixon, "Milk" and "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button." Say it with me: WHY SO SERIOUS?

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'Do the Right Thing' (1989)

Spike Lee has a point when he asks, with characteristic vitriol, “Who’s still watching ‘Driving Miss Daisy’?” This isn’t sour grapes for said film winning best picture while Lee’s masterwork “Do the Right Thing” wasn’t even invited to Oscar’s exclusive country club. It’s a critique of the Academy’s short-sightedness and susceptibility to studio campaigns. Anyway, this film is vibrant, challenging and essential to anyone with an interest in the fabric of American multiculturalism. And Spike, take this to heart: We, the people, will always love “Do the Right Thing.” And maybe that’s all that matters.

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'Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind' (2004)

Michel Gondry's heartbreaking film is another criterion for 21st-century cinema. It captures a distinctly modern dramatic-comedic tone amidst a whimsical-meaningful chopped-up narrative, rendering it a new-era "Annie Hall" – but within the deliriously odd framework of left-field sci-fi. The hell with "Titanic" – this is Kate Winslet's most meaningful and affecting performance. It earned a screenplay Oscar, but golly, the Academy just couldn't exclude conservative bios "Ray" and "Finding Neverland" from best picture contention. Oscar has a dreadfully banal reputation to uphold, you know!

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'A Face in the Crowd' (1957)

Let’s avoid the tar pit of modern political allegory and focus on Elia Kazan’s wickedly smart film, which launched the career Andy Griffith, playing a drunken, womanizing bum who becomes a media sensation unable to exist without the adoration and applause of his fanbase. To be fair to Oscar, reaction to the film was lukewarm at best, but in the years since, it has become a classic, a complex and masterful rumination on morality. It deserves a half-dozen retroactive Oscars, if such a thing existed.

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'Full Metal Jacket' (1987)

A case could probably be made for the Oscar worthiness of every Kubrick film. “Full Metal Jacket” is far from huggable, but each and every Academy member looks like hapless Private Pyle for considering “Fatal Attraction,” “Hope and Glory,” “Moonstruck” and “Broadcast News” over it. (In fact, don’t even look at the best picture nominees throughout the 1980s, because a large majority of the titles are a poor representation of the decade.) At least a best supporting actor nod for the drill sergeant to end all drill sergeants played by R. Lee Ermey? Nope. WHAT’S YOUR MAJOR MALFUNCTION, OSCAR?

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'Groundhog Day' (1993)

SNOBBERY! The grimfaced party poopers of the Academy pretty much loathe comedies nowadays. Theory: they have an inability to laugh and, like, think about stuff at the same time, because Harold Ramis’ crackling-smart, whimsically philosophical film is a masterpiece of modern comedy. It even took Bill Murray another decade, and a more serious role, before Oscar acknowledged his existence, with “Lost in Translation” (and even then, he lost to the safe choice, Sean Penn in “Mystic River”). It’s stuff like this that makes you want to lock Academy members in an insufferably boring time loop where they watch nothing but stuffy crap like “Out of Africa” and “The English Patient” over and over again, unto insanity.

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'Heat' (1995)

Michael Mann is kind of a Hollywood black sheep, a gifted filmmaker and stylist whose work is just too mainstream for all those stodgy Academy stiffnecks. “Heat” is a masterpiece of action choreography, editing and suspenseful storytelling. The film’s heist/shootout sequence is legendary. The pairing of the Pacino and De Niro legends in front of the camera for the first time ever (they shared no scenes in “The Godfather II”) got all the headlines, and Oscar turned up its damn idiot nose. Mann couldn’t steal a single nomination, even in a technical category.

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'King Kong' (1933)

Even very early in the days of Oscar, voters were too good for a movie about a giant gorilla kicking the snot out of dinosaurs. The film is a landmark of special effects, which are still haunting and strange to modern eyes, and the beauty-and-the-beast story is timeless. Even now, Kong’s death is accompanied by a tangible and melancholy tug of tragedy. If you don’t shed a tear for the fallen monster, your heart is dead.

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'Magnolia' (1999)

Paul Thomas Anderson’s emo epic is – Robert Altman’s “Short Cuts” notwithstanding – the best multi-character/tangled-narrative ensemble film birthed from a quickly tiresome trend in the late ’90s and early ’00s. (A trend murdered to death by contrived best picture winner “Crash,” one might note.) I’ll be shocked if people aren’t still singing Aimee Mann’s “Save Me” while having their hearts ripped out by this movie, decades from now. But hey, “The Cider House Rules” got acknowledgement from Oscar, ever the stupid and gullible fish biting at a plastic lure.

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'Manhattan' (1979)

Conspiracy theory alert: Oscar is a spiteful ol’ coot, and he was probably mad that Woody Allen didn’t show up to accept the best picture trophy for 1977’s “Annie Hall.” So “Manhattan,” a film that’s just as strong, “1A” on the filmmaker’s ranked list of works, was nudged out of best picture contention in lieu of the inessential “Breaking Away.” For numerous reasons, Allen isn’t the most beloved guy in Hollywood, but separate the art from the artist (as we should for these discussions), and you’ll realize this is a masterpiece.

