The 20 best films to win Best Picture Part 1 (20-11)

A ranking by Brooks Rich

So a note as I start this list. For the most part the Oscars are bullshit. It's a game of politics and popularity, more often than not, rather than of talent. Go through the listing of every film to win Best Picture and you'll probably shrug at most of them. "Yeah sure, that film is fine, but best picture?" you'll ask yourself. That's a majority of them. But we here at Cinema Basement want to look at the absolute best films to win Best Picture and the absolute worst films to win Best Picture. We'll start with the Best so we have films to act as a standard against which the films picked as the Worst could be measured.

A quick side note: Ridley Scott is delayed till May because these lists kind of took over and were much harder to compile and rank than I thought they would be, especially the list of the Worst. 

But let's not start off negative. Let's rank the twenty best films to win Best Picture. Today we will cover the films ranked from 20-11.


20. Gandhi (1982)

Gandhi was a film that seemed destined to win Best Picture. A biopic about an historical figure that is told on a grand epic scale. Usually these kind of films annoy me, but I admire the technical aspects of Gandhi and Ben Kingsley as Gandhi himself is fantastic.  I think this film is beautifully shot and the art direction is top notch. It won Best Art Direction and Best Cinematography too – so my respect for these aspects seemed to be right on. It's number 20 on the list because it’s an obvious Oscar bait movie – but out of all the Oscar bait movies, it's easily one of the best. However, there is one I find far more entertaining.

19. Amadeus (1984)

Amadeus is as Oscar bait as you can get – but it's also a ton of fun. This film is like an opera brought to the big screen, but it also has a cinematic quality and doesn't feel like a filmed staged play. This film is just a good time. It has a perfect balance of humor and tragedy. Director Milos Forman makes this film feel huge, like a big Best Picture should feel. There's a pageantry to Amadeus that's earned. Amadeus is rightfully representative when you think “Best Picture.” 

18. Gladiator (2000)

This is a personal pick for me because I adore this film. Gladiator was my all-time favorite film for a long time. We're still watching films with big epic feels to them but Gladiator is on another level from Gandhi and Amadeus. It was the end of those big sweeping epic Best Picture, save for The Lord of the Rings trilogy. Even with my personal bias reading into this, I still think is an amazing film and deserved every award it got. I do not understand the hate directed at this film. Russell Crowe is captivating as Maximus and Ridley Scott is at his absolute best as director. 

17. Spotlight (2015)

Spotlight is the most recent film on this list and it's also one of the best films ever made about journalism. Unlike the previous entries on this list, Spotlight is a very quiet film. It's not big and flashy, and fits into the category of quite smaller Best Picture winners. The film, which chronicles the writers of Boston Globe's Spotlight department exposing the massive cover up of child abuse within the Catholic Church, is a character piece above all else. It's kind of an outlier when you look at other Best Picture winners. There are no innovative uses of the camera. There's no brilliant blocking. It is almost like a stage play. But it's so masterfully acted and its script so beautifully written, that, in my opinion, it is the best film since 2000 to win Best Picture. 

16. The French Connection (1971)

The French Connection is more than just a gritty '70s cop thriller that managed to win Best Picture. This is one of those Best Picture winners that is historically significant.  First off it deserved to win as it's arguably the best cop movie ever made. But it also signaled a change in film. In the ‘70s, film become grittier and more realistic. The feel-good, Golden Age of Hollywood was over and the auter directors emerged… directors like Coppola, Spielberg, and Scorsese. The French Connection beat out so-called prestige films like Fiddler on the Roof and Nicholas and Alexandra to signal a real change in film. The French Connection would be followed by The Godfather winning, but we're a ways off from discussing The Godfather. But we can discuss one of the films chronicling the Corleone family right now.



15. The Godfather Part 2 (1974)

So it might be controversial to have this film ranked so low on the list. I am not saying that The Godfather Part 2 is not a good film“ far from it. Godfather II is a near perfect film. But it did pull off a borderline upset as it beat classics like Chinatown and The Conversation. I'm not going to keep it off the list because it did deserve to win and really… how was it going to lose? It's a great film and completes Coppola's one-two punch of winning for the first two Godfathers. Pacino is magnetic as Michael of course, and de Niro gives maybe the performance of his career as young Vito. Really it's between this and Jake LaMotta for De Niro's best. 

14. It Happened One Night (1934)

This is the earliest film on the list. It's hard to compare even Best Picture winners from the '50s and beyond to the films that won the big prize in the ‘30s. A lot of the winners don't hold up well and the films we remember from the '30s usually aren't even in contention. But, in my opinion, the winner from the '30s that holds up the best is the charming screwball comedy It Happened One Night. Yes, it holds up better than Gone With the Wind in my opinion. Think of a romantic comedy that you love. You have this film to thank for it. 

13. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975)

Another gritty film from the '70s that captured the big prize. The '70s will be the decade most represented on this list. I'll be honest though. This is not one of my all time favorite movies, but I would be remiss to keep it off the list. I understand that this is an iconic film and is considered one of the best films not only to capture Best Picture, but to capture the craziness of the '70s. This is maybe the best film about not only mental illness but of repression brought on by authority figures. Nurse Ratchett is a representation of any corrupt authority figure you can think of. I am happy to have this film on the list and understand the important place in history it has. 

12. Silence of the Lambs (1991)

It was shocking when this film won. It beat out prestige films like JFK and The Prince of Tides. The '90s is odd when it comes to Best Picture winners and Silence of the Lambs is one of the best films to win from the decade. Who doesn't know The Silence of the Lambs? It's an amazing performance from Hopkins that is the stuff of film legend now. Jonathan Demme is at the top of his game in the director’s chair and Jodie Foster became a star with her performance here. But in my opinion the star of Silence of the Lambs is Ted Levine as Buffalo Bill, perhaps the scariest movie villain of all time. It's a shame he didn't win alongside Hopkins and Foster.

11. The Deer Hunter (1979)

Seriously, the '70s was a great decade for film. It's fitting that the decade ends with a gritty and heartbroken film about war winning Best Picture. The Deer Hunter is the best film about what the Vietnam War did to the men who went over there and fought it. Director Michael Cimino shows the effects of war better than any other film in my opinion. This is not an easy film to watch, but it is an important film. That's an important factor in judging a Best Picture winner and it's longevity. Is the film still important?  In Deer Hunter's case, absolutely. I think The Deer Hunter still very much resonates and would make a great double feature with the film at the number 10 spot, which we'll get to tomorrow.