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.

My Top Ten Christopher Lloyd Movies

Happy Birthday (soon) to Christopher Lloyd, who turns 79 on Sunday.

I like Christopher Lloyd but this wasn’t an easy top ten as he’s not been in a lot of great films that I’ve seen. I like the top six, I LOVE the top two, but I can take or leave the rest. And I barely remember most of numbers 8 through 16.

But let’s do this list anyway! To be in two of the greatest movies EVER is still impressive. And it also gives me a chance to again mention my favorite episode of Amazing Stories (at the end of the post).

Here we go! Here are My Top Ten Christopher Lloyd Movies (counting down to my favorite movie, not ranked by performance):

The Rest That I’ve Seen:

16. Dennis The Menace
15. Piranha 3D
14. Quicksilver Highway
13. The Tale Of Despereaux
12. A Million Ways To Die In The West
11. Clue

Top Ten:

10. Eight Men Out

9. The Addams Family Movies

8. Mr. Mom

7. Who Framed Roger Rabbit

6. Anastasia

5. Things To Do In Denver When You’re Dead

4. Back To The Future Part III

3. Back To The Future Part II

2. One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest

1. Back To The Future

Saw But Don’t Remember:
The Dream Team, Angels In The Outfield, Baby Geniuses

Some I’ve Not Seen:
The Postman Always Rings Twice, The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension!, Star Trek III: The Search For Spock, Radioland Murders, Man On The Moon, My Favorite Martian, Piranha 3DD, Sin City: A Dame To Kill For, I Am Not A Serial Killer, Going In Style

Big Honorable Mention:

Amazing Stories – Go To The Head Of The Class

Remember Amazing Stories?? Oh man, I loved that show. Some of the stories were fantastic while some were a little dodgy. My very favorite one was a fun story starring Mary Stuart Masterson & Scott Coffey as teenagers who decide to get revenge on their evil English teacher, played by Christopher Lloyd. I used to watch this every October. When I was young & had time for that kind of thing… I’ve not watched one horror movie this October. Well, here’s the synopsis from IMDb and an old commercial for the show.

“A teenage horror buff is so smitten with a sexy classmate that he helps her use black magic on their loathsome English teacher, with shocking and bewildering results.”

My Top Ten Jack Nicholson Movies

Happy Birthday to Jack Nicholson, who turns 79 tomorrow! 🙂

I love Jack. Jack is cool. I’d love to be as cool as Jack! He’s been a favorite actor of mine for years – Probably ever since I saw my top two movies on this list at the age of 15 or so. And, okay – since I also saw Batman at that same time. I became slightly obsessed with Jack’s Joker. I even had some awesome Joker earrings that I wore for months in 1989. What a nerd…

Nicholson has been in some damn good films. It’s not often that I do these Top Ten Actor lists where a couple of the movies are all-time favorites of mine but I can say that’s definitely the case this time with the two that top this list. Absolute classics! I like all the movies in this list but the top two are truly special and a lot of that is thanks to Jack’s performance in each of them. He’s my favorite crazy bastard.

Let’s get this started! Wow – it’s also not often that I’ve reviewed NONE of the films in a top ten I’m doing. A lot of that is down to me being uncomfortable “reviewing” the movies I love the most & I keep putting off reviewing the top two for my IMDB Top 250 Project. Anyway – here are My Top Ten Jack Nicholson Movies (not ranked by performance) counting down to my favorite:

10. TIE: A Few Good Men & Mars Attacks!

9. Easy Rider

8. Tommy

7. Terms Of Endearment

6. The Bucket List

5. The Departed

4. Batman

3. Chinatown

2. The Shining

1. One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest

**In case you wonder why some movies are missing, it may be because I haven’t seen them. Here are the remainder of his films that I’ve seen, but some were so long ago that I need to re-watch them:

– How Do You Know (the only one he was in that I’d consider “bad”)
– The Witches Of Eastwick (need to re-watch)
– Something’s Gotta Give
– Little Shop Of Horrors (need to re-watch)
– As Good As It Gets
– Anger Management
– About Schmidt (Jack was great in this)

Also, here’s a quick Happy Birthday tomorrow to the gorgeous Catherine Mary Stewart (57 – one of my favorite Twitter buddies). Yes, Catherine Mary Stewart & her co-star Kelli Maroney both followed me on Twitter after I reviewed their classic 80’s movie Night Of The Comet. And I use every opportunity possible to keep mentioning that on my blog… 🙂

(Some of my other celeb followers: Zach Galligan, Linnea Quigley, a girl from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and the dude who got his throat ripped out in Road House!!!! I love my mostly-80’s celebrity Twitter followers!) 😉

Finally, there is one cool celebrity birthday that is actually today: Iggy Pop has just turned 69. Wow – he doesn’t look a day over 109!

My Top Ten Best Picture Oscar Winners (And Bottom Five!)

I’m continuing my Oscar-themed week with this list of my favorite (and least-favorite!) Best Picture Oscar winners.

The Academy does quite often get things very wrong (especially in recent years) but when looking at a list of all the winners, there are indeed a lot of true classics here that I’d highly recommend to everyone.

