All 97 Oscars Best Picture Winners, Ranked

[Editor’s Note: This list was originally published in February 2024. It has been updated to add new winners, including “Anora.”]

When the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences hosted their first annual Academy Awards on May 16, 1929 — a short, 15-minute ceremony at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel with tickets that cost the equivalent of $90 today — there were two top awards that night (and an honorary trophy for groundbreaking talkie “The Jazz Singer.”) The first was “Best Unique and Artistic Picture,” honoring boldly experimental art films pushing the medium forward: “Sunrise,” F. W. Murnau’s lyrical masterpiece of a romantic drama, received that prize. Then there was “Outstanding Picture,” given to more commercial fare made within the Hollywood system: That award was given out to “Wings,” a very good and extremely popular World War I action romance starring Clara Bow.

When AMPAS mounted a second ceremony a year later, they retroactively decided that Outstanding Picture was the real highest honor they gave out and discontinued Artistic Picture forever. And, as Oscar ceremonies continued and Outstanding Picture was renamed a few times — finally becoming “Best Picture” in 1962 — “Wings” has been treated as the sole film to establish the pantheon.

It was a decision that proved prescient, in many ways, as to what role Best Picture would come to serve within the culture and the many strong opinions to come about what are the best Best Picture winners and worst Best Picture winners. Ostensibly, it’s an honor bestowed purely on the greatest film of each year, with zero consideration beyond the strength of the picture as a piece of art in itself. Anyone who loves to follow the trudge of the Awards Season can attest that this is not quite true, at least not every year. Quality is in the eye of the beholder, but there are plenty of controversial decisions (“Crash” over “Brokeback Mountain,” anybody?) that continue to enrage many a movie buff. And even better-loved films like “Oppenheimer” — a massive epic that did gangbusters at the box office at a time when the theatrical experience felt in danger of dying away, from an auteur who had long-earned his stripes as one of modern Hollywood’s golden boys — can’t quite clinch the prize without a strong outside narrative to sell to the industry in their favor.

Much like how “Wings” was awarded at a time when Bow was the Hollywood It Girl and its expansive scope made it a beacon for the medium’s future, Best Picture is best understood less as an objective metric of craftsmanship or quality and more of a reflection of where Hollywood is — and where they want the industry, the culture, the country to be. A scroll through the award’s history can reveal a lot about the climate that the Academy was voting within: the ’40s saw films like “Casablanca” and “The Best Years of Our Lives” that reflected a country consumed in war take the top prize, while the ’50s saw the Oscar go to big spectacles like “Around the World in 80 Days” and “Ben-Hur” at a time when TV was emerging and stealing audience attention. The ’60s and ’70s saw the Oscar alternatively go to films that reflected the New Hollywood movement and those that felt like safer, palatable choices amid groundbreaking work. And in recent years, as the Academy itself has come under fire for its lack of diversity and responded by making painstaking efforts to expand its membership, the awards body has generated a taste for more international fare that’s led to groundbreaking wins like the 2020 “Parasite” triumph.

That’s not to say every Best Picture decision is correct — in fact, it’s quite possible that most aren’t. But almost every film on this list has some underlying story to its win that made it, if not a great work of art, then one with an explainable reason for taking cinema’s highest honor. The real test of a great Best Picture winner is how much they resonate 10, 20, 50, 100 years after they were bestowed the little gold man. Some fail — there are plenty of movies on this list where their only claim to fame culturally is the fact that they won Best Picture. Some succeed with flying colors, enduring as some of Hollywood’s most beloved movies, the kind that the Oscars put into sizzle reels and montages for decades to come. This balancing act voters attempt every year — crowning a movie that’s both meaningful in the moment and one that will be remembered fondly in the eras to come — isn’t necessarily a bug: It’s what makes the Best Picture announcement that closes out an Oscars ceremony so enthralling, enraging, and unmissable every year. Read on for all 96 Best Picture Winners in Oscars history, ranked from worst to best.

With editorial contributions from Christian Blauvelt, Bill Desowitz, Kate Erbland, David Ehrlich, Jim Hemphill, Marcus Jones, Ryan Lattanzio, Chris O’Falt, Mark Peikert, Harrison Richlin, Sarah Shachat, Erin Strecker, Anne Thompson, and Christian Zilko.

97. “Cimarron” (dir. Wesley Ruggles, 1931)

The first of only four Westerns to win Best Picture (as of 2025), this RKO epic is better known today for… well, not its revisionist history of the 19th-century land grab or its racist caricatures. If anyone knows “Cimarron” at all, it’s almost solely because of its status as a Best Picture winner and subsequent inclusion on lists like this (and possibly as an adaptation of an Edna Ferber novel). And just to add some context: 1931 was the year “M,” “Dracula,” “Frankenstein,” and “Public Enemy” were all released. Wow, an expensive epic beating out genre pictures? Some things never change. —MP

96. “The Broadway Melody” (dir. Harry Beaumont, 1929)

Sometimes it doesn’t pay to be the first. Often cited as the first fully formed movie musical, the 1929 offering (with the usual backstage plot of the era), “The Broadway Melody” got away with a lot in terms of storytelling by nature of sheer novelty. A full Technicolor singing and dancing sequence can hide a multitude of mediocre sins—but innovation doesn’t mean it deserves a higher ranking on this list. There would be other, better Pre-Code musicals in just a few years; its Oscar win is the defining aspect of “The Broadway Melody.” —MP

95. “Crash” (dir. Paul Haggis, 2005)

Practically shorthand for an undeserving Best Picture winner at this point, “Crash” is one of the rare Oscar winners to actually deserve every bit of scorn and criticism it gets from film nerds. A clumsy afterschool special stretched out into an agonizing sprawl, Paul Haggis’ hyperlink story about the racial tensions between Los Angeles residents populates its world with wafer-thin archetypes rather than flesh-and-blood human beings. It’s the exact kind of empty issues movie that has nothing to say about its subject, and says that nothing through histrionic, broad, and borderline incompetent filmmaking. What makes “Crash” genuinely insidious, and so obviously a film about racism for the liberal white people who make up the Academy, is its surface-level and insultingly shallow conception of racism and prejudice, as a personal fault rather than a broader poison within our social structures. Smug and self-important, without anything of substance to back it up with, “Crash” deserves the fate it has received, as the villain in another, better movie’s (“Brokeback Mountain”) tale of Oscar snubbary. —WC

94. “Cavalcade” (dir. Frank Lloyd, 1933)

The Academy’s preference for decades-spanning epics for Best Picture came early, and this Noel Coward adaptation (about a veddy British family living through veddy British things like the death of Queen Victoria) is a prime example. The film is a slog through history, filled with the kind of early ‘30s sentimentality that mars so many prestige pictures of the era. —MP

93. “Driving Miss Daisy” (dir. Bruce Beresford, 1989)

Was there a rougher decade for the Academy than the 1980s? Winner after winner was dated nearly the minute the ceremony was over, with “Driving Miss Daisy” becoming the poster child of how out of touch Academy voters had become. While it is hard to not love Morgan Freeman in anything, his charming performance as the chaffeur was key to how the film over sentimentalized race relations in the South. Spike Lee, whose “Do the Right Thing” wasn’t even nominated that year, rightly points to the scoreboard — “Driving Miss Daisy” isn’t taught in film school or talked about this century, while the title itself has become synonymous with a nostalgia for a “simpler” time (Spring 1963) before the Civil Right battle and the country’s politics explode. —CO

92. “Green Book” (dir. Peter Farrelly, 2018)

The Academy has had a decade-long string of good Best Picture winners, with this 2019 upset standing out like a sore thumb alongside gems like “Parasite” and “Moonlight.” And “Roma” was sitting right there the taking — the favorite and a beautiful Alfonso Cuarón film to boot — but the politics of streaming (Spielberg-led anti Netflix campaign) was more powerful than the questionable politics of the eventual winner, which for many felt like a regression to Hollywood’s “Driving Miss Daisy” approach to the topic of racism, especially alongside other nominees like “Black Panther” and “BlacKkKlansman.” —CO

91. “Oliver!” (dir. Carol Reed, 1968)

Carol Reed’s entertaining 1968 Panavision extravaganza (Columbia Pictures) adapts the Lionel Bart 1960 stage musical version of Charles Dickens’ 1838 classic “Oliver Twist,” with a rich British ensemble led by wily Ron Moody as Fagin and breakout Mark Lester as the title orphan, with able support from Oliver Reed as threatening burglar Bill Sikes, charming Jack Wild as the Artful Dodger, discovery Shani Wallis as a moving Nancy, and Oscar-winning vet Hugh Griffith (“Ben Hur”) as the magistrate. Several catchy songs entered the culture, including “Consider Yourself,” “Food, Glorious Food,” and “As Long as He Needs Me,” as well as the sticky quote “Please sir, I want some more.” “Oliver!” was nominated for 11 Oscars and won six including Best Picture, Director, Art Direction, Score, and a special choreography award. The movie was beloved by both audiences and critics: even Pauline Kael raved: “”The musical numbers emerge from the story with a grace that has been rarely seen since the musicals of René Clair.” —AT

90. “CODA” (dir. Sian Heder, 2021)

Now that we’re years away from COVID, it’s bewildering to look back and remember how the 2022 Oscars Ceremony rewarded a glorified sitcom episode its highest honor. In the moment, it made more sense: after so much trauma and darkness over two years, a rosy and sentimental film like “CODA” about the power of love and family certainly felt like a balm in awards season, compared to icier, remote works like “The Power of the Dog.” But the COVID-era goggles did a lot of heavy lifting, because Sian Heder’s feel-good teen comedy about the only-hearing child in a deaf family feels more sickening than sweet in 2025. Ugly and airless, “CODA” bloodlessly goes through clichés and conventions — the girl who doesn’t fit in but finds her voice through music, the nebbish love interest, the quirky mentor — with zero deftness to separate it from the average Disney Channel Original Movie. Although praised for its deaf representation, “CODA’s” understanding of the community feels willfully shallow, painting a binary opposition between deafness and music that reduces its deaf cast — Troy Kotsur, Daniel Durant, and Marlee Matlin — to supporting characters in their hearing child’s quest for self-discovery. “CODA” should thank its lucky stars that, thanks to a certain slap overshadowing most of that ceremony, it’s already become too forgotten for people to hate. —WC

89. “The Life of Emile Zola” (dir. William Dieterle, 1937)

Paul Muni starred in this staid movie about the French author, focusing on his early years as Cézanne’s roommate and his famous “J’Accuse!” open letter during The Dreyfus Affair. But what relegates William Dierterle’s movie to the upper reaches of this ranking is its inability, during the studio system of the 1930s, to mention the role antisemitism played in the persecution of Alfred Dreyfus. Biopics are always a lesson in cherry-picking what filmmakers consider relevant, but biopics from the golden age of Hollywood are so sanitized as to border on fiction. At least Muni delivered another great performance (including a lengthy courtroom monologue). —MP

88. “Gentleman’s Agreement” (dir. Elia Kazan, 1947)

The template for so many of the very worst Best Picture winners to come was set right here: The ur-text for the idea of a safe, regressive film passing itself off as a progressive vision, “Gentleman’s Agreement,” with its plot about a non-Jewish reporter (Gregory Peck) pretending to be Jewish to see how he’s treated differently, is a touristic vision of discrimination. It’s like in the early 2000s when Vanessa Minnillo and other TV hosts donned fatsuits to try to see how the reactions they got differed from those greeted by their normally svelte selves.

