After multiple lauded films were left to the wayside by the Academy (as well as
Fargo‘s
not capitalizing on its 1997 nomination) the Coen Brothers finally won their
long-awaited Best Picture Oscar with
No Country for Old Men.
So where does this put them in the history of Academy’s Best Picture Winners?
The Tomatometer knows: check out our newly updated
Best of
the Best Pictures countdown, cataloging every last movie to have taken
home the prestigious award.
Placing between
All The King’s Men
(96 percent on the Tomatometer) and
The Lost
Weekend (96 percent), No Country ("only" 94 percent, but our
complicated Bayesian formula is kind to the movie) is the 27th best reviewed Best
Picture winner in the ceremony’s 80-year history — an honor worthy of a
sticker on the DVD package. We’re just saying.
The Coens have been working their way up the proverbial ladder in order to
reach Sunday’s triple Oscar heights (they also won for directing and adapting
Cormac McCarthy’s novel). Their previous win for Fargo‘s screenplay was
followed by another nomination in the same category in 2001 for
O Brother,
Where Art Thou?. And Fargo was likewise nominated for Best Picture, though
eventually lost out to The English Patient.
While the Coens’ work has always been of an unspeakably high caliber,
they’ve never been poised to sweep the Oscars until No Country. Fargo
was big for them, garnering them a Cesar, plenty of awards from national and
British film circles, and a Palme D’Or. They’ve had BAFTAs (No Country, Oh
Brother Where art Thou, and Fargo) for Best Foreign Film, and
Eddies (given by the American Cinema Editors) for their editing, always under
the pseudonym Roderick Jaynes. However, their streak with No Country
puts them in a category of ritual winners that suggests a career of marathon
noms and wins. Walt Disney’s the record-holder with 26 Oscars against 64
nominations in his lifetime, but…the Coens still have a few good decades left
in them.
At any rate, congratulations to the Coens. And RT readers, we suggest you
guys
click here and jump onto the
Best of the
Best feature like it’s a satchel filled with a million bucks.
