The Golden Globes honor film comedies and dramas, and sometimes that's unfortunate. Brilliant comedies don't necessary come out every year, and every so often the dramas lag too. 1977 was very comedy/musical-heavy (Annie Hall, The Goodbye Girl, Saturday Night Fever) and 1990 was drama-heavy (Dances With Wolves, Goodfellas), and for that reason we'll give the Hollywood Foreign Press some credit for picking these five weird winners. But not too much -- the #1 entry on our list is laughably unforgivable.
5. Atonement
2007 was a great year for film, as decade-topping totems like No Country for Old Men and There Will Be Blood peppered award season. That's why it was weird -- nay, perplexing -- that Atonement, an attractive period romance with a good sex scene, beat out the Coens, Paul Thomas Anderson, and even Michael Clayton for the night's biggest trophy. It's not a bad film; it's just not building a legend the way its competitors still are. Also in 2007 (the ceremony that was canceled thanks to the WGA strike): Juno lost the comedy award to Sweeney Todd.
4. A Majority of One
This film adaptation of Leonard Spigelgass's hit play about a romance between a New York widow (Rosalind Russell) and a Japanese businessman had a few problems. One, it was overlong and pedantic. Two, the "exotic" WWII romance is both a stretch and a cliche. And three (ahem): Alec Guinness played the Japanese businessman. On Broadway, the role was originated by a fellow English actor, but even the great Guinness turned in a performance that The New York Times called "disturbing." Was this movie really better than fellow nominee Breakfast at Tiffany's?
3. The Greatest Show on Earth
Oscar's worst Best Picture is the Hollywood Foreign Press' third-worst awardee. This bloated drama by Cecil B. De Mille about downtrodden circus workers (including James Stewart, who plays a clown who never removes his makeup) was an artless in its bombast and just totally dull. It beat out High Noon for the Golden Globe and the Oscar, and it set the stage for enormous, world-spanning films with little plot. And you know how much you loved Mogambo.
2. Love Story
I'd like to blame Baby Boomers in general for making this 1970 film adaptation of Erich Segal's blockbuster a cinematic phenomenon, because Love Story must be the most overrated romance since the actual Antony and Cleopatra. Ryan O'Neal plays a wealthy Harvard (!) student who falls in love with Ali MacGraw, an uppity, middle-class Radcliffe (!) undergrad. Ali MacGraw's "witty" banter and forced screen presence is just the beginning of this movie's issues. Because, really, the worst part is the crux of the movie. Spoiler alert: She's dying. Spoiler alert #2: You never find out why. So, to answer the film's main question: What can you say about a 25-year-old girl who died? Well, for one thing, she didn't make any sense.
1. Green Card
Remember when I said 1990 was a weak year for comedies? Green Card, a romance both pretentious and dumb starring Gerard Depardieu and Andie MacDowell, was up against the following nominees: Dick Tracy, Ghost, Home Alone, and Pretty Woman. Pretty Woman was good, Dick Tracy was decent, and the houses that Kevin MacAllister and Oda Mae Brown built are best left forgotten. But worse than all of these is Green Card, which employs the tired two-strangers-meet-and-have-to-pretend-to-be-in-love-but-get-this-they're-going-to-fall-in-love to no creative end: Depardieu's American debut is flat, and MacDowell's uninspired delivery makes this movie not only painful, but forgettable.