Dorothy McGuire gives the only vaguely interesting performance here in this sleepy anti-art from Elia Kazan as someone who has to come to terms with her own prejudice that she previously didn’t recognize. Centered almost entirely in a WASP worldview — John Garfield plays the only semi-dimensional Jewish character — this is exactly the kind of attempted bigotry exposé that prioritizes the comfort and safety of its Anglo viewers, because they’re the target audience. Much as you could say for “Crash” and “Slumdog Millionaire” to come. Instead of viewing the members of a discriminated group as human beings, “Gentleman’s Agreement” encourages merely tolerance. To tolerate the hell out of them. —CB

87. “The Great Ziegfeld” (dir. Robert Z. Leonard, 1936)

A prime example of the Academy’s tendency towards a “bigger is better” ethos, this highly sanitized biopic of the Broadway impresario (overseen by his widow, Billie Burke) is a wildly extravagant musical biopic that lacks the heft we now come to associate with the best movies about real people. Add to that its almost three-hour running time, and you get more of a snapshot of MGM moviemaking circa mid-’30s moviemaking than a timeless classic. —MP

86. “Around the World in 80 Days” (dir. Michael Anderson, 1956)

Chalk this one up to the terror that TV struck in the heart of Hollywood. You definitely couldn’t see anything as eye-popping or star-studded as producer Mike Todd’s three-hour epic adventure comedy in that little gray box in your living room, and its Best Picture win says more about where the industry was (and wanted to be) than about the kind of filmmaking excellence that transcends the era to become an all-time classic. —MP

85. “Slumdog Millionaire” (dir. Danny Boyle, 2008)

21st century cinema’s ultimate celebration of windfall capitalism and one of the most disturbing pre-“Emilia Pérez” examples of faux empowerment and progressivism to take awards season by storm, “Slumdog Millionaire” is a mess. This is a film so tonally jarring that you see a kid’s eyes burned out with molten metal and are supposed to forget about that because it works out well for another kid years later and they all dance at the end! Not even taking into consideration the many issues surrounding Danny Boyle’s film offscreen (this is a movie that literally has its own “‘Slumdog Millionaire’ controversies” Wikipedia page), this is movie that passes off the co-opting of a culture as genuine transnational cultural fusion. It may also be the most recent Best Picture winner of which we can say “this couldn’t be made today” (a designation that may not even apply to “Crash”): Its director, screenwriter, producer, and cinematographer are British men, with the top-listed Indians on the call sheet largely being the actors and the composer A.R. Rahman. But then again, “Emilia Pérez” happened. At least this one provided starmaking turns for Dev Patel and Freida Pinto. In every other respect with “Slumdog Millionaire,” we say: Jai no. —CB

84. “The Greatest Show on Earth” (dir. Cecil B. Demile, 1952)

Sometimes fun is all you need—provided the film feels weighty — and star-studded — enough, as proven with this Cecil B. DeMille epic about life under the big top. Starring Charlton Heston as the general manager overseeing major Hollywood stars performing circus acts alongside real-life Ringling Bros. performers, the movie remains one of the more lavishly entertaining of the big-budget, big-screen attempts to woo TV viewers back into cinemas — but as far as cultural currency goes, few would blink if you admitted to missing this one on your Best Picture scorecard. —MP

83. “The Lost Weekend” (dir. Billy Wilder, 1945)

A shockingly puritanical vision from the filmmaker who gave us “well, nobody’s perfect,” this adaptation of Charles R. Jackson’s 1944 novel about a terrible weekend in the life of an alcoholic New York writer is better suited for a temperance society than a movie theater. You know Ray Milland’s Don Birnam has a problem when the opening scene shows him reaching for a bottle hanging from a rope outside his apartment window. Hooboy. It’s all downhill from there, as Don plunges into one indignity after another in the pursuit of demon rum. Wilder filmed a few scenes on location in New York, which serve as a fascinating time capsule of the city in 1945: Yorkville was still a predominantly Jewish neighborhood at the time — Don wants to sell his typewriter for booze money at a pawn shop only to discover, to his horror, that they’re all closed due to Yom Kippur — and the Third Avenue elevated train makes a striking appearance.

The film has some of the cackling misanthropy that could sometimes appear in Wilder at his worst, such as when, upon being caught stealing a lady’s handbag at a nightclub, the club pianist immediately breaks into song with “Somebody stole a purse / Somebody stole A PURSE!” Milland is almost daringly unlikable, the farthest cry from something like “Dial ‘M’ for Murder,” where, even as the murderer, he is the most charismatic character in the movie. But “The Lost Weekend” reeks of the “problem picture” self-seriousness that would define the spate of social-issue movies to come in the ‘50s and ‘60s. One for teetotalers, not cinephiles. —CB

82. “Gigi” (dir. Vincent Minnelli, 1958)

“Gigi” is a sophisticated turn-of-the-century Vincente Minnelli Cinemascope musical that is hard to believe as mainstream material for 1958. Led by Gene Kelly’s discovery Leslie Caron, a French ballet dancer who was 17 in “An American in Paris” and 25 at the start of “Gigi” when she’s supposed to be 14, the movie is based on Colette’s story of a French courtesan in training. (Caron had also starred in a 1955 non-musical stage adaptation of “Gigi.“) The delightful songs by Lerner & Loewe include Maurice Chevalier’s “Thank Heaven for Little Girls” and “I Remember it Well.” Charming romantic lead Louis Jourdan falls in love with Gigi, with able support from her handler, Hermione Gingold. The movie took home nine Oscars, including Best Picture, Director, Writing, Cinematography, Costumes, Song (“Gigi”), and Score, Chevalier accepted an Honorary Oscar as well. —AT

81. “A Beautiful Mind” (dir. Ron Howard, 2001)

One of the most mawkish and unpleasant pieces of “prestige Oscar filmmaking” of the 21st century, “A Beautiful Mind” features subpar work from a lot of people who have all done better elsewhere. Ron Howard has made better films (“Splash,” “Apollo 13”). Akiva Goldsman has written better screenplays (“Practical Magic.”) Pretty much every actor in this sanitized look at the life of genius mathematician John Nash has had better performances, from leading man Russell Crowe in films like “The Insider,” long-suffering wife portrayer Jennifer Connelly in “Dark City,” and supporting actors Ed Harris and Paul Bettany in movies like “The Truman Show” or “Dogville.” And yet, their main moment in the glow of Oscars recognition came via a soggy, toothless, cookie-cutter biopic, one that doesn’t have a hint of grit or authenticity in its rote inspirational storytelling. When people throw around terms like Oscar Bait, “A Beautiful Mind” and its staid nothingness is what they’re gesturing to. —WC

80. “Shakespeare in Love” (dir. John Madden, 1998)

We get it. We really do. In a year in which the Oscar race was rife with more obvious awards heavyweights like “Saving Private Ryan,” “The Thin Red Line,” and “Life Is Beautiful,” the Academy’s decision to award “Shakespeare in Love” with Best Picture in 1999 still raises eyebrows. The film, directed by John Madden and written by Marc Norman and Tom Stoppard (and produced by Harvey Weinstein at the height of his powers), is a frothy blend of historical fiction and rom-com, a departure from the more somber, weighty narratives that often seem to dominate the Oscar race.

A playful reimagining of the early years of the legendary playwright (read: totally fake, but still lots of fun), the film sees Joseph Fiennes stepping into the role of “Will” Shakespeare, who is struck by inspiration — and romance — after meeting Gwyneth Paltrow’s Viola, a woman forbidden to act in the male-dominated theatrical world. The chemistry between Fiennes and Paltrow is charming, but it’s the film’s blend of humor, wit, and heart that elevated it beyond a standard period piece.

While its victory was criticized by some as an affront to the more “serious” “Saving Private Ryan,” “Shakespeare in Love” won over voters with its craft and energy. The film doesn’t demand deep reflection or philosophical discourse, but instead offers a vibrant, emotionally satisfying experience. Popcorn cinema, but make it smart. And award-winning! —KE

79. “Mutiny on the Bounty” (dir. Frank Lloyd, 1935)

The biggest box office success of 1935, “Mutiny on the Bounty” is legitimately exciting, and certainly a scenery-chewing showcase for Clark Gable as dashing mutineer Fletcher Christian and Charles Laughton as the odious Capt. Bligh. It may not actually come close to the depth of feeling of the 1962 remake starring Marlon Brando and Trevor Howard in those roles, which ultimately has caused this film to recede a bit in cinematic history. Its best remembered today for its impact on a few developments in Oscar lore: For being the last Best Picture winner, after “The Broadway Melody” and “Grand Hotel” to win no other Oscars other than Best Picture (despite being nominated for eight total), and for spurring the creation of the Supporting performer categories the following year because three thesps from “Mutiny on the Bounty” were nominated for Best Actor, all but ensuring none would win: Gable, Laughton, and Franchot Tone. —CB

78. “Out of Africa” (dir. Sydney Pollack, 1985)

Bland and bloated, “Out of Africa” is the type of middlebrow epic romance that’s easy to feel nostalgic for nowadays, with how rare they’ve become in cinemas. Still, it’s doubtful anybody has particularly fond memories of Sydney Pollock’s loose adaptation of the Danish aristocrat Karen Blixen’s autobiography, covering her life in Kenya during British colonial rule and her affair with British big game hunter Denys Finch Hatton. Casting beautiful movie stars like Meryl Streep and Robert Redford in this love story certainly goes a long way towards making “Out of Africa” watchable, but the film is too bloodless and restrained to offer the type of sweeping romance it’s aiming for. Also curtailing the romance: the film’s rosy and sympathetic look at the lives of dignified colonialists in Africa, with only token acknowledgment toward the actual people of Kenya, proves shockingly myopic and uncomplicated. —WC

77. “Braveheart” (dir. Mel Gibson, 1995)

There’s nothing wrong with a meathead action epic like “Braveheart.” It’s the air of self-importance and near delusional belief that it adds up to anything more than just bloodshed that makes Mel Gibson’s three-hour ’90s touchstone so numbing. An infamously extremely historically inaccurate take on the life of William Wallace, the Scottish knight who fought for his land’s independence in the late 13th century, “Braveheart” certainly is memorable, with some sprawling action scenes that get your heart pumping. Still, after a while, all the guts and gore run a bit dry in shock value. And when the film steps off the battlefield and into courtroom intrigue, the characters are far too wafer-thin and the writing too rote for the movie to make its political warfare as exciting as its physical warfare. A big problem is Gibson’s own performance as Wallace, which proves too stoic and surface-level cool to have much soul. —WC

76. “The King’s Speech” (dir. Tom Hooper, 2010)

A 2010s throwback to the type of staid, sanitized period pieces that dominated the Oscars in the ’80s, “The King’s Speech” looked practically Jurassic compared to some of the movies it beat out for the top prize, most infamously “The Social Network.” Rather than embrace a film that would prove both evocative of the time and prescient to the years to come, the Academy opted for the feel-good, handsomely mounted trifle that looks back to the onset of World War II through the least political lens possible. That’s not to say that Tom Hooper’s film is completely charmless: Colin Firth is enormously affecting as King George VI, who must overcome a stammer to effectively take the throne after his brother abdicates and leads the country into the war. Geoffrey Rush is a hoot as the king’s speech and language therapist Lionel Logue, and the two men make for an entertaining double act. It’s not enough, though, to give “The King’s Speech” any weight, or help it stick in your memory longer than the day you watched it. —WC

75. “Rain Man” (dir. Barry Levinson, 1988)

After years in development and a parade of A-list directors (Sydney Pollack, Steven Spielberg, Martin Brest) and actors (Bill Murray, Mel Gibson, Dennis Quaid) who came and went, this road movie about a self-centered opportunist and his autistic brother found the perfect team to make it in Barry Levinson, Tom Cruise, and Dustin Hoffman. Moving without ever veering into sentimentality, profound in its observations and insights but funny and accessible, “Rain Man” is the kind of miracle movie Hollywood studios rarely make anymore — the smooth, smart mass entertainment for adults. Levinson was and is the master of this type of filmmaking, and “Rain Man” found him at the peak of his powers following the likes of “Diner,” “The Natural,” and “Good Morning Vietnam” and right before “Avalon” and “Bugsy.” A perfectly calibrated character study with the swift pace and energy of the Astaire-Rogers musicals Hoffman’s Raymond finds so enthralling. —JH

74. “American Beauty” (dir. Sam Mendes, 1999)

1999 is frequently considered one of the greatest years in American film history. So of course, in a sea of timeless classics like “The Matrix,” “Eyes Wide Shut,” and “The Insider,” Best Picture went to “American Beauty,” the one film that would most curdle and rot with the passage of time. And not just because of disgraced leading man Kevin Spacey, although his performance as a dissatisfied suburbanite who becomes infatuated with his daughter’s best friend now resonates uncomfortably close to the man’s real life. What makes “American Beauty” seem so vital in 1999 and so out-of-touch now is its shallow musings on the emptiness of upper-middle-class suburbia, a lifestyle that doesn’t really exist anymore. Sadly, Mendes’ film doesn’t even really work as a time capsule of a different time in American culture, between its overwrought soapy writing and its queasy decision to side with Spacey’s Lester in his marital spats with wife Carolyn (Annette Bening, unquestionably the film’s MVP). “American Beauty” looks great — Conrad Hall gives this superficial world an almost ethereal glow — but its beauty proves frustratingly shallow. —WC

73. “You Can’t Take It With You” (dir. Frank Capra, 1938)

George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart were two of the wittiest playwrights of the 1930s (their “The Man Who Came to Dinner” has especially stood the test of time despite its barrage of period-specific references and namedrops), and it’s easy to see why Capra was drawn to their Pulitzer Prize-winning “You Can’t Take It With You.” It’s the story of an extended family of misfits trying to find understanding among the “normals” around them — absolutely material of a piece with “Mr. Deeds Goes to Town.” But this film adaptation is more a collection of great moments than a cohesive narrative. The moment when Jimmy Stewart threatens to scream, and acts like he’s barely suppressing a massive yell just climbing out of his throat, and makes poor Jean Arthur so nervous that she screams instead, is one of Stewart’s greatest comedic bits. It certainly shows Capra’s finesse with actors, and he’d win his third Best Director Oscar here, the only other Academy Award the film won. But “You Can’t Take It with You” is ultimately less than the sum of its parts. —CB

72. “Argo” (dir. Ben Affleck, 2012)

Developed by George Clooney and Grant Heslov’s Smoke House Productions from an article in Wired, 2012 Mideast thriller “Argo” adapts ex-CIA operative Tony Mendez’s memoir. Directed by Ben Affleck for $44-million,“Argo” is an intricately constructed movie written by Oscar-winner Chris Terrio that blends Hollywood comedy with riveting action as Mendez (Affleck) sets up an elaborate plot to rescue six American hostages in Iran. He and some wily industry veterans (hilarious John Goodman and Alan Arkin) stage a movie shoot in Tehran and somehow manage to extricate the terrified hostages. “Argo,” even though Affleck notoriously missed a directing or acting nomination, landed seven Oscar nods and three wins (Best Picture, Adapted Screenplay for Chris Terrio, and Film Editing for William Goldenberg). Affleck called “Argo” “a labor of love” which was designed to stand the test of time like the ’70s classics he reveres from directors such as Martin Scorsese, Sydney Pollack, and Sidney Lumet. Affleck followed his director rule: “I make sure to work as hard as I absolutely possibly can, because I know that’s the only shot I have at being successful.” —AT

71. “The Artist” (dir. Michel Hazanavicius, 2011)

The idea of a silent film hitting theaters in 2011 could have easily resulted in little more than an insufferably self-referential gimmick. But Michel Hazanavicius approached “The Artist,” a story of a silent film star (Jean Dujardin) falling for a rising talkie actress (Bérénice Bejo) as an evolving industry places his career on the decline while hers rises, with enough subtlety and nuance to ensure that its narrative merit is not completely tied to its format. Of course, the topic of actors struggling to adapt to the biggest change in Hollywood history has been explored countless times, from “Singin’ in the Rain” to “Babylon.” And while nobody is making the argument that “The Artist” is the best example of this micro-niche, the warm story of adapting to change against the backdrop of Tinseltown glamour is a reminder of why filmmakers feel compelled to revisit the Silent Era over and over again. —CZ

70. “The Shape of Water” (dir. Guillermo del Toro, 2017)

Just as the Academy recognized the artistry and craftsmanship of Guillermo Del Toro’s Spanish-language nominee “Pan’s Labyrinth” (six nominations, three wins including cinematography, makeup, and art direction), voters responded to his English-language masterwork “The Shape of Water” with 13 nominations, leading the field. Del Toro builds an immersive ’60s fantasy world that could only come from his prodigious imagination. The Mexican transplant is a respected and beloved figure who has managed to artfully mix genre and commercial elements with his own personal artistic imprint.

