25 best movies that never won an Oscar

24. Die Hard

Yes, action movies aren’t exactly known as Academy catnip. But Die Hard is considered one of (if not the) greatest action films of all time, and it actually was nominated for quite a few Oscars in 1989. It’s sad in retrospect that one of the most influential genre films ever released didn’t come home with even a token prize of appreciation.

Die Hard was nominated for Sound Mixing, Film Editing, Sound Editing and Visual Effects, all of which it lost. It could’ve easily picked up one of those awards, but most of the technical effects categories that year were rightfully owned by Who Framed Roger Rabbit. It’s hard to argue with the results because of how visually and aurally innovative that film was.

The one shame in terms of nominations was that Alan Rickman wasn’t given any Best Supporting Actor love for portraying Hans Gruber, arguably one of the greatest action-movie villains in cinematic history. He could’ve been slotted in there amid a slew of much, much less iconic performances. Sorry, eventual winner Kevin Kline for A Fish Called Wanda. You’re no Hans Gruber.

Fun fact: The Japanese Academy picked Die Hard as its Best Foreign Language Film of 1990. Maybe they appreciated the use of the Japanese Nakatomi Corporation, the namesake of the film’s famous Nakatomi Plaza? Whatever their reasoning was, at least someone was willing to give Die Hard some hardware.