10 Movies That Won an Oscar for Best Picture in the Past Decade, Ranked by Rotten Tomatoes Scores
The Academy's decisions are not always unanimously agreed upon by viewers, but one thing cannot be taken away from any of these films – they have all entered the history of cinema forever.
The annual Oscars are not only a reason to talk about the state of the industry and the best films released, but also the cause of many heated debates about the fairness of chosen winners.
We remember all the winners of the last ten years and try to look at the victory of each of them from a distance.
10. Green Book, 2018
Rotten Tomatoes Score: 77%
This touching drama from Peter Farrelly, director of the famous comedy Dumb and Dumber, won the 2018 Academy Award for Best Picture.
When Tony loses his job as a club bouncer, fate forces him to take a job driving for an African American pianist Don Shirley.
Talented and outrageous, Don and his small band are about to tour the South – where the man clearly will need the help of an Italian bouncer. Tony and Don embark on a long journey that will change their lives forever.
9. The Shape of Water, 2017
Rotten Tomatoes Score: 92%
The project, which the director has been working on all his life, was born in the author's childhood dreams: the young Guillermo del Toro often imagined a picture in which the main villain of Creature from the Black Lagoon fell in love with a woman. And several decades later, he finally made a movie about it.
The Shape of Water is a magnum opus not only because of its complex production history, but also because it is the author's ultimate cinema: from a naive form that makes it easier to observe the most frightening manifestations of human society, to charming melodramatic sequences.
8. Nomadland, 2020
Rotten Tomatoes Score: 93%
Throughout the awards season, Chloé Zhao's Nomadland has been a magnet for all the statuettes without any visible competition, arriving at the Oscars as the odds-on favorite.
The Oscar-winning road movie cemented Frances McDormand's title as the most sought-after and talented actress of our time. She plays Fern, a widowed blue-collar woman who sells her possessions and embarks on a journey along the endless highways of America.
7. Anora, 2024
Rotten Tomatoes Score: 93%
The awards season ended with the unconditional triumph of Sean Baker's Anora. The film won the Oscar for Best Picture, Mikey Madison won for Best Actress, and Baker himself took home statuettes for directing, editing, and original screenplay.
The win for Mikey Madison, who played a sex worker, was a surprise. For the 25-year-old actress, this is her first lead role in a feature film.
Sean Baker decided to write a script specifically for Madison when he saw her in Quentin Tarantino 's Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. And in the end, her role in Baker's project won her an Oscar.
6. Oppenheimer, 2023
Rotten Tomatoes Score: 93%
The biopic about the creator of the atomic bomb, J. Robert Oppenheimer, won seven statuettes: Best Picture and Best Director went to Christopher Nolan, Best Actor to Cillian Murphy, and Best Supporting Actor to Robert Downey Jr.
There were no surprises, all the predictions were correct – the three-hour statement about the fragility of the world and human destructiveness reflected the spirit of the times, while preserving its cinematic merits.
Oppenheimer also became one of the highest-grossing films among the Best Picture winners – the film earned $975 million at the box office.
5. CODA, 2021
Rotten Tomatoes Score: 94%
One of the most unexpected wins for Best Picture was the triumph of the modest indie drama CODA. At the time, it seemed that The Power of the Dog and Netflix would not miss out on the main Oscar.
CODA broke several records: for the first time, the top statuette went to a film from the Sundance Film Festival and a project from a streaming service. Netflix has been dreaming of this for five years, and Apple TV+ achieved the desired result in the third year of its existence.
The story centers on high school student Ruby, the only hearing person in her family. She is torn between helping her parents save their fishing business and her own dream of a music career.
4. Everything Everywhere All at Once, 2022
Rotten Tomatoes Score: 94%
In 2022, the Academy decided to split the majority of statuettes between two contenders: Everything Everywhere All at Once and All Quiet on the Western Front.
And it is the success of A24's brainchild that suggests Oscar has not lost its grip, even when it comes to unconventional movies.
Everything Everywhere All at Once captured the hearts of viewers and grossed over $100 million at the box office – seven Oscars, including a win in the main category, seem like a logical conclusion to this amazing success story.
3. Spotlight, 2015
Rotten Tomatoes Score: 97%
How are sensations born? Real, proven, and painful ones. This is the subject of director Tom McCarthy's production drama, which tells the story of a real-life journalistic investigation that exposed child sexual abuse among Boston's Catholic priests.
From a journalistic and political point of view, Spotlight is a worthy and meaningful film, but from an artistic point, the movie is interesting only for its screenplay and Mark Ruffalo 's performance.
2. Moonlight, 2016
Rotten Tomatoes Score: 98%
A modern classic and an important movie whose influence is easily underestimated, but which can already be seen in many independent films.
With three short stories, Barry Jenkins and Tarell Alvin McCraney have achieved what Richard Linklater hoped to do when he began his 12-year experiment with Boyhood: they have succeeded in realistically depicting the coming of age of an ordinary teenager and his difficult path to accepting his identity.
1. Parasite, 2019
Rotten Tomatoes Score: 99%
The most sensational and surprising Oscar of the decade – the statuette was won by a non-English-language film from South Korea, a country that had never even received a Best Foreign Film nomination.
The victory of Parasite is a victory for art in its purest form, not blinded by the glitter of big names or topical plots. But it is also an act of final recognition by the world community of the power of South Korean cinematography – one of the strongest in the world.