The crafts appreciated this impeccably designed and photographed fairy-tale romance that matches a mute laboratory cleaning woman (Sally Hawkins) with a glowing captive merman (Del Toro regular Doug Jones). They see beauty and sensuality in each other where others (like Michael Shannon’s abusive government agent) see abhorrent aberration. The Academy actors branch nominated three Oscar veterans, Hawkins, Richard Jenkins as her gay neighbor, and Octavia Spencer as her talkative cleaning partner. In the end, “The Shape of Water” won Best Picture, Director, Score, and Production Design. “I wanted to tell the story of the patron saint of otherness outcasts, which was this creature,” Del Toro told IndieWire at the time. “It was great to do a love story in 1962 in the Cold War; the only trick was to do it for less than $20 million. And I wanted to make a movie in love with cinema. I wanted it to be shameless and earnest and honest and not postmodern, reflective. It took five years to get this done right.” —AT

69. “Million Dollar Baby” (dir. Clint Eastwood, 2004)

Clint Eastwood’s 2004 tearjerker was adapted by Paul Haggis from boxing trainer Jerry Boyd’s stories in “Rope Burns: Stories from the Corner” (2000). Oscar winner Hilary Swank (“Boys Don’t Cry”) gained 19 pounds during strenuous bulk-up workouts to play the young boxer that Eastwood’s boxing coach takes under his wing. The heart of the movie is the father-daughter relationship between Eastwood and Swank, which yields copious tears for most viewers. Released late in the year, box-office smash “Million Dollar Baby” ($216 million worldwide) won four Oscars, including Best Picture, Director, Actress, and Supporting Actor (Morgan Freeman), 74-year-old Eastwood became the oldest Best Director Oscar winner. It was his second director and producer win, following 1993’s “Unforgiven.” —AT

68. “Birdman (or the Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)” (dir. Alejandro G. Iñarritu, 2014)

A work of singular originality, Alejandro González Iñárritu’s “Birdman” combines masterful technical craftsmanship with thoughtful meditations about life in the spotlight and the impossible task of squaring artistic ambition with the realities of aging. Michael Keaton gives a self-referential performance as an actor who has long been pigeonholed in a career-defining superhero role, only to find his attempt at reinventing himself in a Broadway production sabotaged by insecurities that manifest as hallucinations of his comic book character speaking to him directly. The role launched a renaissance in Keaton’s career — even if the bit seems less intentionally funny following Keaton’s return as Batman in “The Flash” — and served as a showcase for his wide range of comedic and dramatic chops. Iñárritu and cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki marry the mediums of film and theatre by presenting the film in what appears to be one continuous shot. The long takes and subtle editing create an environment of endless tension that builds towards a blistering conclusion that would have enshrined “Birdman” in film history even if the Oscars had ignored it. —CZ

67. “Forrest Gump” (dir. Robert Zemeckis, 1994)

In 1994, “Forrest Gump” emerged as the unexpected Best Picture winner at the Academy Awards, leaving some moviegoers scratching their heads and others embracing its unique cultural impact. Even now, in the very pages of this website, its merits and follies continue to be debated. If nothing else, that’s a film with staying power.

At its heart, the film is a powerful (if often very weird) portrayal of an ordinary man who inadvertently shapes the course of American history. Directed by Robert Zemeckis and starring Tom Hanks in a career-defining performance, “Forrest Gump” might sound silly, but it also explores heavy themes, from the power of fate to the possibility of true resilience.

And don’t deny the tech wizardry: Zemeckis harnessed cutting-edge CGI to place Forrest at pivotal moments in history — from meeting John F. Kennedy to running across the country — in a way that felt organic rather than gimmicky (at least, at the time). The film’s combination of whimsy and gravitas, enhanced by Alan Silvestri’s iconic score and its unforgettable soundtrack, made the film an emblematic snapshot of American sentimentality in the ’90s.

Don’t discount what that meant in 1994, as this crowd-pleaser captured the American zeitgeist at the time, and its victory at the Oscars spoke to its obvious (if, again, kinda weird) emotional power. We’re still talking about it, and that counts for plenty. —KE

66. “A Man For All Seasons” (dir. Fred Zinnemann, 1966)

Pretty much the epitome of a handsomely mounted, somewhat claustrophobically cloistered period drama, “A Man For All Seasons” is still a perfectly engaging and enjoyable example of the form. Fred Zinneman directs the 1966 film, which dramatizes the final years of Sir Thomas Moore and the trial that brought his downfall when he refused to annul Henry VIII’s marriage to Catherine of Aragon by making him the head of the Church of England. If you know the real history, nothing about the film is particularly or uniquely revealing, and it suffers from a bit of pomp and circumstance that borders on stuffy. Its main draw? The great cast, including a Best Actor-winning Paul Scofield as More and some brilliant supporting performances from Vanessa Redgrave and Orson Welles. —WC

65. “Nomadland” (dir. Chloé Zhao, 2020)

The west giveth and the west taketh away. This is not only true of the story at the heart of writer/director Chloé Zhao’s Academy Award-winning road drama, but of Zhao’s birth into the upper echelons of cinematic history. Like “Nomadland,” her first two films, “Songs My Brother Taught Me” and “The Rider,” use the wide open expanse of the West to explore narratives of deep inner turmoil. While both serve as stunning introductions to a totemic talent, it was Zhao’s collaboration with Frances McDormand — her performance earning her a third Best Actress Oscar — that cemented her status as one of the greatest filmmakers of her generation and made her the first woman of Asian descent to win Best Director.

“Nomadland” follows Fern, a woman on the other side of middle age who recently lost her husband, her job, and her house following the 2010 Recession. Now she travels the American West, chasing seasonal jobs and living out of her van. At first, it’s hard to parse whether this is the life she wants or the life she thinks she deserves, but as the film progresses and she’s presented with other options, one realizes this is the only life she’s ready to handle right now. The loss she carries is so vast, so deep, that even the notion of taking on anything else she could potentially lose, whether that be a new house or a new love, is debilitating for her. She’d much rather cling to that wide-open road. —HR

64. “Dances With Wolves” (dir. Kevin Costner, 1990)

The Western had been pronounced dead by virtually everyone when actor, producer, and director Kevin Costner brought it roaring back to life with this 1990 hit, a great American epic that triumphed against industry expectations to win seven Oscars including Best Picture. While the film was not revolutionary in the way some less informed commentators believed (there had been Westerns going back to the silent era that were sympathetic to Native American characters — this was hardly the first), it was an exquisite piece of classical craftsmanship — elegant and expressive in its visuals, rousing and affecting in its characterizations and musical score, and sweeping in its ambition. As with much of Costner’s work, its earnest sincerity is both its greatest strength and the thing that makes it an easy target for cynics; Costner wears his heart on his sleeve, and the emotional purity of his vision makes “Dances with Wolves” a deeply moving piece of old-fashioned Hollywood mythmaking. —JH

63. “The English Patient” (dir. Anthony Minghella, 1996)

Writer-director Anthony Minghella’s adaptation of the acclaimed novel by Michael Ondaatje about escaping the ghosts of the past is the last great romantic war drama of the 20th century, winning nine Oscars. In addition to Best Picture, it earned Best Director, Best Supporting Actress for Juliet Binoche, Best Cinematography for John Seale, Best Art Direction-Set Decoration for Stuart Craig and Stephenie McMillan, Best Costume Design for Ann Roth, Best Editing and Best Sound for Walter Murch, and Best Score for Gabriel Yared. “The English Patient” recalls the best of David Lean, with its epic sweep of the Sahara desert in the late ’30s and liberating intimacy between Ralph Fiennes’ Hungarian cartographer (very loosely based on aristocrat László Almásy) and Kristin Scott Thomas’ surveyor. They fall in love during an archeological expedition inside the ancient Cave of Swimmers, where they are enraptured by the mysterious cave paintings. However, the brilliance of Ondaatje’s narrative, which Minghella dramatically sharpens, lies in its use of flashbacks to deconstruct the identity of Fiennes’ dying and severely burned English patient. He is cared for by a combat nurse (Binoche) in a bombed-out Italian villa during the last days of World War II. Fiennes has lost his memory but slowly unravels the tragic events with Thomas while dealing with Willem Dafoe’s vengeful Canadian intelligence operative, who believes he’s responsible for the Germans torturing him and cutting off his thumbs. What separates “The English Patient” from say, “Out of Africa,” is its existential gravitas, which immortalizes human existence amidst the brutality of war. —BD

62. “Chicago” (dir. Rob Marshall, 2002)

The 2003 Best Picture winner directed by Rob Marshall accomplished a special feat: It’s the rare movie musical that managed to innovate, and became better than the cheesy, winky stage show upon which it’s based. Starring Renee Zellweger as accused murderer Roxie Hart, Catherine Zeta-Jones (who snagged the Best Supporting Actress trophy) as an even more famous accused murderer, and Richard Gere as their shady, charming lawyer Billy Flynn, the movie is a flashy production about the jazz age but also delves deep (well deep-ish) into questions of justice and fairness under the law. The musical numbers, choreographed by Marshall as seen through Roxie showbiz-hungry eyes, are the consistent standouts, high gloss, technically proficient and full of musical theater bangers that explain why just a few sounds — a pop, a hiss, squish, say— can make one instantly want to sing along, even 20 years later.

It had been three decades at that point (since “Oliver!” in 1968) since a musical snagged the top trophy at the Academy Awards, a victory a musical hasn’t seen since. While “Chicago” didn’t usher in a new Golden Age at the cinemas, it remains a high point for the ceremony’s choices, a starry, memorable adaptation that was a box office hit that worked on just about every level. —ES

61. “Gandhi” (dir. Richard Attenborough, 1982)

One of the first in a succession of relatively conventional, somewhat staid biopics and historical epics that dominated the Oscars during the ’80s, “Gandhi” has a lot going for it that sets it apart from the worst of this trend. Well, it has a lot of one great thing going for it to set itself apart, and that’s Ben Kingsley’s star-making performance as the civil rights figure famed for his role in ending British colonial rule. A virtual unknown at the time he took the part, Kingsley is so commanding, and embodies the part so fiercely, that it’s impossible to imagine anyone else taking on the figure aside from him. The rest of the movie around him is fine, a conventional biopic that doesn’t fully do justice to the complex man at its center, with sturdy and safe direction from Richard Attenborough. It just can’t hope to measure up to Kingsley’s greatness. —WC

60. “Everything Everywhere All At Once” (dir. Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, 2023)

A story about a flustered Chinese-American woman who’s struggling to finish her taxes (only to get audited by the great evils of our multiverse), “Everything Everywhere All at Once” is as overstuffed as its title implies, even more juvenile than its pedigree suggests, and so creatively unbound from the minute it starts that it makes even the Daniels’ earlier efforts seem like they were made with Bressonian restraint by comparison — no small feat in the context of a directing duo whose previous feature was a sweet fable starring Harry Potter as an explosively farting corpse. That it won Best Picture — and was regarded as a lock to do so by the end of its campaign — remains one of the only bits of Oscar history as weird and wonderful as the movie itself, though all signs point to the idea that “Everything Everywhere All at Once” might be more precedent than outlier. Confirming what “Moonlight” had given us good reason to hope for, A24’s second Best Picture-winner double-underlined the fact that we’d moved into a future where poignancy was more valuable than prestige; a future where anything could be an Oscar movie so long as it reminded people what they loved about movies in the first place. —DE

59. “Grand Hotel” (dir. Edmond Goulding, 1932)

So much more than the sum of its parts — and as the first “let’s have such a massive cast of A-Listers you’ll be playing ‘spot the celebrity!’” movie it certainly has a lot of parts — “Grand Hotel” conjures an entire world. The cosmopolitan world of Berlin right at the last moment before the Nazis took over. “People coming, going. Nothing ever happens,” Lewis Stone’s Dr. Otternschlag says. Of course, a tremendous deal does happen. The lives of characters played by John Barrymore (never more dashing), Joan Crawford (positively radiant), Wallace Beery (positively vile), Lionel Barrymore (annoying yet affecting), and, of course, Greta Garbo, criss-cross with soap opera abandon under the roof of the Grand Hotel.

