The Best of the Best Picture Winners, Ranked

This Sunday, the 88th Best Picture will be named. Before we welcome a new member of this exclusive (and highly debatable) club, our bloggers look back at their top-ranked Best Picture winners. Check the bottom of the post to see how all 87 stack up on the global chart.

The Silence of the Lambs, #148 (1991)

I think The Silence of the Lambs is a fascinating reversal from everything the Academy did not reward in the 1980s. In the years prior, Dances With Wolves beat Goodfellas, Driving Miss Daisy beat Do The Right Thing and Born on the Fourth of July, and Rain Man beat movies including Die Hard, Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, and A Fish Called Wanda. It was safe to say that the Oscars had established a type, but The Silence of the Lambs was a different sort of prestige picture, one that is remarkably crafted, full of fantastic performances, and touches on social issues without being a Message Movie. Tak Fujimoto offers some of the most emotionally functional images I can name in Oscars history, and everyone is giving their all to these performances. Tense, smart as a whip, and with an iconic supporting performance credited by the Academy as a great lead performance, I’d happily boot up The Silence of the Lambs just to watch Jodie Foster and Ted Levine work their butts off, but I get a great movie to boot. — Alex Christian Lovendahl

Gladiator, #29 (2000)

The Return of the King, my #14, was already spoken for, so I dropped down to the next Oscar winner on my list. Unlike The Lord of the Rings, Gladiator was not an immediate favorite for me, but it earned its position on my chart through subsequent viewings. Despite director Ridley Scott‘s trademark visual panache, some of the effects shots look a little dated these days, but it hardly matters. The true strength of Gladiator is in its story, and the pair of impeccable performances that are its backbone. Russell Crowe has never been more suited to a role than that of Maximus, the revenge-driven gladiator with nothing to lose. As his polar opposite, the spoiled and thoroughly rotten Commodus, Joaquin Phoenix literally oozes evil. They are ably supported by the likes of Connie Nielsen, Djimon Hounsou, Richard Harris and Oliver Reed (in his final performance, miraculously stitched together by the filmmakers when he died suddenly during production). Yet it’s Crowe and Phoenix’s show to win or lose, and they light up the screen, particularly in the brief scenes they share. For better or worse Gladiator ushered in a modern resurgence of the sword-and-sandal genre, but in the ensuing decade and a half it has never been handled as deftly or beautifully as it was here. — Nigel Druitt

The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, #15 (2003)

Eleven Academy Awards. That is the record for most wins by a single film on Oscar night, and it is a distinction shared by three: Ben-Hur, Titanic, and my highest-ranked Best Picture winner (#15 on my chart), The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King. The culmination of Peter Jackson’s epic fantasy trilogy, The Return of the King brings a satisfying and faithful conclusion to one of the greatest tales ever told. Indeed, many fans of J.R.R. Tolkien’s masterpiece doubted that Hollywood would ever be able to do the story justice and make a worthy film or series of films that could capture the essence, epic scale, and rich characters of The Lord of the Rings trilogy. Remarkably, Jackson did exactly that, and by the time the final film in the trilogy arrived, all we had to do was watch as Gandalf, Aragorn, Frodo, Sam, and the rest completed their quest to save Middle-earth from the armies of Mordor. It has everything you could want from an epic film: grand battles, quotable dialogue, a beautiful score, breathtaking visuals, fantastic performances of iconic characters, and a story that will endure until the end of human civilization (yeah, I said it). Much could be said about the entire trilogy, or Tolkien’s story itself. But often, when I think about why I love a film, I think about the moments that make that film memorable or enjoyable for me. And there is a reason why The Return of the King, specifically, is so high on my chart: it is because it has so many of those moments. Gandalf taking charge of the city’s defenses during the battle for Minas Tirith; King Theoden leading the soldiers of Rohan into battle to aid the men of Gondor; Eowyn slaying the Witch-king of Angmar; Gandalf and Pippin discussing death (“White shores, and beyond, a far green country under a swift sunrise.” Is there anything that Gandalf does or says that isn’t fantastic?); Aragorn’s rousing speech before the final battle against the forces of Mordor; and, most poignantly for me, Samwise carrying Frodo on his back up the slopes of Mount Doom to complete their quest. All of these moments (and more) are what come to my mind when I think about this most excellent film, a film that is truly worthy of Best Picture, and the other ten Oscars it won. — Matt Ray

West Side Story, #8 (1961)

The first time I saw West Side Story, I hated it. I was a literature purist at the time, not yet more than a casual movie fan, and I was beyond incensed that it had the gall to SLIGHTLY change the ending of Romeo and Juliet. Obviously, I have changed my mind. This is hands down the best version of Romeo and Juliet, even better than Shakespeare’s original — not only is it immediate and visceral due to the shift to 20th century New York City, but the feud between the Jets and the Sharks, though perhaps ultimately as baseless as the Montague-Capulet feud, feels like it has real stakes in a world of race and class violence. And I mean, nobody films dancing like this anymore. Choreographer and dance director Jerome Robbins shares director’s credit with Robert Wise for good reason; not only is the dancing stunningly performed by a combination of movie actor-dancers like Russ Tamblyn and working ballet dancers, but it’s captured dynamically without resorting to close-ups and quick edits that take away from the performances. I know some are annoyed by the mere presence of singing and dancing in a world like this, and to those people, I have nothing to say. For the rest of us, there’s simply nothing like West Side Story, and I doubt there ever will be again. — Jandy Hardesty

Annie Hall, #4 (1977)

Woody Allen is now one of my favorite writer/directors, but Annie Hall was the first one of his I fell in love with. Yes, it’s funny, and the dialogue is clever and the characters interesting, but more than that, I found it beautifully refreshing as a love story. Right from the beginning, it’s clear that the two don’t end up together, but their time together is never painted as a tragedy or a horrible mistake, the way so many break-up stories do. As we see them at different points throughout their relationship, we see all the little ways in which they simply drift apart. No big dramatic fights that end in tears, no awful revelation about one partner that pushes the other to the breaking point. It ends as naturally as it began. The final lines have always stuck with me: “I guess that’s pretty much now how I feel about relationships. They’re totally irrational, and crazy, and absurd, but I guess we keep going through it because most of us… need the eggs.” There’s no room for bitterness or regret in this break-up film because there’s no magical romance we’re destined for. It’s just about people trying to figure out life together, and sometimes it’s irrational and crazy and absurd that we even try, but in the end, it can be worth it even if it falls apart. I appreciated this practicality as a seemingly perpetually single woman, and when I finally entered my first serious relationship in my late 20s, I found this movie a comforting reminder that what I did in this relationship never needed to make or break me. — Hannah Keefer

The Godfather, #2 (1972)