I have my little IMDB project where I’m trying to watch all the IMDB Top 250 Films so I’m not about to start attempting to watch all the Best Picture Winners. However, when making this list, I discovered that I’ve already seen 47 so I guess that isn’t too bad! So I ranked them ALL (because I’m sad like that). But I’ll of course focus on the top ten.

So now, counting down to My Top Ten Best Picture Oscar Winners, these are all of them that I’ve seen ranked from least favorite to favorite. My Bottom Five list will follow this one…

Chicago
Birdman
The King’s Speech
Oliver!
Out Of Africa
On The Waterfront
Driving Miss Daisy
Chariots Of Fire
Dances With Wolves
Unforgiven
A Beautiful Mind
Spotlight
Moonlight
Argo
Braveheart
My Fair Lady
All About Eve
The Best Years Of Our Lives
The Silence Of The Lambs
Rebecca
The French Connection
West Side Story
Gladiator
Amadeus
Forrest Gump
Ben-Hur
The Shape Of Water
Rain Man
In The Heat Of The Night
Casablanca
Gone With The Wind
The Sting
Terms Of Endearment

We’re getting there… 😉

15. Platoon
14. The Deer Hunter
13. The Departed
12. Million Dollar Baby
11. Titanic

My Top Ten Best Picture Winners:

10. TIE: American Beauty & Schindler’s List

9. Midnight Cowboy

8. The Apartment

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

6. Rocky

5. The Artist

4. TIE: The Godfather & The Godfather Part II (it made more sense to keep them together but I slightly prefer the first film)

3. The Bridge On The River Kwai

2. The Sound Of Music

1. One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest

I absolutely love Cuckoo’s Nest – it’s very easily my number one favorite. 🙂

And now is when I’m going to be a bitch! Here are My Bottom Five Best Picture Oscar Winners (Counting down to the very worst):

5. Crash
4. Ordinary People (it beat Raging Bull & The Elephant Man!)
3. Shakespeare In Love (it famously beat Saving Private Ryan)
2. Slumdog Millionaire
1. The English Patient


*yawn!*

It was fun making this list! I really should try to watch more Oscar winners – I seem to especially have not seen many of the winners from the past decade or so. I’d love to hear all of your favorite & least favorite Best Pictures in the comments now! 🙂

**List updated 2/7/17 to add Spotlight, Million Dollar Baby & Rocky

**List updated 25/11/17 to add Moonlight

**List updated 28/1/18 to add The French Connection

**List updated December 2018 to add The King’s Speech & The Shape Of Water

**List updated February 2019 to add In The Heat Of The Night

My Movie Picks For MovieRob & Silver Screen Serenade’s Cara

 
I recently won a quiz put together by MovieRob for Cara’s blogiversary bash over at Silver Screen Serenade (you can see the post & quiz HERE). Anyway, I correctly named a bunch of lesser known Star Wars characters (because I’m a nerd who goes to things like Secret Cinema’s The Empire Strikes Back). 😉 So my reward is choosing three movies for Cara & Rob to each watch. Here are my picks!:

  FOR CARA:

I e-mailed Cara a little list of about ten movies asking her if she’d seen any of them and was surprised that she’d only seen one. Cara is young and still has plenty of classic movies to see so it was much easier picking three for her than for movie-watching-machine Rob. I’d like Cara to watch:

  • The Terminator
  • One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest
  • EITHER: Cinema Paradiso (original version, not the Director’s Cut) or City Lights

*Cara – I’ll let you choose whether you’re in the mood for a silent film or the Italian film my blog name is based on – I love them both! They both have two of the most amazing endings ever. But next quiz I win, you’re watching a Studio Ghibli. 😉

 FOR ROB:

Rob is very hard to choose a movie for because he’s seen everything worthwhile! He’s a movie-reviewing-maniac. So, Rob – I’m not doing this to be mean but you’re going to have to step out of your comfort zone and watch the very few movies on this planet that you possibly haven’t seen. 😉 I know you’re unlikely to like these but, every movie to your taste that I thought of, I checked your blog and you’ve seen it! So… I’d like Rob to watch:

  • A film directed by David Cronenberg that he’s not seen
  • Seven Samurai if he’s not seen it (Rob – as a Star Wars fan, you should really see some Kurosawa if you haven’t)
  • EITHER: One of the Jackass movies or Slither if not seen

*Rob – it has to be a movie you’ve not seen so, if you HAVE seen any of the above, let me know as I have a few alternatives. But you REALLY won’t like those… Lol. (For the record, I like all of the above)

There you go! Cara, I hope you enjoy my picks. And, Rob, I hope you don’t hate me. 😉

 
I’d just like to add that Kelli Maroney favorited my tweet yesterday about My Top Ten Drew Struzan Movie Art Pieces. Did you say “who”?! I forget you’re all only 20. Kelli Maroney from Fast Times At Ridgemont High & Chopping Mall & the AWESOME Night Of The Comet!!! 🙂 (I take every opportunity I can to mention the fact that she & Catherine Mary Stewart follow me on Twitter…) 😉

Thanks also to @videovangaurd @le0pard13 & @RobbinsRealm for retweeting it. Drew Struzan needs more recognition!