But “Grand Hotel” recognizes, like silent cinema before it, that there can be incredible human feeling in melodrama — the kind of emotional depth that scares us, and so we snicker at melodrama to keep it at bay. Garbo, as a tragic ballerina, utters her iconic line, “I want to be alone,” which for many is the most memorable thing about “Grand Hotel.” But Goulding’s film is more than “I want to be alone” as well. An accomplished pairing of silent era emotion with the endless yammer of talkies (“Grand Hotel” was based on a play by William A. Drake, itself adapted from Austrian-Jewish émigré Vicki Baum’s 1929 novel), it glows with the Continental sophistication that would come to mark even more Hollywood films in the decade ahead as more and more film artists fled Europe. —CB

58. “Gladiator” (dir. Ridley Scott, 2000)

There are so many ways you can pick apart “Gladiator” if you want to fire some arrows at this superlative sword-and-sandals epic: Joaquin Phoenix’s “It vexes me. I’m terribly vexed”; the “wailing woman” vocals in the closing music that sparked an unfortunate trend across many 2000s soundtracks; the fact that it’s just a remake of Anthony Mann’s “The Fall of the Roman Empire.” No matter! This is craftsmanship full of such care and tactility (even with its, for its time, impressive CGI Colosseum exteriors), it makes one ache that there was a moment, only 25 years ago, when this was what met the definition of a blockbuster. And that, as such, a blockbuster could indeed win Best Picture.

Not the grading-on-a-curve “best popular film” nonsense the Academy tried out to acknowledge the franchise dreck that’s coopted the entire idea of blockbuster filmmaking. Actual meat-and-potatoes blockbuster filmmaking. The kind that could give us an electrifying Oliver Reed in an ecstatic reverie when he recalls the blood and sweat and exhilaration of being a gladiator himself. Or Richard Harris pontificating with great purpose about democracy. Or Russell Crowe, a thinking man’s he-man for the ages, giving extraordinary soulfulness to material that could have been completely rote. We come to praise “Gladiator,” not bury it. —CB

57. “Wings” (dir. William A. Wellman, 1927)

You have to respect the first. Sure, “Wings” came at a time so far removed from our own that it can be a little difficult to appreciate the things that made it so popular and renowned upon release — the sense of scope and scale, the highly realistic air battle sequences that made it one of the first true action films. And in terms of real artistic relevance to the future of cinema, the film is massively dwarfed by its twin winner from the first ceremony, F. W. Muranu’s “Sunrise.” And yet, William A. Wellman’s World War I romance is the film that kicked off a near-century of Oscars to follow, and for that, it will always be in the history books. It helps that it (mostly) holds up too — while the central love triangle between two best friends and the girl they love is a wee shallow, the leads commit to the melodrama with class and dignity, the action still can provoke a thrill, and the ending is liable to make you cry. It’s the exact type of great popcorn entertainment that Hollywood was founded on, and in that respect, its status as the first Best Picture winner is all too perfect. —WC

56. “In the Heat of the Night” (dir. Norman Jewison, 1967)

It’s hard to remember, but back in 1968 Norman Jewison’s “In the Heat of the Night” beat the two favorites for the Best Picture Oscar, “The Graduate” and “Bonnie and Clyde.” After winning his first Oscar and breaking the color barrier, Sidney Poitier (“Lilies of the Field”) and Rod Steiger led a powerful cast in this riveting Mississippi murder mystery based on a 1965 novel by John Ball set during the fraught Civil Rights era. The movie pulled no punches in its depictions of the racist South. As a Philadelphia cop far from home, dignified Poitier stands up to the bigoted police as he tries to solve a murder. His infamous slap of Larry Gates as Mr. Endicott became known as “the slap heard ’round the world.” (That’s because it was the first time a Black actor had slapped a white man on screen.) It’s a buddy movie, as Poitier and Steiger bond together in order to solve the crime. United Artists backed the movie at a $2 million budget, banking that it would turn a profit even if it was boycotted in the South. Moviegoers attended in droves all over the country. “In the Heat of the Night” won five Oscars, including Best Actor for Steiger, Best Adapted Screenplay (Stirling Siliphant), Editing (Hal Ashby), and Sound Mixing. —AT

55. “All the King’s Men” (dir. Robert Rossen, 1949)

Maybe the defining “all power corrupts” story of American politics, Robert Penn Warren’s 1946 novel becomes a thrillingly naturalistic drama in the hands of Robert Rossen, who’d cut his teeth writing screenplays for gangster movies and film noir in the 1930s and ‘40s. The same cynical view of American society you’d find in noir is lathered on “All the King’s Men,” but with a heavy dose of sadness too: Willie Stark, a populist firebrand in a southern state, had so much potential to do a great deal for working people. Instead he became caught up in the trappings of his office as governor, caring more about nonsense like his son winning the big football game for the state university. Loosely based on the life story of Huey Long, “All the King’s Men” features a powerful performance from Broderick Crawford as Stark, who conveys every shade of corruption on the journey from idealism to autocracy. And also a chilling turn from Mercedes McCambridge as the most hard-edged of hard-edged reporters. Where is America going? “All the King’s Men” gives an answer: To the same places it’s gone before. Over and over again. —CB

54. “Patton” (dir. Franklin J. Schaffner, 1970)

Francis Ford Coppola had been working in Hollywood for nearly a decade by the time he shared an Oscar win for Best Original Screenplay with “Patton” co-writer Edmund H. North, but it was this accolade that first got him considered for the job of adapting and directing “The Godfather” — a film that changed the course of Coppola’s history and cinema’s as well. Like “The Godfather,” Franklin J. Schaffner’s “Patton” is about war, history, and the key figures who shift both.

George C. Scott won his first and only Oscar for his role as General George S. Patton, or as he was more casually referred to, “Old Blood and Guts.” The reason for such a nickname becomes clear almost immediately upon watching his biopic, as Scott portrays the WWII commander as an egocentric brute whose belief in his own historical significance may very well have helped bring about the end of fascism’s reign of terror (at least for a few decades). For WWII buffs, “Patton” is recognized as a crucial text, both for its thorough depiction of military planning and execution and its nuanced portrayal of army leadership. On a cinematic level, the film dramatizes how wars are fought and won in a grand fashion few others have achieved. —HR

53. “The Hurt Locker” (dir. Kathryn Bigelow, 2009)

A turning point at the Oscars for several reasons, whether it be its helmer Katheryn Bigelow becoming the first woman to win Best Director, or the Best Picture categories returning to 10 nominees for the first time since the 1940s, the prevailing legacy of the Iraq War drama about a soldier feeling more at home on the battlefield, dismantling bombs, than back in America, is its David and Goliath story. Up against “Avatar,” newly the most successful film of all time, the independent production proved that great filmmaking can still provide explosive thrills on a modest budget. —MJ

52. “Hamlet” (dir. Laurence Olivier, 1948)

The first non-Hollywood production to win Best Picture, Olivier’s “Hamlet,” the first film version of Shakespeare’s play in English, is far from a straightforward adaptation. (If you want that, probably just watch Kenneth Branagh’s four-hour 1996 version.) Lit like noir, deep shadows add texture and richness to the Oscar-winning art direction and costumes. Entire monologues, including the “to be or not to be” soliloquy, are staged via voiceover to add greater realism: After all, would characters walking around dank chambers and reciting reams of text to themselves really be what anyone would do? But they very well could be thinking all of these monologues, and these are certainly characters given to brooding and obsessive ruminating.

All of this is to say, this is Olivier making real choices about how to realize this material for the movie camera. To make it live and breathe for audiences in a stylized, but somewhat naturalistic, way. If you liked Joel Coen’s chiaroscuro “Macbeth” — or really any riff on Shakespeare that tries to make the material cinematic rather than a filmed play — you can trace a straight line from that back to Olivier’s “Hamlet.” Should it have won Best Picture over “The Treasure of the Sierra Madre” or “The Red Shoes”? No. But that’s no reason to pour poison in cinephiles’ ears and act like it’s an unworthy winner. —CB

51. “My Fair Lady” (dir. George Cukor, 1964)

In so many ways it’s the epitome of the stagy, high-key-lighting Broadway adaptations of the ‘60s — seriously, not a shadow is to be found anywhere, turn of the last century London interiors were never that bright! — but “My Fair Lady” is like a fancy cake: There may well be artificial colors and flavors, it may not be nutritive, but it sure tastes sweet. Even if it’s been sitting on the shelf a little while. George Cukor’s adaptation of the Lerner & Loewe favorite has indeed seen its reputation dim over the years. There’s the questionable gender politics of the material itself (“Eliza, fetch me my slippers!”), and a feeling that the film is a last gasp more than an invigorating triumph. We’re certainly a long way from the days when Roger Ebert, in his Great Movies review, said that any cultured person should have all the lyrics memorized. But Audrey Hepburn is simply enchanting (an adjective used more in describing her than in possibly any other context), Rex Harrison is gruff and loveable, Wilfred Hyde-White is the definitive stuffy old English gentleman, and, yes, those songs do hold up. Of all of Alan Jay Lerner’s librettos his lyrics here capture the messy dynamics of a relationship worthy of someone who was married nine times. “Marriage is Alan’s way of saying goodbye,” one of his ex-wives is rumored to have said. Viewers will always be saying hello to “My Fair Lady.” —CB

50. “Spotlight” (dir. Tom McCarthy, 2015)

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: we’d all be a lot better off in a world in which “Spotlight” winning the top trophy of the year wasn’t a given. In a year dominated by glitzy epics and high-concept narratives, Tom McCarthy’s grounded drama was the rare Best Picture winner that didn’t lean on flashy flourishes or over-the-top performances to make its impact — it thrives on precision, truth, and the feeling of watching a team of journalists slowly, meticulously, piece together a story that changes everything.

The film tracks The Boston Globe’s Spotlight team as they unravel the shocking sexual abuse scandal within the Catholic Church. Sounds heavy, right? But McCarthy doesn’t sensationalize it; instead, he lets the story unfold like the most gripping of thrillers — without the flash. Its pace keeps you at the edge of your seat, especially when you realize just how much more there is to uncover.

A murderer’s row of stars only further added to its sensibilities: Michael Keaton, Mark Ruffalo, and Rachel McAdams give some of their best, most understated work here, showing us just how far quiet determination can go. No explosions, no heart-pounding showdowns — just a room full of people with a mission and a belief that the truth must come out. The most exciting thing that happens in the film? A phone rings. Someone picks up a newspaper. Someone tells their story.

In a world where “fake news” is a daily headline, “Spotlight” serves as a timely reminder of why we need investigative journalism now more than ever. It may not have fireworks, but it has a blazing, necessary message that made it more than worthy of its Oscar win. —KE

49. “Platoon” (dir. Oliver Stone, 1986)

Many view Oliver Stone’s “JFK” as the filmmaker’s masterpiece and place it an unofficial trilogy against his other presidency-related films “Nixon” and “W.,” but it may be more accurately placed amongst Stone’s work depicting the Vietnam War, including his adaptation of Ron Kovic’s “Born on the Fourth of July” and his own semi-autobiographical “Platoon.” Where “JFK” takes a birds-eye view of the social and political turmoil that possibly led to America’s involvement in the Vietnam War, “Platoon” brings us right into the heart of the conflict, embedding us like Charlie Sheen’s Chris Taylor into the 25th Infantry Division near the Cambodian border.