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'The Master' (2012)

Even with three acting nominations for Amy Adams, Joaquin Phoenix and Philip Seymour Hoffman, even with the best picture pool expanded to up to 10 nominees, Paul Thomas Anderson’s electrifyingly confrontational movie that’s not about Scientology (but really is) couldn’t nudge its way past a putrid thing like “Les Miserables” and make the cut. I contend, when the dust settles on Anderson’s career, “The Master” will stand close behind “There Will Be Blood” as his best work. The film clings to the memory like your most vivid and surreal dream.

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'Once Upon a Time in the West' (1968)

I cannot comprehend how a master of the medium like Sergio Leone has nary a single Oscar nomination. This film is a towering cinematic monument, a Western that’s much more than “just a Western,” a sprawling, ambitious, thrilling, suspenseful work, bristling with subtext, remarkably directed, written, acted and scored. Its influence can be seen in the work of many modern filmmakers. At the very least, composer Ennio Morricone and Henry Fonda, cast against type as a nasty, nasty villain, deserved nominations. But Oscar always looked down at Leone for some reason, even when he made the prestige American picture “Once Upon a Time in America.” SNOBS.

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'Pan's Labyrinth' (2006)

Guillermo del Toro's historical horror fantasy drama is the most unforgettable – and probably the best – film of the 21st century so far. What a brilliant genre mash it is, a tragedy as beautiful as it is scary. It is a perfect film, and I say that approximately ZERO films. But the Academy apparently doesn't like to read subtitles. "Babel" (ugh) and "Little Miss Sunshine" got nominated, which seemed like a great idea at the time (note: it wasn't). Meanwhile, "Pan's Labyrinth" got its face rubbed in the dirt when it lost in the foreign language film category, to "The Lives of Others." I shake three things: my head, my fist at the sky and Oscar, by the lapels.

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'Psycho' (1960)

At least Hitch got a best director acknowledgment. Do I even need to make an argument for this? If you take an introductory film-studies class, and you don’t analyze the shower scene from “Psycho,” drop it for study hall, because it’s not worthy. But hey, John Wayne’s political-soapbox flop “The Alamo” got a nomination. And so did “The Sundowners,” once described as “especially appropriate entertainment for the Christmas holidays” – please, try to reign in your excitement! The best picture competition in 1961 was so flimsy, attempting to figure out the thinking behind “Psycho’s” exclusion will only lead to madness.

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'Rosemary's Baby' (1968)

Roman Polanski’s terrifying (and funny!) story in which Mia Farrow unwittingly births the son of Satan functions as an adroit metaphor for Academy inclusiveness. Guess who the unsettlingly smiling covenant of Satanic worshippers represents? OK, maybe it’s a stretch. But one thing is for certain: no nomination for this landmark film – about which one could write a graduate thesis or six – is as much a travesty as the Great “Psycho” Snub of 1960.

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'The Searchers' (1956)

Considered among the greatest Westerns ever, this is the absolute pinnacle of the legendary, cinematically lucrative John Ford-John Wayne creative partnership. It's a first-list inductee into the National Film Registry. Wayne challenged himself like no other time in his career, playing his most complex, nuanced and conflicted character, sometimes daringly against type. New York magazine once called "The Searchers" the most influential American film ever made. Oscar had none of it: ZERO NOMINATIONS. Go to hell, "The Searchers"! "Around the World in 80 Days" is the Academy's real masterpiece!

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'Seven Samurai' (1954)

Oscar is so shamelessly focused on American and British pictures, isn’t he? A face on the Mt. Rushmore of filmmakers, Akira Kurosawa enjoyed one, single, lonely best director nomination in a career studded with pictures of unmeasurable influence. (His Russian film “Dersu Uzala” won best foreign language film in 1975, a categorical ghetto in which other masters such as Ingmar Bergman and Federico Fellini frequently were mired.) The epic “Seven Samurai” is his magnum opus, a work of significant narrative and technical innovation, and probably one of the 10 best films of all time. (I’m sure it rivals “Touch of Evil” for references in subsequent films.) It got a couple of lowly nods, for costume and art direction. It would’ve gone up against “On the Waterfront” for best picture, an Oscar duel for the ages, but alas, only in our dreams.

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'The Shining' (1980)

Horror movies are even more of Oscar's bastard children than comedies. The genre is locked in the closet with stale bread and a couple of saltines. It's so low and base. I mean, all the remarkable visual dynamism and psychological depth of "The Shining" can't possibly be as meaningful as that year's eventual Oscar winner "Ordinary People," right? I mean, Stanley Kubrick is such a hack, scaring us and making us feel like damn children or something. Junk like "The Shining" is so extraordinary. We're adults, we're above anything with the slightest whiff of the supernatural. We prefer our movies very boring and very serious.

