My Top Ten Best Picture Oscar Winners (Including Full Ranked List Of All Seen)

The Oscar nominees are being announced today (I think?), so I thought I’d start my new project to watch all the Best Picture Oscar Winners.

I’ll post about the project & the 31 that I have left to watch soon. First I thought it would be fun to rank the 62 that I’ve already seen.

I do have to say that I haven’t enjoyed the Oscars as much for the last decade or so. When you look at winners from the past, there are some truly fantastic & epic films. But maybe the problem is just that movies aren’t actually as good nowadays… Either way, I don’t expect much from this year’s nominees since I didn’t see anything great in 2020. We’ll see – there are still plenty of 2020 films not yet available in the U.K. so maybe I’ve missed out on a masterpiece (but I doubt it). And although there are loads of great movies that I really liked in the list below, only the top 2 are personal all-time favorites of mine.

For now, here’s my full ranked list of all the Best Picture Oscar Winners I’ve seen so far, counting down to my top ten:

62-61 (hated these)

62. The English Patient
61. Slumdog Millionaire

60-51: (some of these really shouldn’t be winners)

60. Crash (ugh)
59. Shakespeare In Love
58. The Hurt Locker
57. All Quiet On The Western Front (don’t really remember this – watched it in school)
56. Ordinary People
55. Birdman
54. Chicago
53. Oliver!
52. The King’s Speech
51. Out Of Africa (don’t remember this well either)

Top 50:

50. On The Waterfront
49. Chariots Of Fire (should rewatch this too)
48. Driving Miss Daisy
47. Green Book
46. Dances With Wolves
45. Kramer vs. Kramer
44. A Beautiful Mind
43. Spotlight
42. No Country For Old Men
41. Unforgiven

Top Forty:

40. Moonlight
39. Argo
38. Braveheart
37. The Silence Of The Lambs
36. My Fair Lady
35. All About Eve
34. The Best Years Of Our Lives
33. Rebecca
‪32. The French Connection
31. Gladiator

Top Thirty:

30. Forrest Gump
29. Ben-Hur
28. West Side Story
27. Amadeus
26. In The Heat Of The Night
25. The Shape Of Water
24. Casablanca (in all honesty, need to rewatch this as well)
23. Gone With The Wind
22. The Sting (also need to rewatch – just remember liking it a lot as a kid)
21. Platoon

Top Twenty:

20. Terms Of Endearment
19. Rain Man
18. The Deer Hunter
17. It Happened One Night
16. Parasite
15. The Departed
14. Million Dollar Baby
13. Schindler’s List
12. American Beauty
11. Midnight Cowboy

****Top Ten:****

My Top Ten Best Picture Winners:

10. The Artist

9. Titanic

8. The Apartment

7. Rocky

6. The Lord Of The Rings: The Return Of The King

5. The Godfather Part II

4. The Godfather

3. The Bridge On The River Kwai

2. The Sound Of Music

1. One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest

The 31 Still To Be Seen:

2014 12 Years a Slave
1988 The Last Emperor
1983 Gandhi
1978 Annie Hall
1971 Patton
1967 A Man for All Seasons
1964 Tom Jones
1963 Lawrence of Arabia
1959 Gigi
1957 Around the World in 80 Days
1956 Marty
1954 From Here to Eternity
1953 The Greatest Show on Earth
1952 An American in Paris
1950 All the Kings Men
1949 Hamlet
1948 Gentleman’s Agreement
1946 The Lost Weekend
1945 Going My Way
1943 Mrs. Miniver
1942 How Green Was My Valley
1939 You Can’t Take It with You
1938 The Life of Emile Zola
1937 The Great Ziegfeld
1936 Mutiny on the Bounty
1934 Cavalcade
1933 Grand Hotel
1932 Cimarron
1930 The Broadway Melody
1929 Wings (and Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans) (plan to watch both as they both actually won the top prizes that year – Wings was later declared the official winner but Sunrise sounds better…)

I’ll still be working on my IMDb Top 250 Challenge as well. Last week I ranked the those I’ve watched so far HERE and listed those I still need to watch HERE.