Featuring a colorful cast of characters played by Tom Berenger, Willem Dafoe, Forest Whitaker, Keith David, Johnny Depp, and more, Stone’s deeply personal examination of war takes an interest in the bonds formed amongst soldiers and, for better and worse, the loyalties they ultimately elicit. Though “Platoon” offers many iconic moments — from weed being smoked out of a gun’s muzzle to villages being burnt to the ground — all the film needed was the shot of Dafoe’s Sgt. Elias running for his life, Vietcong bullets tearing into him as his brothers-in-arms watch on from helicopters with horror and shame to confirm its status as one of the most honest and searing portraits of war. —HR

48. “The Last Emperor” (dir. Bernardo Bertolucci, 1987)

International art-house auteur Bernardo Bertolucci scored one of the greatest comebacks in the history of cinema with this lush, intelligent epic depicting the life of Puyi, China’s last emperor of the title. Bertolucci had become a sensation with “Last Tango in Paris” in 1972 but struggled to maintain his reputation with the films that followed. “1900” was an unadulterated masterpiece of staggering ambition, but fights with financiers and mixed reviews gave it the whiff of failure; “Luna” and “Tragedy of a Ridiculous Man” were less high-profile, both for better and (mostly) worse. But with “The Last Emperor” Bertolucci reestablished himself as a filmmaker of the highest order, someone capable of telling the most intimate of stories on the most sweeping of canvases, all the while capturing a mass audience without sacrificing one iota of his directorial personality. “The Last Emperor” has the educational value of a great history class, the visual and aural dazzle of a Cecil B. DeMille spectacle, and the intense depth of a penetrating character study; it’s all of these things and more, a case where the Academy unquestionably got it right. —JH

47. “Kramer vs. Kramer” (dir. Robert Benton, 1979)

Robert Benton’s “Kramer vs. Kramer” is now unfortunately more remembered as the film where, according to Meryl Streep, co-star Dustin Hoffman slapped her during a take to generate the right response for a pivotal emotional scene. It was also, Streep has said, her first take in her first movie. Along with Best Picture, both Hoffman and Streep won for this enormously moving and understated divorce drama about a New York ad man (Hoffman) whose wife (Streep) is leaving him and their son, leaving him to raise the kid alone. The drama builds toward a powerful courtroom saga that makes “Marriage Story” look like “Liar Liar.” Ted and Joanna don’t reconcile, but the film does give them a great final moment, with a teary Streep heading out in an elevator and Hoffman telling her, “You look terrific.” —RL

46. “Tom Jones” (dir. Tony Richardson, 1963)

Boiled down by John Osborne from Henry Fielding’s sprawling picaresque 1749 novel “The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling,” Tony Richardson’s delightful 1963 British comedy “Tom Jones” broke out the young Albert Finney as a charming rogue who moves from one rowdy sexual adventure to another. The centerpiece is a lobster feast as bawdy foreplay with Diane Cilento. Susannah York plays the more conventional romantic interest, while Hugh Griffith and Dame Edith Evans offer hilarious support. “Tom Jones” was a popular hit, was nominated for ten Oscars, and won four, including Picture, Director, Adapted Screenplay, and Score (John Addison). —AT

45. “Anora” (dir. Sean Baker, 2024)

As the Academy has expanded its membership in the decade following the #OscarsSoWhite controversy, a different type of Best Picture winner has emerged: one that’s grittier and scrappier, an indie triumph that American and international voters alike can rally around. “Anora” exemplifies this new breed of Oscar film, a raunchy, funny, devastating $6 million comedy about sex work and class exploitation from a true blue independent auteur who has spent his award season campaigning for the power of the theatrical experience and the importance of supporting small artistic cinema. The magic of “Anora” is that while it’s plenty accessible and breezy — beginning as a whirlwind fairy tale before morphing into a stressful dark comedy until it finally settles into pure tragedy — it still feels so specific and pointed to 2024 and the national moment in its portrayal of working-class people getting used and discarded by careless oligarchs. Baker’s filmmaking is a touch sleeker than his past masterpieces, but the control and precision he finds within the film’s chaos earned him every one of his record-breaking four Oscars. Of course, the film’s lasting legacy will likely be as the star is born moment for leading lady Mikey Madison, whose vivid portrayal of the titular young woman (justly) won her Best Actress. —WC

44. “The Departed” (dir. Martin Scorsese, 2006)

Master filmmaker Martin Scorsese finally won an Oscar for one of his signature crime dramas, and all it took was assembling a cast consisting of at least a third of the leading men working at the time, from Leonardo DiCaprio to Matt Damon to Mark Wahlberg to veterans Jack Nicholson and Martin Sheen (with Brad Pitt as an executive producer.) Breaking out of his New York shell, the American adaptation of 2002 Hong Kong hit “Infernal Affairs” exposes the criminal underbelly of Boston, balancing twin narratives of an undercover cop chasing a fellow officer in bed with the Irish Mob. Though Scorsese had made better films before, and has made better films since, this 2006 release is an eternal crowd pleaser that has plenty of fun twists and turns. —MJ

43. “Ordinary People” (dir. Robert Redford, 1980)

Robert Redford made a poignant feature filmmaking debut with this sophisticated and at times scalding adaptation of Judith Guest’s novel, “Ordinary People.” The actor-turned-director peels back the unraveling of an Illinois family, where the father (Donald Sutherland) accidentally caused the death of his son in a sailing accident. Left to pick up the pieces are the other son (Timothy Hutton, a Best Supporting Actor Oscar winner) and emotionally distant mother (Mary Tyler Moore, who is quite unsettling here and unlike anything she played on TV). Redford avoids any soap operatics or melodramas, playing everything at a minor key, in what feels like a realistic portrayal of suburban life, and a film wherein middle class audiences saw their desperations reflected. —RL

42. “The Sting” (dir. George Roy Hill, 1973)

Conceived as an excuse to reunite the trio of Paul Newman, Robert Redford, and director George Roy Hill that turned “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” into a modern classic, “The Sting” might not match the artistic significance of the film that preceded it, but makes up for it by doubling the fun. A goofy 1930s gangster caper draped in all of the pinstripe suits and fedoras you could ever dream of, the film tells a story of two con men who devise a scheme to rip off a mob boss that’s too complicated to ever be summarized succinctly. David S. Ward’s script is so endlessly clever that you can’t help but laugh, and Newman and Redford carry the story, which occasionally borders on cartoonish, with enough charisma to remind you why they’re enshrined as the two definitive movie stars of their generation. In short, “The Sting” is quite possibly the most fun you’ll ever have watching a Best Picture winner. —CZ

41. “The Sound of Music” (dir. Robert Wise, 1965)

It’s very likely that the first Best Picture for the majority of film devotees was “The Sound of Music,” one of the most beloved family-friendly classics in cinema history. And well it’s easy to roll your eyes and poke fun at the earnestness that defines Robert Wise’s staging of the Rogers & Hammerstein Classic, watch it again. Even as an adult, you’ll still find yourself singing along. That score is immortal, with songs like “Sixteen Going on Seventeen” and “Clim Ev’ry Mountain” remaining staples to this day, and the music has never sounded half as good as it does coming from Julie Andrews, whose spritely and luminous portrayal of nun-turned-governess Maria remains the gold standard for musical theater acting. And while there are a few creaky elements, she’s ably supported by a dashing Christopher Plummer, leading to some real spark in the central romance. And while it’s family-friendly, “The Sound of Music” is by no means toothless — this is a movie about embracing family and love, and rejecting fascism, after all. There are worse things for your kids to be learning. —WC

40. “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” (dir. Miloš Forman, 1975)

Ever since Nellie Bly chose to have herself committed to the asylum on Blackwell’s Island (now Roosevelt Island) in New York City in 1887, mental health and its treatment has been of constant interest to the American psyche. During the 1960s, the topic was thoroughly explored in novels like Ken Kesey’s “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” and Fredrick Wiseman’s haunting documentary “Titicut Follies,” but it wasn’t until the former was adapted into a narrative feature by Miloš Forman in 1975 that the psychiatric community began reassessing the efficacy of institutionalization.

Led by a towering, Oscar-winning performance from Jack Nicholson, Forman’s “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” features an all-star cast of nobodies who were about to become somebodies, including Brad Dourif, Christopher Lloyd, and Danny DeVito. Nicholson’s McMurphy is best described as an eccentric (though sexual predator may be more apt), but in the world of psychiatric health, that’s not a term doctors and nurses used lightly. What the film reveals is not a concern for the individual ailments and strife facing each patient, but treatment of mental illness as an extension of societal conformity.

Nurse Ratched isn’t a health care professional so much as she’s a tight-fisted school marm ready to rap a student’s knuckles (or electro-shock them) whenever necessary. In this case, can McMurphy be viewed as a hero for standing up to her or a victim of his own caprice? Where you stand on this matter may have more to do with your own feelings towards mental illness than what he’s going through, but alas, maybe that’s the whole point of what the film is trying to say. —HR

39. “From Here to Eternity” (dir. Fred Zinnemann, 1953)

Everyone remembers that opening to “From Here to Eternity,” a (for the time) quite racy beach makeout between Burt Lancaster and Deborah Kerr at their most beautiful. It’s only three seconds long, but so well-remembered that Kerr was once quoted saying “I’ve played so many different roles in so many different locales…and yet all they ever talk about is that roll in the sand.” The rest of the film hasn’t endured to quite that extent, but Fed Zinnemann’s drama about the lives of army men in the months before Pearl Harbor is a brilliant human drama about people on the verge of a great, catastrophic shift. Lancaster plays an officer in an affair with his captain’s wife (Kerr). Frank Sinatra and Montgomery Clift play soldiers subjected to bullying from their superior officers, while Donna Reed is a local who romances Clift’s troubled Prewitt. All the actors deliver career-best performances in the movie, which remains a superb tearjerker a half-century after its release. —WC

38. “Marty” (dir. Delbert Mann, 1955)

Occasionally, a film competing in the Oscars gets deemed by pundits too “small” to really have a chance at taking the top prize. And yet, in 1955, the simple, lovely romance “Marty” triumphed at the Oscars. How small is Delbert Mann’s directiorial debut? It’s actually based on a 1953 teleplay that was broadcast via the anthology series “The Philco Television Playhouse.” Original writer Paddy Chayefsky expanded on the script to deliver the film, which recast the title role from Rod Steiger to an Oscar-winning Ernest Borgnine, tremendously affecting as a socially awkward bachelor who battles family disapproval to romance high school teacher Clair (Betsy Blair). The two actors have radiant chemistry together, making this quiet, sweet romance pop off the screen. Academy voters weren’t the only people taken with “Marty:” it made history as the first film to win Cannes’ Palme d’Or. —WC

37. “12 Years a Slave” (dir. Steve McQueen, 2014)

Although its reputation precedes it in terms of being “hard to watch,” Steve McQueen’s historical drama about a free Black man trafficked into chattel slavery down south a couple decades before the Civil War is as artful as it is harrowing. While the role of Solomon Northrup is an incredible showcase of Chiwetel Ejiofor’s talents, it is then newcomer Lupita Nyong’o who serves as the true heart of the film, navigating her way through both the surreal and the painful parts of American history on shameful display. —MJ

36. “Oppenheimer” (dir. Christopher Nolan, 2023)

Even the biggest Christopher Nolan hater had to find something to appreciate about “Oppenheimer.” After spending the first half of his career establishing himself as Hollywood’s most cerebral purveyor of blockbusters, Nolan’s biographical film (just don’t call it a biopic!) about the man who invented the atomic bomb saw him working at the height of his artistic and commercial powers. Anchored by a brilliantly tortured performance by Cillian Murphy in the titular role, “Oppenheimer” felt like a natural culmination of many ideas that have always fascinated Nolan: races against time, the pursuit of scientific achievements against a backdrop of chaos, and the possibility that logic is not enough to understand a world that’s ruled as much by humanity’s fickle emotions as the laws of nature. It’s Nolan’s most artistically significant work, and the fact that it became a bona fide summer blockbuster is a testament to his gravitas (and the fact that black looks funny when juxtaposed with pink). Nolan’s Oscar sweep was seen by many as overdue recognition for a man who has done more to carry the film industry on his back than just about any other individual in the past two decades, but it was also well-deserved on the merits of his best film. —CZ

35. “Rocky” (dir. John G. Avildsen, 1976)

The quintessential sports movie from a decade filled with them, “Rocky” would be a real contender for the title of most rewatchable Best Picture winner of all time. Written by and starring a then-unknown Sylvester Stallone, “Rocky” introduced the world to one of the most iconic protagonists of the 20th century in Rocky Balboa. The all-American fighter was as much of an underdog as the man who risked everything to play him in the film, endearing himself to audiences with his awkwardness and convincing them to root for him with his electric training montages. Elements of the film have been referenced and parodied so many times that it’s easy to lose sight of the artistic merit it possesses — the fact that it spawned a franchise of less high-minded but always enjoyable sequels is just an added bonus. The brilliant narrative device of Rocky Balboa losing his big fight but winning the battle of love has stood the test of time beautifully, and “Rocky” lives on as a pleasant reminder of times when the tastes of mainstream audiences and Oscar voters were in lockstep. —CZ

34. “Chariots of Fire” (dir. Hugh Hudson, 1981)

As underrated a Best Picture winner as there’s ever been, “Chariots of Fire” doesn’t have a higher reputation simply because of the classics it beat for Oscar’s top prize: “Raiders of the Lost Ark” and “Reds.” That’s unfair. Just as “How Green Was My Valley” was a masterpiece in its own right but could never shake beating “Citizen Kane,” “Chariots of Fire” needs to be seen as a film, and a great one at that, not just as an Oscars pugilist that socked Indiana Jones and John Reed in the jaw.

Actually watch “Chariots of Fire.” Go ahead. You will see an almost singular sports-movie-as-art-movie. Very little else comes close to the formal exactitude director Hugh Hudson brought to this story of Britain’s elite sprinters competing for gold at the 1924 Olympics. Maybe Michael Ritchie’s “Downhill Racer”? But that’s about it.

