(Photo by Neon/Courtesy Everett Collection. ANORA.)

All 98 Best Picture Winners, Ranked by Tomatometer

Every year, after the fracas of awards season and studio campaigning, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences hands out the ultimate prize in cinema, the explicit recommendation that if you’re only going to watch one movie, make it the one we picked. We’re talking the Oscar for Best Picture. Less than 100 of these have been handed out through the centuries. But ever wonder how the movies of this exclusive golden club would fare against each other?

Welcome to our countdown of every Best Picture winner ever, from the Certified Fresh (Casablanca, Schindler’s List, Argo, Lawrence of Arabia, The Godfather, The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King…most of them, fortunately), the kinda Fresh (Out of Africa, Forrest Gump), to the ‘HUH? HOW?’ Rottens (The Broadway Melody, Cimarron).

See where all the films place in our guide to Best Picture Winners, Ranked by Tomatometer!

Golden Globes Best Picture Winners by Tomatometer

Since 1943, the Golden Globes have been celebrating the biggest, brightest, and starriest movies of the year. Now, we’re taking every Golden Globe Best Motion Picture winner — including the categories for Drama, Comedy/Musical, and that brief period of unadulterated hedonism during the 1950s/1960s when Musical and Comedy were separated — and ranking them, with Certified Fresh films first. Lately, we’ve caught up with The Brutalist and Emilia Perez taking home the big two. See all Golden Globes Best Picture winners by Tomatometer!

There’s a well-known, somewhat tongue-in-cheek Hollywood maxim that says all actors ultimately want to direct, but few actually get the chance, and fewer still find success when given the opportunity. Not so for Jason Hall, who appeared in a handful of films and TV series — including a brief recurring role on Buffy the Vampire Slayer — and penned a couple of big screenplays before helming his feature directorial debut, Thank You for Your Service.

The film, which stars Miles Teller and Haley Bennett, centers on a group of Iraq veterans dealing with PTSD, a subject Hall previously explored in his Oscar-nominated screenplay for Clint Eastwood’s American Sniper. Critics have called the film a powerfully acted portrayal of the emotional impact of war, and to mark its release in theaters on Friday, Hall offered up his Five Favorite Military Films. Read on for the full list.

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Thank You for Your Service is in theaters now. Read reviews for it here.

Mel Gibson is getting the best reviews of his directorial career for Hacksaw Ridge, the World War II true story of conscientious objector Desmond Doss, who received the Medal of Honor for saving 75 men without ever carrying a gun or weapon. The legend of Doss inspires this week’s gallery: 24 Certified Fresh WWII movies!

(And before you ask, Grave of the Fireflies is Fresh but not Certified Fresh.)

The last time he performed in a musically themed role, he won an Academy Award for his trouble, and one good biopic deserves another, so Jamie Foxx has just signed on to star in The Soloist, a film about a prodigy whose career is derailed by the onset of schizophrenia.

The prodigy in question, Nathaniel Ayers, started showing symptoms of the disease during his second season at Julliard, and ended up on the streets of Los Angeles, where he plays violin and cello for passersby under what he believes to be the protection of the spirit of Beethoven. Ayers got the public’s attention through the work of an LA Times reporter named Steve Lopez, whose columns (and upcoming book) formed part of the basis for the movie’s script — which was written, according to Variety, by Erin Brockovich screenwriter Susannah Grant.

The article also mentions that the film will be directed by Joe Wright, previously known for directing the Keira Knightley projects Pride & Prejudice and Atonement. Foxx is already studying stringed instruments under the direction of a cellist from the L.A. Philharmonic. The star, who will turn 40 in December, will need to undergo a bit of a transformation to play a second-year Julliard student, as well as that same student more than 30 years later, but he’s certainly got the dramatic chops to pull it off. To read one of Lopez’s columns about Ayers, follow the second link below.

Source: Variety
Source: LA Times

Ten years ago the AFI gave us a list of the Top 100 American Films Ever Made — and when that was done they churned out 15 other lists every few years. And then last night they updated the Top 100 … I guess because they ran out of lists.

Frankly I think all of these lists are a little silly, but they do spark a lot of movie discussion and therefore I’m all for ’em. Seems a bit unnecessary to update a list that’s barely ten years old, but hey, you do what you have to do to get the viewers interested. I’ll post the new list below, but if you’d like to compare it to the original Top 100, you can check our source below.

