The 12 Worst Best Picture Oscar Winners of All Time (Slashfilm)

"The thing about the Academy Award for Best Picture is that it is a popularity contest. And, like most popularity contests, it rewards agreeability, both artistically — the winner must be a widely-liked crowd-pleaser, and institutionally — the winner must reflect well on the Academy. The archetype of the 'Oscar bait' film is really just the mathematical derivation of decades of the Academy's membership defaulting to the films that pleased the most people while displeasing the fewest, always guided by a certain unspoken sense that Best Picture winners had to be prestigious and respectable — whatever that meant at any given point in history. At some points, it meant terrible movies were rewarded with the exact right amount of cultural complacency to win Best Picture, whether because they were huge box office hits, because they flattered the industry's self-importance, or because they just fit too snugly into the reigning norms of 'good taste.'" - slashfilm.com