Look at the scene of Harold Abrahams’ (Ben Cross) triumph in the 100m dash. It’s staged in one long-take, with the camera far removed from the track, and no score playing on the soundtrack, to give a uniquely detached, gods’ eye view of this incredible achievement. And then it repeats it in slow motion while faint wails of Vangelis’s generational score, so famous its ubiquity probably hurt the reputation of the movie as well, creep up. And all this after a prelude to the race where Vangelis gives almost eerie, horror-movie like music to set the stage: There’s no other movie that captures the nauseous leadup to a race like this, and the anticlimactic “now what?” when it’s actually been won.

Winning is “a very hard pill to swallow” Nigel Havers’ Lord Lindsay says in the scenes thereafter, which show Abrahams’ depression that, despite having won, it’s all over. It was a triumph yes, but also a mountaintop in one’s life that can only mean it’s all downhill from there — Olympic depression is widespread among medal-winning athletes and “Chariots of Fire” is one of the only movies to ever capture this. The price of gold is steep. —CB

33. “Ben-Hur” (dir. William Wyler, 1959)

Count IndieWire as fans of Wyler’s epic-scale Western “The Big Country,” which he all but abandoned, before shooting had even finished, for an even greater spectacle: A second adaptation of General Lew Wallace’s 19th century sword-and-sandal swashbuckler that literally had as its subtitle “A Tale of the Christ” (parodied by “Hail, Caesar!”).

“Ben-Hur” is a Judean prince, and his life story is sort of like an Anno Domini “Forrest Gump,” in which he intersects at key moments with Jesus himself. The film is as uneven as you’d expect with that concept — uncredited screenwriter Gore Vidal’s homoerotic script elements only fleetingly appear in the final version, which leads to an especially slack first act — but when it clicks into gear, it clicks into gear. There have been film actors who’ve inhabited their parts more deeply than Charlton Heston, but it’s hard to think of an actor who gave greater conviction to their roles, who seemed to believe in them and in so doing make the audience believe in the world of the characters, more than Heston.

The chariot race is a 70mm Cinecitta extravaganza beyond compare, and in many ways represents MGM’s last great flex as Hollywood’s biggest powerhouse studio: Each of the film’s six Mitchell Camera Company 70 mm lenses cost $100,000 alone. What’s striking is how good everything after the chariot race is, when Christ truly does perform a miracle for Ben-Hur and his family. As epic-movie music’s greater practitioner, Miklos Rosza, swells his heavenly score in the final miraculous moments of “Ben-Hur” it’s hard not to think, at least to this writer, tears welling in my eyes upon listening to the Hungarian composer’s celestial music: Why can’t Christianity be like this all the time? If “Ben-Hur” is the grand finale to the studio era, it is not a burial, but an ascension. —CB

32. “The Deer Hunter” (dir. Michael Cimino, 1978)

War is not for the faint of heart. In fact, really, it shouldn’t be for anyone. While many films released in the aftermath of the Vietnam War aimed to explore not only the violence of this affair, but its lingering side effects as well, what Michael Cimino’s “The Deer Hunter” accomplishes in contrast speaks more to the humanity that’s lost as a result of all the chaos and fighting. The film begins amidst the conflict, but thousands of miles away, with a group of young Western Pennsylvania men preparing to leave to start their service.

Best friends amongst the group, Mike (Robert De Niro) and Nick (Christopher Walken) are at the heart of the film’s three-hour runtime and represent the contrasts in conviction that separate one soldier from another. While Mike is a steely-eyed fighter willing to do anything to survive, Nick is more passive, a fact that ultimately rips apart his psyche and leads to his devastating end. War kills a lot of people in a lot of different ways, but “The Deer Hunter” reminds us that its harshest of cruelties is wreaking havoc on the soul. —HR

31. “Midnight Cowboy” (dir. John Schlesinger, 1969)

An X-rated Best Picture winner? Stranger things have happened, but in the case of John Schlesinger’s rambling portrait of a Texan (Jon Voight) who becomes a hustler in New York, “Midnight Cowboy” made history as an adults-only film that took the top prize. Schlesinger and screenwriter Waldo Salt also won Oscars for this New Hollywood classic, whose gender politics and supposed sexual brazenness at the time feel dated now, but were industry-shattering in 1969 when the film was released. And the movie has actual heart, thanks to the buddy chemistry between Voight and Dustin Hoffman as the sickly con man who links up with. “Midnight Cowboy” would introduce a new wave of sexually bold films unto audiences, but that would never repeat quite so at the Oscars. —RL

30. “An American in Paris” (dir. Vincente Minnelli, 1951)

“An American in Paris” isn’t quite Gene Kelly or MGM musicals at the peak of their powers — “Singin’ in the Rain” happened a year later, after all. But the film is such a magical delight that it’s easy to get swept away in it anyway. Building on the catalog of composer George Gershwin, Vincent Minnelli drops the audience into a fantasy vision of Paris, with the always charming and rakish Kelly playing our window in as a suffering artist who falls for a local girl (Leslie Caron). The love triangle and complications that push them apart before they can come together aren’t that complicated, but the songs and the storytelling make it feel magical. And then, of course, there’s the immortal 17-minute-long fantasy ballet, one of the greatest uses of dance to express emotion and longing that’s ever been put to film. —WC

29. “How Green Was My Valley” (dir. John Ford, 1941)

For some, “How Green Was My Valley” will always be that film that robbed “Citizen Kane” of the Oscar. Did John Ford’s story of a Welsh mining family divided by a labor strike necessarily deserve to beat out Orson Welles’ masterpiece? No, but then again, what film can measure up to “Citizen Kane?” While it’s not necessarily Ford’s all-time best, “How Green Was My Valley” is up there in terms of the director’s great accomplishments, an affecting and heartbreaking family drama with brilliant performances and an enormous amount of empathy for all of the flawed, stubborn people trying to do what’s best for themselves in a difficult situation. Other films have tried to ape the film’s format, which looks at this struggle through the perspective of the youngest member of the clan, youngest son Huw (Roddy McDowall). Many, like “Belfast,” wind up feeling a bit twee and insubstantial. But “How Green Was My Valley” never feels anything less than gritty, raw, and honest. If “Citizen Kane” is an example of revolutionary filmmaking, Ford’s drama is the peak of the good sturdy basics done flawlessly. —WC

28. “The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King” (dir. Peter Jackson, 2003)

Like “Return of the Jedi” before it, “The Return of the King” is as much a chance for the filmmakers to leave all their visual prowess on the field, even as they tick off their remaining squares for Joseph Campbell bingo, as it is to finish the story of “The Lord of the Rings.” Director Peter Jackson even gets to indulge in his horror roots in the monstrously effective sequence of our two stalwart hobbits attempting to (finally) walk into Mordor through the lair of a giant spider. The technical achievement, and the stuck landing (seven times) over the course of three films, makes it easy for “ROTK” to stand in for the entire trilogy.

But what “Return of the King” quite good in its own right is how it uses the characters to guide us through its world-spanning, three-hour showdown between good and evil. The first and most important battle — Oliphant takedowns aside — that every member of the film’s extended fellowship must face is the battle between hope and despair. Arguably the most sublime moment of the film, the lighting of the beacons, all comes down to Pippin (Billy Boyd), this tiny Tookish goofball, who makes the choice to reach out and help even though the scale of Sauron’s menace seems impossible to fathom, let alone counter.

Again and again in “Return of the King,” Jackson finds ways to make good on the promise of the “Lord of the Rings” films, and shows that even the smallest person can change the course of the future. —SS

27. “Parasite” (dir. Bong Joon-ho, 2019)

To date, the Oscars have maybe never picked a cooler Best Picture winner than “Parasite.” Like all good stories about class in late-stage capitalism, this movie is sharp and funny and absurd until it absolutely isn’t, until the violence that’s been but a latent promise explodes indiscriminately outwards. But director Bong Joon-ho clearly isn’t opposed to all structures, because the ruthlessness with which “Parasite” charges and repurposes and reveals new dimensions of the spaces that the two families inhabit might even take Hitchcock’s breath away.

A second viewing makes it clear all the cinematic ways in which Bong and his team is playing with composition, depth, color, rhythm, and the static or handheld nature of the camera throughout the first half of the film to make what happens in the second half impossible to see — money makes lots of things impossible to see, after all. But even when encountering Ki Woo’s (Choi Woo-sik) prosperity rock for the first time, there’s a desperate, angry promise we can feel “Parasite” making; it is perhaps on us that we are surprised when the film keeps it. —SS

26. “Gone With the Wind” (dir. Victor Fleming, 1939)

Victor Fleming had two movies up for Best Picture Academy Awards in 1940, “The Wizard of Oz” and “Gone with the Wind.” This sweeping, swoony saga of the American South amid the Civil War and the Reconstruction that followed has since been deemed offensive for romanticizing the horrors of slavery. Indeed, this is a beautiful Antebellum South populated by Clark Gable and Vivien Leigh (who get some of the tastiest, most quotable lines in film history thanks to Sidney Howard’s script) that is a far cry from Steve McQueen’s “12 Years a Slave,” which won Best Picture 74 years later. But just because its legacy is complicated doesn’t mean we should pretend it didn’t happen. Or that it isn’t quite spectacularly mounted, and with a great performance from Hattie McDaniel as Mammy, making her the first Black Oscar winner. Though she never received an Oscar statuette, which was lost but then replaced by the Academy in 2023. It’s now at the Chadwick A. Boseman College of Fine Arts in D.C. —RL

25. “Rebecca” (dir. Alfred Hitchcock, 1940)

A number of the Master of Suspense’s British movies are excellent (“The Lodger,” “Blackmail,” “The 39 Steps,” “Sabotage,” and “The Lady Vanishes” to name a few) but his complete artistic vision arrived in full-bloom with his Hollywood debut, “Rebecca.” In fact, it’s hard to think of any other non-American filmmaker whose aesthetic was more fully formed in their first American film. Daphne du Maurier’s Gothic novel was absolutely perfect material for Hitchcock because it not only gave him opportunities for suspense (everything with Judith Anderson’s eerie, unblinking Mrs. Danvers; the reveal of Maxim de Winter’s dark secret), but the comic bits that populate his entire body of work (and that require as much precision to pull off as any suspenseful moment).

There’s the brutally haughty Mrs. Van Hopper (Florence Bates) as Joan Fontaine’s odious employer (“Nasty stuff!” she barks when having just taken her medicine. “Quick! Give me a chocolate!”). Nigel Bruce carrying a rubber dumbbell for his weightlifter costume at a ball. George Sanders lustily eating a chicken leg while blackmailing the de Winters and announcing he no longer wishes “to be a motorcar salesman.” And though Robert E. Sherwood and essential collaborator Joan Harrison are the credited screenwriters, the script is full of the brilliant background filler dialogue that populates so many of Hitchcock’s later films (films on which Harrison had no role). When Gladys Cooper tells a butler suffering from a toothache that he “should have them out, all of them — wretched nuisances, teeth,” there are glimpses of Madame Sebastian in “Notorious” opining at some length about how getting to the airport takes longer than actual air travel. This kind of writing does so much to make these characters feel real and the world they inhabit lived in. Hitchcock was already the Master, even in 1940. —CB

24. “All Quiet on the Western Front” (dir. Lewis Milestone, 1930)

The first truly great film awarded at the Oscars, “All Quiet on the Western Front” remains the gold standard that all anti-war stories are judged by — and most of them, the 2022 remake included, fall short. Released at a time when the devastation of World War I was still a recent memory, Lewis Milestone’s adaptation of the German novel by Erich Maria Remarque is a bleak, bitter story about German schoolboys who were sold a dream of defending their country and enlist to face horrible, dehumanizing conditions before they’re inevitable unremarkable ends. Its existence angered Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party as they were rising to power: in German theaters, chief Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels had plants release mice and stink bombs to disrupt screenings. But divorced from the conflict and the circumstances that birthed it, “All Quiet on the Western Front” is still wildly powerful, one of the few anti-war stories to really capture the futility and the banality of bloodshed. —WC

23. “West Side Story” (dir. Robert Wise and Jerome Robbins, 1961)

The original 1961 “West Side Story” commits one massive sin that tarnishes its perfection, diluting its powerful anti-xenophobia message by slathering a bunch of white actors in brownface to play the Latino Sharks — Rita Moreno (who deservedly won Best Supporting Actress for her vivacious portrayal of Anita) is basically the only actual Puerto Rican seen on screen. If it wasn’t for that, “West Side Story” would be a home-run masterpiece, and it’s still pretty close to one. Co-directed by Robert Wise and original Broadway stage choreographer Jerome Robbins (his sole film directing credit), the operatic Romeo & Juliet story of two teens on opposite sides of a gang war is maybe the most beautiful Hollywood film ever made, a glorious technicolor fusion of impeccable choreographing, lighting, set design, and costumes that manages to translate the show’s story in a way that feels both theatrical and cinematic. A shot of Natalie Wood twirling her dress that dissolves into red, the way the world around her Maria and Richard Beymer’s Tony comes out focus whenever they see each other — “West Side Story” is a masterclass in using raw filmmaking to convey pure emotion, reflecting all the angst and passion burning through these young impressionable kids. Musicals are still struggling to build upon what Wise and Robbins perfected. —WC