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'Singin' in the Rain' (1952)

Considering Hollywood’s glowing adulation of musicals in the ’50s and ’60s, you’d think this Gene Kelly classic would have been able to stock every cabin on the Titanic with an Oscar. You’d be wrong. It scraped up two nods (Jean Hagen for best actress, best score), went home empty handed, and was later considered not only Kelly’s best work, but likely the best American musical in cinema history. What won best picture that year? The worst winner ever, “The Greatest Show on Earth.” Should I say it? I’ll say it: Oscar, you’re all wet. (I’ll let myself out now.)

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'Some Like it Hot' (1959)

Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon dress as women and try really hard not to be visibly flummoxed in the presence of Marilyn Monroe in one of the greatest, knock-down funniest comedies ever made. It’s more of a stretch for a light(ish) comedy to get a best picture nomination now, but back then, it wasn’t nearly as rare – which makes its snub even more of a monumental head-scratcher, especially considering Billy Wilder was up for best director and screenplay awards.

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'Spartacus' (1960)

Stanley Kubrick’s massive gladiator saga has everything the Academy loves: grandiosity, scope, an epic story, an iconic performance by an all-time great movie star (Kirk Douglas), a massive budget. It screams PRESTIGE. But it earned not a single nomination. The fact that “Gladiator” scored a best picture win and “Spartacus” didn’t is like Bob Dylan getting all the accolades as Llewyn Davis suffers. Maybe Oscar was burned out on swords and sandals a year after “Ben-Hur” won. Or maybe Oscar is just a nincompoop.

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'The Third Man' (1949)

A stunning film noir, a benchmark in the genre, and film itself, snubbed. Carol Reed directed the movie, employing delightfully Dutch angles like his star, Orson Welles, liked to use in abundance as well. Welles may have been the kiss of death for “The Third Man’s” Oscar chances – he apparently was poison to an Academy sometimes too obsessed with singing and dancing and/or flimsy spectacle. Makes you wonder if the greatest thing the Oscars ever produced was the cuckoo clock. So to speak.

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'Touch of Evil' (1958)

Orson Welles’ definitive film noir features one of the most stunning opening tracking shots in the history of film (and might be the shot most frequently referenced in other movies, ever). This is the kind of virtuoso stuff that really makes Oscar salivate nowadays, considering he awarded Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu with gold two years in a row. But things were different in 1958, when the mentally addled Academy deemed “Auntie Mame” and “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” more worthy of accolades. I mean, who the heck is Orson Welles, anyway? One of the greatest and most influential film directors of all time or something?

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'Vertigo' (1958)

Even understanding that this isn't Alfred Hitchcock's most accessible work, it's easily his most complex, thematically dense and psychologically profound film. Now, you can't even speak the title without a magisterial air of importance. It's one of the most significant films ever made. Its nominations? Art direction and sound. Should Oscar GO HOME because he's DRUNK? Yes. Yes, he should. By the way, here's a reminder that Hitchcock never won an Oscar, getting only the honorary Irvin G. Thalberg Award.

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'WALL-E' (2008)

I once went to Disney World, and combed dozens of its omnipresent gift shops for “WALL-E” merchandise. Among Everest-sized mountains of princess bric-a-brac and Mickey Mouse toilet garnishes, I found one, single, lonely “WALL-E” Christmas ornament. I swear there was more “Song of the South” gear for sale. It made me conclude that Disney World is a stupid place, on par perhaps with the stupidity of Oscar. “WALL-E” won the best animated film award, but the Academy will forever shove masterworks into this genre ghetto. The implication is, “WALL-E” is “just a cartoon,” when it’s “just” a singular achievement of visually driven narrative storytelling and thematic depth. TIME magazine proclaimed it the greatest film of its decade. But Oscar so rarely allows animation into its best picture rodeo – three times – and that’s a disgrace.

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'Zodiac' (2007)

The serial killer movie that pretty much bulldozed the dirt atop the coffin of a well-worn genre is also David Fincher's most ambitious, subtle and detailed effort, which, considering the director's reputation for grueling exactitude, must have been a living hell for stars Robert Downey Jr., Mark Ruffalo and Jake Gyllenhaal. Give them all Oscars, and be thankful they aren't posthumous. I will give the Academy some grace here, because the film has a long fuse on it, and its impact arrives after a second or third viewing. And here's where we should pause and recognize that "Zodiac," "No Country for Old Men" and "There Will Be Blood" all debuted in the same year, and somehow, we weren't flat-out killed dead by all the genius intensity.

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'Hidden Figures' courtesy photo | 20th Century Fox

More on the Oscars

Michigan residents: MLive is running its annual Pick of the Flicks Oscar contest again, with a chance to win 150 Golden Ticket movie passes for Celebration Cinema theaters. Go here for all the details on how to enter.