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We all make mistakes. From leisure suits in the ‘70s, to “hypercolor” clothing in the ‘80s, to rat tail haircuts anytime, we Americans are notorious for making choices that seemed like good ideas at the time. Despite our less-than-stellar judgment, we tend to demand more of our finest institutions. In particular, we expect our most prestigious award-givers to choose the right winners. Is that too much to ask? Take the Academy Awards (please!). Today, we thought it might be fun to go back through history and point out the most obvious mistakes in the history of the Oscars. Focusing on past recipients of the three major awards (Best Picture, Actor and Actress), we’ll identify the times when Oscar really fell down on the job. And, sad to say, it’s happened more than once.

Ah, that eternal question: which is better, the book or the movie? Though such comparisons are natural, even inevitable, they’re also kind of pointless, since the conventions of each medium differ so markedly. Books explore the dense inner lives of characters in a way movies can’t, while films use sight, sound and motion to create an immediacy books can’t.

In Hollywood, August is rather indelicately known as a “dump month”— a time when studios traditionally litter theaters with films that have low box-office expectations and pack all the heft of a half-eaten Twizzler (à la this year’s “Let’s Be Cops” and “The Expendables 3”).  However, now and then over the years, the scheduling gods have managed to include a real gem with all the other celluloid junk. Here’s a look at some of the films that—from the 1950s to the 2010s—have defied their dog-day August release dates and become timeless works of art.   

The phenomenon known as typecasting has been practiced in Hollywood since its earliest days. Stars who excelled in certain kinds of roles were usually offered those kinds of parts repeatedly. To risk-averse studios, this simply made good business sense.

Submarines perform wonderfully as containers for high-tension drama as the challenges of close quarters, the inability to see what’s going on above, and the vulnerability of sailors working at many fathoms beneath the sea become as compressed as the oxygen they breathe.