22. “The Bridge on the River Kwai” (dir. David Lean, 1957)

Bum-bum…bum-bum-bum bum-bum…with a score this addictive, it’s no wonder David Lean’s “The Bridge on the River Kwai” lives on as one of the greatest films ever made, let alone one of the finest Best Picture winners. Just as composer Malcolm Arnold’s “River Kwai March” was written to counter the “Colonel Bogey March” whistled by the British soldiers of the film, “The Bridge on the River Kwai” is a study of contrasts as much as it is similarities. British sensibility isn’t so different from Japanese honor, yet when put in opposition to one another, both can appear as either brutes or fools depending on the spectator. As for American grit, it’s all well and good when it’s driving William Holden’s Navy-man Shears to escape the Thailand-based prison he’s bound in, but when it also pushes him to return and destroy the eponymous bridge, one has to wonder if grit is just, as Major Clipton exclaims at the end, “Madness!” —HR

21. “No Country for Old Men” (dir. Joel and Ethan Coen, 2007)

The passage of 17 years has only been kinder to the Coen Brothers’ extraordinary picaresque about a Texas hunter on the run from hired killers after he stumbles upon a bag full of cash at the body-strewn site of a drug deal gone wrong. Some critics have accused the Coens of misanthropy across their body of work, but in no film of theirs has there been a warmer regard for their characters than “No Country for Old Men,” even as they face the most pitiless circumstances and nemeses, the most shattering twists of fate. This is a film about powerlessness. About the belief that we hold more ability to change our fates than we really do, and the sometimes terrifying, sometimes heartbreaking revelation that we’re unable to. That powerlessness is embodied by most of the characters, but none more so than Terrell County Sheriff Ed Tom Bell (Tommy Lee Jones), who spends the movie stumbling around several steps behind everyone else before simply retiring. Sure, in some other Coen films, a break from the narrative (say, the Mike Yanagita detour in “Fargo”) feels a little less than entirely empathetic. Not so here, where the narrative ellipses and ambiguities only add to several characters’ states of grace. May we all have someone down the road from us, setting a campfire to light our way. —CB

20. “Unforgiven” (dir. Clint Eastwood, 1992)

“It’s a hell of a thing killing a man. You take away all he’s got and all he’s ever gonna have.” William Munny can be thoughtful enough to say that, and also, at the end of the film, after he’s unleashed a bloody torrent of violence, warn, “I’ll come back and kill every one of you sons of bitches.” Munny became his worst self once again, and we cheer every minute of it. When he gives that warning, the American flag is framed behind him, and he slinks off into the dark, rainy night. No triumphant moment in a Western has been framed more sinisterly, no victory a greater moral defeat for its protagonist, who earlier took big gulps from a whiskey bottle – given up years before – in order to fully let his dark side come out.

Imagine Clint Eastwood giving this level of reflection on the Western and its inherent lethality after he launched his superstardom with a film where he says, “Get three coffins ready.” And then later, “My mistake. Four coffins.” Has a figure associated with any genre ever given so eloquent a final statement about that genre? More than just “when the legend comes back, print the legend,” “Unforgiven” shows what happens when the legend and reality exist at the same time, how the different lives a person has led can be compartmentalized, but never truly exorcised. And how an act of justice can also be unjust — because, after all, deserve’s got nothing to do with it. —CB

19. “The French Connection” (dir. William Friedkin, 1971)

The fact that it has been over 50 years since William Friedkin made “The French Connection” and no one has been able to top its indelible car chase scene — despite many trying — kind of says everything you have to say about how alive and vital the film remains. Though its hardboiled procedural format may have roots in classic crime films such as “The Naked City” and “Where the Sidewalk Ends,” “The French Connection” goes beyond these pulpy concoctions by cutting to the tough, chaotic truth of life as a cop.

Gene Hackman’s Jimmy “Popeye” Doyle is not a man to be fucked with and yet for the duration of the film, that’s exactly what he faces. It would almost be sad if Popeye wasn’t such an indomitable, racist prick, making his struggle and response to it both hilarious and justified. After all, who else would give chase, cause multiple accidents, and put tons of lives in danger other than a rat bastard like this? Popeye may be the exact kind of toxic officer of the law many have railed against throughout history, but there’s no denying, watching him in action does still have its certain appeals. —HR

18. “On the Waterfront” (dir. Elia Kazan, 1954)

Few performances in film history are as titanic or as influential as the one Marlon Brando gives in “On the Waterfront.” Brando was a star already, becoming an instant sex symbol with his sweaty turn in 1951’s “A Streetcar Named Desire,” but his Oscar win for “On the Waterfront” and his raw, moving turn epitomized the method acting style that would move Hollywood from its classic era into a grittier future. Elia Kazan’s an intimate drama about a down-on-his-luck ex-boxer who finds renewed hope and inspiration to do the right thing when he gets a chance to testify against the mob boss who once convinced him to throw it all away is the ultimate acting showcase, a living ode to Brando’s singular abilities with a killer central monologue, that “I coulda been a contender” monologue, that hits you square in the gut. Simply put, the film wouldn’t work at all without Brando. Which is not to say that it’s great only because of Brando — between its wonderful screenplay, killer supporting cast, and powerful message about redemption and the power of one man against corruption, this is one of the great movies of its decade. —WC

17. “Terms of Endearment” (dir. James L. Brooks, 1983)

Writer James L. Brooks made one of the most impressive directorial debuts in film history with this 1983 adaptation of Larry McMurtry’s novel, a book rumored to be based on producer Polly Platt and her relationship with her daughters. Although he had forged a successful career in television, creating classic sitcoms like “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” and “Taxi” and writing the fine Burt Reynolds-Jill Clayburgh romance “Starting Over,” nothing on Brooks’ résumé prepared audiences for the delicate tonal balance of “Terms,” a comedy about the relationship between a mother (Shirley MacLaine) and daughter (Debra Winger) that culminates in the daughter being diagnosed with a terminal illness. Cancer might not seem like the raw material for wall-to-wall laughs, but that’s exactly what “Terms” provides — even when the movie goes dark in its final act, Brooks never loses sight of that initial intention. The performances are stellar, but the MVP may be composer Michael Gore, whose music is as inextricable from the movie’s artistic and commercial success as John Williams’ “Jaws” score is from Steven Spielberg’s film. Right from the beginning, Gore’s themes provide an additional dimension and energy to “Terms,” not just underlining the action on screen but generating entirely new emotional responses in the audience. —JH

16. “It Happened One Night” (dir. Frank Capra, 1934)

Frank Capra’s Best Picture win for “It Happened One Night” saw the screwball comedy genre recognized on the American film industry’s biggest stage. The subgenre of pratfalls, confusion, and unexpected romances that arose from chaotic days was a pivotal force in Hollywood’s first half-century, and “It Happened One Night” was undeniably a high point. (We wouldn’t blame you if you made the case that “Bringing Up Baby” or “His Girl Friday” edges it out for the title of the GOAT screwball comedy, but at a certain point it’s splitting hairs.) Telling the story of a spoiled socialite (Claudette Colbert) who falls for a common reporter over the course of a bus ride that turns into a bigger ordeal than either could have ever planned, the pre-Code comedy represents a pitch-perfect execution of everything that makes the screwball comedy genre great. Its influence on pop culture was so significant that some even credit it with inspiring the creation of Bugs Bunny. And even after watching a century’s worth of films and TV shows that liberally borrowed its tropes, we dare you to turn on “It Happened One Night” and try to stop yourself from grinning ear-to-ear by the end. —CZ

15. “Mrs. Miniver” (dir. William Wyler, 1942)

Nazi propaganda chief Joseph Goebbels feared “Mrs. Miniver” above all other anti-Nazi cinematic statements made by the Allies because it focused more on the “us” rather than the “us vs. them.” It presents a depiction of an actual alternative to despotism, an alternative worth fighting for and dying for: A life of flower contests and readings from “Alice in Wonderland” and steps toward making an ever more just society — even the local aristocrat, Lady Beldon (Dame May Whitty), becomes something of a democrat by the end.

The passage of time may have dimmed the particular context that gave “Mrs. Miniver” such extraordinary power, but it’s worth looking at William Wyler’s gentle, episodic film about life in pastoral Britain again. Because, unlike Frank Capra’s overtly militant “Why We Fight” films, the “why we fight” argument of “Mrs. Miniver” is about what we must save, what we hold dear. Wyler understands there’s as much heroism in getting innocents to an air raid shelter as there is flying bombing runs over Occupied Europe. His moody nighttime staging of the small boats gathering to sail to Dunkirk is the very opposite of rousing hero worship. An increasingly loud world may have made the quiet truths of “Mrs. Miniver” seem small — tune out the noise and hear what this film is saying. It’s a roadmap for how dignity and freedom can survive. —CB 

14. “Annie Hall” (dir. Woody Allen, 1977)

It’s hard to overstate the lasting influence that Woody Allen’s “Annie Hall” has left on pop culture. Allen’s sixth feature film behind the camera marked a massive step forward, trading the (often hilarious) broad comedy that powered his early farces for a more nuanced look at modern neuroses and gender relations that introduced an era of rom-coms for The Thinking Moviegoer. Everything from its fourth wall-breaking postmodernism to its integration of Freudian therapeutic ideas was an innovation, and the fact that it made such a cultural impact and beat “Star Wars” for Best Picture is a compliment to the sophisticated audiences of the ’70s. The film also marked the proper introduction of Allen’s trademark persona as a nervous, overthinking New York creative — an archetype that continues to appear everywhere you look in modern comedy. Diane Keaton’s performance as the eponymous free spirit gives Allen a perfect foil for those neuroses, as she embodies the character with a joyful lust for life that contrasts with his seriousness without every devolving into ditziness. “Annie Hall” spawned countless knock-offs — many of which were directed by Allen himself — but a precious few of them ever topped the New Yorker’s bittersweet masterpiece. —CZ

13. “The Godfather Part II” (dir. Francis Ford Coppola, 1974)

If turning Mario Puzo’s “The Godfather” into classic cinema initially felt like an impossible task to Francis Ford Coppola, the only job that could have been harder was making a sequel that matched the original. Not only did Coppola achieve that, there’s a strong case to be made that he surpassed his original masterpiece. “The Godfather Part II” tells an ambitious story over the course of two timelines, going back in time to follow the Corleone family’s original journey from Italy to America while showing us its expansion into Las Vegas gambling and further decline following the events of the first film. While just about every scene in the original “Godfather” is a certified banger that prompts you to drop everything you’re doing if you happen to see it on TV, “Part II” sees Coppola capitalizing on his well-earned freedom to occasionally take a moment to stop and enjoy the view. That patience results in a film with more breathing room — even if the sequel is occasionally less gripping than its predecessor, it has time to build towards a summit that is every bit as meaningful. Coppola often says that he views the first two “Godfather” movies as a single, epic film. Taken together, they represent the ultimate American cinematic saga, but that shouldn’t minimize the way “Part II” stands out as a classic in its own right. —CZ

12. “The Silence of the Lambs” (dir. Jonathan Demme, 1992)

Horror is infamously, not really the Academy’s bag: almost every year there’s at least one great film in the genre that gets overlooked in the Oscars Race. While it’s not exactly the type of gritty, low-budget indie gorefest many horror aficionados crave, Jonathan Demme’s iconic serial killer thriller is the closest the genre will probably ever come to Best Picture glory. And the impeccably made, widely acclaimed film won big: despite releasing in January before that year’s ceremony even aired, it triumphed to become one of three films to win all five major categories: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Actress, and Best Adapted Screenplay. And justly so, because the movie remains one of cinema’s all-time great chillers, a tense, frightening look into human cruelty that features stars Jodi Foster and Anthony Hopkins at their absolute best. So many horror films can lose their power when they become absorbed by the culture to the extent that “Silence of the Lambs” has. And yet somehow, Hannibal Lecter and Buffalo Bill can still keep you awake at night. —WC

11. “Amadeus” (dir. Miloš Forman, 1984)

Oscar-winning director Milos Forman (“One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest”) and Oscar-nominated screenwriter Peter Shaffer (“Equus”), adapting his own 1979 stage play, created the perfect period biopic of a musical genius by pitting giggly Vienna prodigy Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (Tom Hulce) against envious composer colleague Antonio Salieri (F. Murray Abraham), who can’t compete with him. Salieri narrates the tale of his disgust with the vulgar, childish Mozart who is blessed with musical gifts from the gods. In 1985, Forman won his second Oscar, Shaffer his first for this movie, which was nominated for 11 Oscars and won 8 including Picture, Director, Writer, Actor (Abraham), Art Direction, Costume Design, Sound, and Makeup. —AT

10. “Going My Way” (dir. Leo McCarey, 1944)

The entire body of work of Leo McCarey deserves greater discovery, but none more so than “Going My Way,” a film so popular in its time, that its popularity may have occluded its greatness in the decades after. This is as close to an American version of an Ozu film as you’ll ever find in a Hollywood movie (even considering McCarey’s own earlier “Make Way for Tomorrow,” which literally inspired Ozu’s “Tokyo Story”).

