Best Pictures Ranking
and Oscar thoughts
Look at that photo! The palette, the scale, the design! The 2025 Oscars gave us one beautiful set after another. I was continuously wowed by them. Gorgeous!
The Oscars telecast went really well this year, I think, unless you—like me—were watching on Hulu, which shut off the video before the final two awards. I found the tone was maintained better than usual: socially conscious but art-focused, funny yet respectful, a real forum for celebrating excellence (even if that’s an elusive dream).
I only want to mention two award winners. My prayers somehow carried the beautiful Latvian film Flow to a surprising upset in Best Animated Feature! And—after months of confusion and predictions of a wide spread of films honored—Anora simply swept through the evening, cleaning up pretty universally.
What I do think is worth some time to consider are the lessons to be learned about the current state of the Academy from the nigh-pornographic film being named Best Picture. Clearly, the Academy of old is no longer in the driver’s seat. It wasn’t too long ago that you could pick “an Oscars film” simply from a synopsis. The last six years have given us five nontraditional Best Pictures: the Korean class thriller Parasite, the freeform docudrama Nomadland, the feel-good simplicity of CODA, the surreal maximalism of Everything Everywhere All at Once, the lone example of the type of dramatic biopic that used to win without fail in Oppenheimer, and now the microbudget sex-worker comedy Anora. How did things change so drastically from the days of Green Book and Spotlight?
You could see the shift begin when the quiet gay Black romance Moonlight quite spectacularly beat the favorite, La La Land. Soon, we were watching the quiet fish-creature romance The Shape of Water walking away with the prize and completely flipping the familiar script. In that time, the Academy (in the nick of time to avoid the scandal of the Golden Globes) had been broadening its horizons and enlarging its voting body. Now boasting just under 10,000 members, the Academy has prioritized international and minority additions as well as intentionally skewing younger in its invitations. That is how we have seen unprecedented agreement between the Cannes Film Festival and the Oscars (Parasite and Anora pulled off the rare feat off winning both the Palme d’Or and the Oscar for Best Picture).
The body many of us still imagine when we say “the Academy” has officially been replaced by a more daring collection of voters from around the world. All of the old rules are suddenly up in the air. (And it’s exhilarating chaos!)
Below, see my personal ranking of all 97(+1) Best Pictures. (The first Academy Awards gave out Best Picture and Most Artistic Picture, meaning that while Wings is the official winner from 1927, Sunrise is also usually included in lists of winners. I have isolated by an extra indentation.)
Best Pictures, ranked
Chicago
Schindler’s List
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
Annie Hall
Casablanca
Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)
Everything Everywhere All At Once
The Sound of Music
The Best Years of Our Lives
Parasite
On the Waterfront
All About Eve
The Artist
Oliver!
Mrs. Miniver
Wings
Midnight Cowboy
No Country for Old Men
Shakespeare in Love
Out of Africa
The Silence of the Lambs
Gandhi
Gentleman's Agreement
Rebecca
Sunrise: a song of two humans
Argo
Oppenheimer
An American in Paris
Grand Hotel
The Lost Weekend
All Quiet on the Western Front
The Apartment
Mutiny on the Bounty
It Happened One Night
Unforgiven
Marty
The Last Emperor
Lawrence of Arabia
The Bridge on the River Kwai
The Hurt Locker
Titanic
West Side Story
Spotlight
Cavalcade
Platoon
Nomadland
Ben-Hur
Going My Way
The King's Speech
The Great Ziegfeld
Gone with the Wind
12 Years a Slave
You Can’t Take It With You
Kramer vs. Kramer
How Green Was My Valley
The Sting
Hamlet
Chariots of Fire
Slumdog Millionaire
A Man For All Seasons
In the Heat of the Night
All the King’s Men
Gigi
The French Connection
Ordinary People
American Beauty
A Beautiful Mind
Anora
The Deer Hunter
Amadeus
Rocky
Forrest Gump
Terms of Endearment
From Here to Eternity
CODA
The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King
The Departed
The Shape of Water
The Broadway Melody
Moonlight
My Fair Lady
Rain Man
Green Book
Patton
The Life of Emile Zola
The Greatest Show on Earth
Around the World in 80 Days
Cimarron
Gladiator
The Godfather
The English Patient
Million Dollar Baby
Dances With Wolves
Crash
Driving Miss Daisy
Tom Jones
The Godfather, Part II
Braveheart