8 Favorite Best Picture Winners

It being awards season, I’m starting off with an old fashioned meaningless List. I have limited myself to one Best Picture winner per decade, which was excruciating but necessary.

Rachel’s Eight Favorite Best Picture Winners

1) It Happened One Night (1934)

Great mad-cap romantic comedy well before madcap romantic comedies were a dime a dozen. Featuring the never-more-charming Clark Gable, and possibly the original Manic Pixie Dreamgirl (TM AVClub) Ellie Andrews.

Honorable Mention: Gone With the Wind

2) Casablanca (1941)

The 40s being the decade in which I’ve seen the fewest number of Best Picture winners, Casablanca easily wins my favorite of the decade.

Honorable Mention: Rebecca, which feels nothing like a Hitchcock. I would love to know what his original film would have been like pre-studio tampering.

3) All About Eve (1950)

Too many good things cannot be said about this movie. The characters are brilliant and the dialogue still snaps. Films with multiple truly great roles for women come along far too infrequently.

Honorable Mention: On the Waterfront, a movie that redefined how actors act, and An American in Paris, on the sheer basis of the ballet sequence, which could be on a nonstop loop in the background of my life for days on end before I would get tired of it.

4) The Apartment (1960)

There is nothing epic or grand in this movie at all, but there are no lines out of place or character notes that don’t ring true. The modern crop of showy spectacle Best Pictures contenders could watch and take notes.

Honorable Mention: Midnight Cowboy. Despite its dated feel now, the relationship between the two lead characters remains touching and haunting.

5) The Godfather Part II (1972)

A movie with a ridiculously great script. The dovetailing between the stories of two Corleone is exquisite and seems almost too good to be true.

Additional note: When compiling this list I thought, “What? Chinatown did not win Best Picture?” and was about to throw a very belated fit, until I realized that it was in contention in 1972 as well. Very, very tough call, but the Oscar went to the right film.

Honorable Mention: The Godfather, Annie Hall

6) Platoon (1986)

On rewatching, this is an uglier and harder movie than I had remembered, but just as powerful. Although after excessive amounts of Tropic Thunder I wonder if I’ll ever be able to view the final shot of Willem Dafoe the same way.

Honorable Mention: Amadeus, which I haven’t seen in possibly a full decade but can still recall scene by scene. Salieri breaks my heart.

7) The Silence of the Lambs (1991)

A rare perfectly crafted thriller that had most if not everyone actually rooting for a serial killer.

Honorable Mention: Braveheart. Not a movie that will go down as a cinematic masterpiece, but a movie that I am a sucker for nonetheless. As much as I roll my eyes at many moments throughout the film, I am always especially moved by Robert the Bruce’s final speech to his father.

8) The Departed (2006)

I am a sucker for messy endings. Not sad endings per se, just messy realistic ones. See also my love of About Schmidt over As Good as it Gets.

Honorable Mention: Return of the King, which is included on the assumption that it was awarded a Best Picture for the sake of all three movies.