Eschewing anything like a conventional plot, “Going My Way” concerns itself with a younger priest (Bing Crosby) who’s assigned by his bishop to help out an older priest (Barry Fitzgerald), who may have lost a step or two. And from there, the film is largely episodic: There’s the episode with the local hooligan kids who’ve stolen turkeys from a poulterer, the one with the banker who’s trying to evict an old woman from his tenement, the one with a young singer trying to find a job, the one where the singer and the banker hook up and end up living together before he’s shipped off to war, a detour to the Metropolitan Opera where an old friend is playing Carmen, a golf outing, an entire choral practice with a boys’ choir. It’s gentle and plugged into the rhythms of life in a way you’d expect from McCarey, Hollywood cinema’s greatest early master of improvisation.

A largely non-singing part for Crosby, “Going My Way” is actually like his approach to singing translated into acting form: Understated, with all showy flourishes trimmed away so that meaning can come across unfettered. So many Best Picture winners could also be “Most Picture” winners, displays of bombast and actorly swagger, Hollywood flexing its power. “Going My Way” showed another path rarely taken, one with a different set of cinematic values worth cherishing. —CB

9. “Moonlight” (dir. Barry Jenkins, 2016)

Though a certain snafu at the Academy Awards has left Barry Jenkins’ sophomore effort, an adaptation of one of Tarell Alvin McCraney’s unproduced plays, forever intertwined with another one of the nominees, its vast accomplishments stand tall on their own. The domestic drama set in Liberty City, a predominantly Black neighborhood in Miami, presents its characters in a different light from how the world often sees them. The tenderness imparted by stars Mahershala Ali, Trevante Rhodes, André Holland, and more throughout the film is a necessary balm to not just the expectations of men from marginalized backgrounds, but to masculinity as a whole. And in terms of how it is shot and edited, almost no one has ever looked better on camera than how Black and Kevin look in that diner, as the soul music plays. —MJ

8. “The Best Years of Our Lives” (dir. William Wyler, 1946)

There can be a difference between virtuosity and mastery. The former is showy brilliance that’s self-evident, the latter understated and more concentrated on meaning and emotion in a way that doesn’t make you go “wow, that’s great.” You won’t say that because you’re too absorbed in the moment. You’re not thinking of the technique, you’re living in the story. If Orson Welles embodied virtuosity in the 1940s – Charles Foster Kanes stretching off to infinity as he walks in front of mirrors! – Wyler best inhabited the idea of mastery.

“The Best Years of Our Lives” is a domestic drama of extraordinary depth and ambition that shows the levels of emotion Hollywood was capable of mining even before “The Method” took the industry by storm. A kind of epilogue to the entire idea of the “homefront movie,” it looks at three servicemen who return from World War II and their difficult transition back to civilian life.

Wyler uses “Kane” cinematographer Gregg Toland to stage scenes in depth, not for pictorial swagger but to add layers of meaning to key moments. One soldier is playing a little tune on the piano in a moment of fun, while in the background, in the phone booth, another is having his heart ripped out. Extraordinary turns by Dana Andrews, Harold Russell, Fredric March, and Teresa Wright ground a drama that seems all too prescient: They encounter one guy who thinks we shouldn’t have fought World War II at all because the real enemies of the U.S. are “the limeys and the reds.” History keeps repeating itself. —CB

7. “Schindler’s List” (dir. Steven Spielberg, 1993)

Steven Spielberg was already the most financially successful director in history when he took his biggest artistic and commercial risk with this three-hour black-and-white Holocaust drama, but “Schindler’s List” took him to a whole new level of prominence and sent his career in different, deeper directions. A deeply moving and uncompromising look into the heart of darkness, “Schindler’s List” is somehow unflinching and devastating yet uplifting — Spielberg’s world of view is broad enough to include the darkest facets of humanity without losing faith in our capacity for unfathomably selfless acts of heroism and sacrifice. The recreation of WWII Poland is astonishing in its verisimilitude, but Spielberg isn’t merely imitating documentary techniques here; “Schindler’s List” is as much a “movie” movie as any of the Indiana Jones films in its supreme skill at guiding an audience’s eye, mind, and heart. A singular achievement that nevertheless paved the way for equally ambitious Spielberg epics like “Munich” and “A.I.,” “Schindler’s List” is what you get when cinema’s greatest entertainer applies his talents to the most meaningful and important subject of his career. —JH

6. “Titanic” (dir. James Cameron, 1997)

Writer-director James Cameron doggedly kept afloat his $200-million 1997 epic true adventure about the 1912 sinking of the ocean liner Titanic in the face of studio fear and skepticism. It was the most expensive movie ever made at the time, and Twentieth Century Fox asked Paramount to partner on the movie. Cameron wrote the movie in two timelines, as treasure hunter Brock Lovett (Bill Paxton) explores the sunken wreck of the RMS Titanic at the bottom of the Atlantic, and brings onboard the elderly survivor Rose Dukater (Gloria Stuart) to narrate her teenage romance with young steerage passenger Jack Dawson (Leonardo DiCaprio), an artist who seeks freedom for both himself and Rose (Kate Winslet), who is trapped by her wealthy family and being forced to marry someone she does not love (Billy Zane). After Dawson persuades the desperate Rose not to jump off the ship, she invites him to dinner in the luxurious First Class dining room. Nouveau riche Molly Brown (Kathy Bates) lends him a dinner jacket and after dinner, Jack brings Rose down below for some boisterous dancing. Their romance flourishes: she lets Jack draw her in the nude. And when the ship is sinking, she refuses to take her place in a lifeboat without him. Cameron and VFX master Rob Legato used groundbreaking VFX to create the gigantic ship and painstakingly recreate its sinking. The movie masterfully combines a heartfelt romance with tragic true history. Cameron emerged from the torturous journey of making the movie with the greatest blockbuster of all time, the first to pass the $1 billion mark. (Reissues have pushed the total to $2.26 billion.) “Titanic” earned 14 Oscar nominations and won a record-tying 11, including Best Picture and Best Director. “Titanic” eventually lost its box office crown to another Jim Cameron joint: “Avatar.” —AT

5. “Casablanca” (dir. Michael Curtiz, 1942)

When people talk about “Casablanca,” it’s usually in reference to the fog-soaked finale, in which Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman’s lovers mean to catch the last plane to Lisbon. And the pleasure of a first viewing of “Casablanca” is indeed in getting caught up in Rick and Ilsa’s perfect, stolen romance. Aside from a flashback to Paris, the two have precious little screentime just to themselves, which makes the moments they do share all the more potent, their passion all the more desperate, and the shadows covering their faces as they embrace all the more evocative. That alone might be worthy of an Oscar.

Yet the Michael Curtiz film wouldn’t work if its world were not so filled with such wisecracking, desperate, and (mostly) decent figures in its well-realized (studio sets notwithstanding) background. The employees and frequenters of Rick’s Café American are a variable coalition of the witty, one that slyly reflects the nationalities of the Allied war effort as well as “good” Germans who object to their government’s turn to fascism. Their unbridled admiration of Rick is what gives his decision consequence. Technically, the film isn’t innovative so much as it is sound, a textbook-perfect example of the type of propaganda Hollywood contributed to the war effort.

Rick and Ilsa ultimately part ways not because of Lazlo (Paul Henreid), or because they aren’t deeply in love, but because the Allied effort requires they do. Because they sacrifice it, their love becomes ennobled, legendary, far bigger than the ‘hill of beans’ from which it sprang. But the reason why “Casablanca” has remained a classic and one of the most worthy Best Picture winners as time goes by, is in how the film demonstrates to us exactly how much that hill of beans, and each of the people on it, really matters. —SS

4. “The Godfather” (dir. Francis Ford Coppola, 1972)

If you’re looking for explanations as to why “The Godfather” is so perfect, you should start with the fact that Francis Ford Coppola didn’t want to make it. The San Francisco-based experimental filmmaker has always been endlessly proud of his Italian heritage, and initially bristled at the idea of adapting a paperback gangster novel that would only add to the cultural perception that Italian immigrants were always associated with the Mafia. Financial necessities forced him to take the job, but his resistance to succumbing to stereotypes helped turn it into one of the greatest American films of all time. While “The Godfather” has its share of gangster spectacle, from tollbooth shootings to horse heads in places you’d never expect to find them, Coppola approaches the material with intellectual ambition that borders on Shakespearian. Beginning with the iconic opening line “I believe in America,” the film forms a tableau of the ideas that shaped this nation of immigrants and the people who made it that way: money, power, ambition, family, and the eternal tension between honoring the traditions that shaped you and reinventing yourself enough to seize the new world that’s in front of you. From Marlon Brando’s endlessly quotable Don to Al Pacino’s tortured golden child, the film contains enough classic performances to fill an entire chapter of cinema history. And its marriage of entertainment value and intellectual sophistication puts it in a rarified class with depressingly few peers. —CZ

3. “Lawrence of Arabia” (dir. David Lean, 1962)

The desert couldn’t be more vast, but David Lean and cinematographer Freddie A. Young also make it look like a spare post-modernist painting at times. That visual contrast of maximal scale and minimalist composition sets the thematic tone for “Lawrence of Arabia,” as well, the most intimate of all epics. There are up to 1,000 extras in some scenes, but most striking is the uncertainty and ambiguity that Peter O’Toole brings to his portrayal of T.E. Lawrence, the British Army officer who rallied the scattered tribes of Arabia in revolt against the Ottoman Empire during the First World War. Is this the first Anglo-American movie that’s legitimately critical of interventionist “white savior” narratives? It certainly shows how Lawrence gets off on his messiah complex, and how easily his work is coopted by the British colonial authorities for their own exploitation.

Take a step back and think of just how challenging and un-jingoistic “Lawrence of Arabia” is. It’s easy to see how the same zero-sum logic applied by those unhappy that Luke Skywalker did not achieve absolute, devastating victory in “The Last Jedi” might be upset with Lean’s film that Lawrence doesn’t achieve a lasting peace in the Middle East. It’s not the rah-rah triumphs that stick with you in “Lawrence of Arabia,” it’s the tiniest moments: Lawrence fixated on the blood on a dagger after a battle, still not quite able to process the reality of killing; his gaze across the horizon to the tiniest speck in the distance that turns out to be Sherif Ali (the great Egyptian actor Omar Sharif, an instant star in the West with his performance here); and of course the famous cut facilitated by editor Anne V. Coates of Lawrence blowing out a lit match… and instantly, we’re in the desert.

Think also of how all these scenes depend upon the subjectivity of Lawrence, a kind of “unreliable narrator” as film subject. There may not be a film on this list that combines sprawling production values with depth of character the way “Lawrence of Arabia” does. —CB

2. “The Apartment” (dir. Billy Wilder, 1960)

The 1960s were a decade of changing social norms, ushering America from the cookie cutter traditionalism of the 1950s to the counterculture-fueled ’70s in ten eventful years. It’s fitting, then, that the decade kicked off with a Best Picture winner that brilliantly touched on the discontent lurking beneath the perfect facade of marriage and corporate jobs. Billy Wilder’s “The Apartment” is a masterful work of screenwriting, a comedy whose clever dialogue, dark humor, and willingness to embrace taboo subject matters mask a belief that the human spirit is still worth fighting for if we could just stop repressing it with unnatural behavior. Jack Lemmon stars as Bud Baxter, a corporate drone who finds himself skyrocketing through the management hierarchy when he starts letting higher-ups use his apartment as a covert location for their extramarital affairs. It’s a great plan that allows him to exploit a cynical society for his own cynical gains, only becoming complicated when one of his tenants tries to seduce the elevator girl (Shirley MacLaine) who has the key to Bud’s own heart. Wilder’s pen was never sharper, and Lemmon and MacLaine bring his script to life with vibrant chemistry that ensures the film still feels endlessly fresh over six decades later. Hollywood is constantly alternating between warm optimism and biting satire, shifting its tone to reflect the social mores of each era. A product of a time that was firmly torn between the two extremes, “The Apartment” stands out as a singular achievement because it reflects both so earnestly. —CZ

1. “All About Eve” (dir. Joseph L. Mankiewicz, 1950)

Hollywood, and the Academy, love movies about show business. Mostly, this manifests in the form of exasperating odes to the magic of acting and storytelling. But in 1950, the Oscars rewarded “All About Eve,” the ultimate in savage, vicious backstage dramas and a barbed, caustic look at stardom that has been aped and imitated by everything from “The Substance” to “Showgirls.” Written and directed by a never-better Joseph L. Mankiewicz, “All About Eve” has quite possibly the sharpest, greatest script in the history of cinema, supplying its story of an aging Broadway starlet (Bette Davis, in her ultimate role) and the pretender to her throne (Anne Baxter) with acidic one-liners and cutting observations on the corroding influence the limelight has upon the soul. A fun, savagely bitchy movie, “All About Eve” nonetheless contains compassion for its stars and sophistication in its storytelling, with queer subtext that critics still analyze years later. What really makes it the ultimate Best Picture winner, though, is it’s the embodiment of great Hollywood filmmaking: A glamorous cast full of ridiculously talented actresses squaring off against each other, impeccable direction, and frothy fun with a hint of venom within. No other Best Picture winner embodies the glitz and the glamor that defines the Academy, even if there’s plenty of grit underneath. —WC