Geeks don’t get much respect at the Academy Awards.  No science fiction film has ever won Best Picture and just a handful have been nominated.  Fantasy got some more wins, but that’s only cause of music - Wizard of Oz wouldn’t worked as well if it was Somewhere over the spatial anomaly.  This list recognizes the best geek movies also nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture ranked not only by how many awards they had, but also for how much geeks also like them (sorry Armageddon).

 7. Jaws - 4 nominations, 3 wins

Duh dun. Duh dun.  Aside from being scary as swimming with man-eating sharks, Jaws began the blockbuster mentality in Hollywood (not necessarily a good thing) and made the career of a small time director known as Steven Spielberg.  This sea classic has chewed its way into geek hearts the way any move can - with a giant mechanical monster bent on destruction.

6. A Clockwork Orange - 4 nominations

Hailed as one of the greatest movies ever and the Academy Awards failed to give it one Oscar.  It’s a common trend (where’s Blade Runner).  Stanley Kubrick’s twisted sci-fi adventure lost out to French Connection’s famous car chases, but remains iconic for its hats, music, and malicious intent.  Not the happiest of movies, but that just makes us love it more.

5. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon - 10 nominations, 4 wins

It’s like a live action video game.  Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon brought the popular wuxia chivalric martial arts movies to the United States, with thrilling fight sequences comparable to cartoons and video games.  The combination of talented fighters, rich choreography, and invisible wires raised the bar for live-action fight sequences, encouraging media to replicate each other. Of course, now movies are out pacing video games for fight sequences.

4. Raiders of the Lost Ark - 8 nominations, 4 wins

The blockbuster franchise, looking to re-ignite fans this year, won geek hearts with the combined spectacle making might of Spielberg and George Lucas.  The film featured not only dazzling special effects, but had genuine wit and charm, especially from the swashbuckling hero.  Oh, and having tons of Nazis to kill helps.

3. E.T., the Extra-Terrestrial - 9 nominations, 4 wins

Even geeks can cry.  E.T.’s tear-jerking story of a boy and his alien won children and adults and especially Academy members.  But the story wasn’t enough to sway Academy voters away from their love affair with serious drama and acting and all that crap.  E.T. lost out to Gandhi, to which its director Richard Attenborough responded: "I was certain that not only would E.T. win, but that it should win. It was inventive, powerful, [and] wonderful. I make more mundane movies."

2. Star Wars - 10 nominations, 6 wins

The story of Star Wars’ trip to the Academy Awards is almost like that of Star Wars itself - the powerful Empire gets trounced in the final minutes by some Rebels with a fraction of the firepower and budget.  Star Wars lost the Best Picture award to comedy Annie Hall in one of the biggest upsets in movie history.  It is also one of the rare occasions where the Best Picture winner did not win the most awards of the nights (Star Wars did).  Even without the ego-boosting statuette, Star Wars has remained one of the most influential and beloved movie franchises while Annie Hall is only watched by Baby Boomers desperately clinging to the memories of when they were relevant.

1. Lord of the Rings: Return of the King - 11 nominations, 11 wins

Here’s the only movie on this list to actually have won Best Picture.  After Fellowship of the Ring and Two Towers were snubbed for the massive achievement in film making they were, Return of the King made up for those failures by winning every single award except Documentary Short (even though it totally deserved it). Translating more than 1,000 pages into a more than 12 hour epic required more than one year to film, thousands of special effect shots, and simply one of the largest undertakings in movie history.  And the result is true movie magic, bringing Middle-Earth to the top.