It's a crime this film didn't sweep the oscars.

Rating: 10/10 (15 September 2000)

I consider this film superior to Forrest Gump (the big oscar winner that year) in almost every way possible. Granted, Forrest Gump is a good film, but The Shawshank Redemption is an absolutely brilliant piece of art (yes I said art) that, in my opinion, is one of the greatest films ever made. Judging from the scores it got here on the IMDB, many people agreed with me.
This just prooves how ego-centric the Oscars actually are. They really aren't about which film is the best, they're about what the simple-minded audience wants to win. Forrest Gump made an absolute killing at the box office, Shawshank did quite poorly. It's likely that the results at the Oscars satisfied more people than it would have had Shawshank won, but that's only because not many people saw it. I'd like to see you find someone who hasn't seen Forrest Gump.
If you think this is a one time thing for the Oscars, look at the results for Titanic, a film that I thought was absolute trash, James Cameron's worst. It won a bunch of oscars because everyone on the planet saw it. LA Confidential was the FAR more deserving film of that year, Good Will Hunting was also very good. But since the academy wouldn't want to upset all the idiotic fans of Titanic, it takes the oscars over the deserving film. The only "NOMINATION" that lousy movie deserved was for visual effects and I thought Starship Troopers deserved the win (which it didn't get, of course).
I think it's really sad that our society has become so corrupted by mass hysteria that it can't even figure out which films are great, and which aren't. Forrest Gump is good, The Shawshank Redemption is great. Titanic is crap, LA Confidential is very good (not as good as Shawshank though).