(Photo by Warner Bros. /Courtesy Everett Collection)

Best Cinematography Oscar-Winning Movies, Ranked

Movies are first and foremost a visual medium, and on-set cinematographers are responsible for setting up the angles, the lighting, and the look of what’s being captured on camera. In other words, cinematography is about how we see movies. Take a look at the movies and filmmakers that have won the Academy Award for Best Cinematography over the past 25 years and big scenes and moments immediately fill the mind’s eye: Saving Private Ryan’s desaturated, dirt-and-blood-on-the-lenses look put you in the middle of the chaos on Omaha Beach. Andrew Lesine brought the high fantasy of Tolkien to earthy life in The Fellowship of the Ring. You can’t separate the overwhelming rain-drenched appearance in Road to Perdition from the movie’s plot, thanks to Conrad Hall, who won the Oscar posthumously. Like a magician, Emmanuel Lubezki won three in a row for pulling off three wildly different assignments: Gravity, Birdman, and The Revenant. Roger Deakins was nominated 13 times before finally winning one for Blade Runner 2049′s sci-fi vistas and memorable triple-layered love scene, and then winning again for matching all the complicated sequences in 1917 to help achieve the appearance of one continuous shot.

The Best Cinematography award has been a thing for as long as the Oscars have been around, with Sunrise taking home inaugural gold in 1927. By 1940, the award had permanently split in two: One for Black-and-White, and the other for films in Color, with Gone with the Wind being the first to win the latter. 1966 was the final time the Academy made that distinction, though black-and-white movies have won since, like Schindler’s List in 1994, Roma in 2019, and Mank in 2021.

And now, we’re ranking all Best Cinematography Oscar-winning movie by Tomatometer! —Alex Vo