And definitely feel free to share your thoughts, opinions and outrage regarding the big list. There’s a lot of movies out there, so please do toss your lists out, too. (The one below came from a list of 1,500 filmmakers, writers, actors, critics, and "others.")

At the very least, this list should give you a good idea of how to fill up your Netflix queue.

1. "Citizen Kane," 1941.
2. "The Godfather," 1972.
3. "Casablanca," 1942.
4. "Raging Bull," 1980.
5. "Singin’ in the Rain," 1952.
6. "Gone With the Wind," 1939.
7. "Lawrence of Arabia," 1962.
8. "Schindler’s List," 1993.
9. "Vertigo," 1958.
10. "The Wizard of Oz," 1939.

11. "City Lights," 1931.
12. "The Searchers," 1956.
13. "Star Wars," 1977.
14. "Psycho," 1960.
15. "2001: A Space Odyssey," 1968.
16. "Sunset Blvd.", 1950.
17. "The Graduate," 1967.
18. "The General," 1927.
19. "On the Waterfront," 1954.
20. "It’s a Wonderful Life," 1946.

21. "Chinatown," 1974.
22. "Some Like It Hot," 1959.
23. "The Grapes of Wrath," 1940.
24. "E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial," 1982.
25. "To Kill a Mockingbird," 1962.
26. "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington," 1939.
27. "High Noon," 1952.
28. "All About Eve," 1950.
29. "Double Indemnity," 1944.
30. "Apocalypse Now," 1979.

31. "The Maltese Falcon," 1941.
32. "The Godfather Part II," 1974.
33. "One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest," 1975.
34. "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs," 1937.
35. "Annie Hall," 1977.
36. "The Bridge on the River Kwai," 1957.
37. "The Best Years of Our Lives," 1946.
38. "The Treasure of the Sierra Madre," 1948.
39. "Dr. Strangelove," 1964.
40. "The Sound of Music," 1965.

41. "King Kong," 1933.
42. "Bonnie and Clyde," 1967.
43. "Midnight Cowboy," 1969.
44. "The Philadelphia Story," 1940.
45. "Shane," 1953.
46. "It Happened One Night," 1934.
47. "A Streetcar Named Desire," 1951.
48. "Rear Window," 1954.
49. "Intolerance," 1916.
50. "The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring," 2001.

51. "West Side Story," 1961.
52. "Taxi Driver," 1976.
53. "The Deer Hunter," 1978.
54. "M*A*S*H," 1970.
55. "North by Northwest," 1959.
56. "Jaws," 1975.
57. "Rocky," 1976.
58. "The Gold Rush," 1925.
59. "Nashville," 1975.
60. "Duck Soup," 1933.

61. "Sullivan’s Travels," 1941.
62. "American Graffiti," 1973.
63. "Cabaret," 1972.
64. "Network," 1976.
65. "The African Queen," 1951.
66. "Raiders of the Lost Ark," 1981.
67. "Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?", 1966.
68. "Unforgiven," 1992.
69. "Tootsie," 1982.
70. "A Clockwork Orange," 1971.

71. "Saving Private Ryan," 1998.
72. "The Shawshank Redemption," 1994.
73. "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid," 1969.
74. "The Silence of the Lambs," 1991.
75. "In the Heat of the Night," 1967.
76. "Forrest Gump," 1994.
77. "All the President’s Men," 1976.
78. "Modern Times," 1936.
79. "The Wild Bunch," 1969.
80. "The Apartment, 1960.

81. "Spartacus," 1960.
82. "Sunrise," 1927.
83. "Titanic," 1997.
84. "Easy Rider," 1969.
85. "A Night at the Opera," 1935.
86. "Platoon," 1986.
87. "12 Angry Men," 1957.
88. "Bringing Up Baby," 1938.
89. "The Sixth Sense," 1999.
90. "Swing Time," 1936.

91. "Sophie’s Choice," 1982.
92. "Goodfellas," 1990.
93. "The French Connection," 1971.
94. "Pulp Fiction," 1994.
95. "The Last Picture Show," 1971.
96. "Do the Right Thing," 1989.
97. "Blade Runner," 1982.
98. "Yankee Doodle Dandy," 1942.
99. "Toy Story," 1995.
100. "Ben-Hur," 1959.

Grr. I’m annoyed that neither of my all-time favorites (those would be "Alien" and "Young Frankenstein") made the list. Oh well.

Be honest: How many of ’em have you seen?

Source: SeattlePI.com