25 best movies that never won an Oscar

5. The Shawshank Redemption

Spoiler alert: This is the first of two Stephen King adaptations to appear on this list. King-based films have a hit-or-miss history with the Oscars. Once in a while, a film like Misery will take home a trophy. But other times, an equally deserving film like The Shawshank Redemption will leave the yearly ceremony with a big, fat goose egg.

The Academy did give The Shawshank Redemption plenty of opportunities to win a 1995 Oscar by nominating it in seven categories: Best Picture, Best Supporting Actor (Morgan Freeman), Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Cinematography (one of Roger Deakins’ many losses in this category), Sound, Film Editing and Original Score.

It wound up falling short to Forrest Gump in a few categories, and probably would’ve won Original Score if it wasn’t for that pesky Disney flick about talking animated lions. The most interesting thing to note here is that Shawshank lost out on a Sound Oscar to, of all movies, Speed, which also won a separate Oscar for Sound Editing. That’s right: Speed is a multi-Oscar-winning movie.

This is the rare situation where the film in question probably had the best chance of winning Best Picture, and with hindsight probably should have. Of course, one of the few films more iconic than Shawshank happens to be Forrest Gump, that year’s Best Picture winner.

Life is like a box of chocolates, ya know? You never know what awesome film won’t win a single Oscar.