Over the last decade, there have been some really interesting Best Picture Oscar winners. Some were immediately considered among the greatest of the 21st century, while others were thrown to the bottom of the barrel as some of the worst of all time. Some were predicted to win before they were even nominated, while others were exciting wildcards that proved there’s never 100% certainty with the Academy Awards. One thing all of these films have in common, though, is that they stir some very entertaining conversations.
From Spotlight to Anora, the Best Picture recipients of the last 10 years cover a wide range of genres, tones, story types, and—of course—levels of quality. While the vast majority of these Oscar-winning films are, at the very least, good, it’s undeniable that some are better than others. And with nominations for the 2026 Academy Awards fast approaching, it’s as good a time as any to look back at how we’ve been doing so far over the last 10 years.
10
‘Green Book’ (2018)
Regarded by many as one of the worst Best Picture winners ever, Green Book is one of the rare 21st-century winners that are truly, genuinely bad. This feel-good anti-racism tale that follows Tony Vallelonga and Dr. Don Shirley taking a road trip through the American South is definitely not without redeeming qualities. There are some decently constructed scenes, and Viggo Mortensen and an Oscar-winning Mahershala Ali both offer fantastic performances, but that’s about as far as it goes for this one.
Despite being tied up in controversies throughout its whole awards campaign, Green Book managed to snatch the 2019 Best Picture Oscar. 2018 wasn’t the best year for cinema, to be fair, but actually great films like Roma and A Star Is Born would surely have aged much better as more deserving winners. As it stands, Green Book‘s questionable white savior narrative, surface-level treatment of ’60s American racism, and entirely unremarkable aesthetic make it one of the weakest Best Picture recipients of the whole 21st century.
9
‘CODA’ (2021)
Turns out mid movies can win Oscars, too. This has always been known, of course, but the 2022 Academy Awards reaffirmed that fact when they awarded Apple TV’s CODA with the Best Picture Oscar. It’s not a bad film by any means, but this feel-good family dramedy about a hearing girl from a deaf family who dreams of a music career also doesn’t scream “Best Picture material.”
CODA has some great performances (including Troy Kotsur‘s Oscar-winning turn), a cute story, and a charming tone, but people who have grown to expect the Academy to reward artsier, bolder, more groundbreaking and memorable cinema were disappointed by its victory. It’s a competently made film, no matter how you slice it, but placing it side by side with its far less clichéd peers from the last decade, CODA sticks out like a sore thumb.
8
‘Nomadland’ (2020)
Some have dared to call Chloé Zhao‘s Nomadland one of the most boring Best Picture winners of the 21st century, but while it’s definitely far slower-paced and more minimalistic than your average film, this road trip drama about a van-dwelling nomad in her sixties roaming through the American West is by no means boring. Anchored by a deservedly Oscar-winning turn by Frances McDormand, this gem is cinema stripped down to its bare, most basic elements.
Nomadland continues Zhao’s style of working with non-professional actors and striving for the utmost realism. While that’s arguably the movie’s biggest strength, it arguably also functions as its most vulnerable point. Nomadland is compelling, but it isn’t particularly exciting or even particularly memorable. It’s a phenomenal one-off experience kind of film, but not the kind that will go down in history as one of its decade’s strongest wins.
7
‘The Shape of Water’ (2017)
Mexican auteur Guillermo del Toro has been the master of dark fantasy for a while, but it took the Academy some time to award him a double win: Best Director and Best Picture for The Shape of Water. Though far from being del Toro’s best, this bizarre yet beautiful Cold War tale of a romance between a woman and a monster is nevertheless a fantastic movie. Still, its Best Picture win has remained one of the most divisive of the 2010s.
Divisive or not, though, The Shape of Water is one of the greatest fantasy movies of the 2010s, a visually striking and emotionally stirring gem that builds upon del Toro’s usual thematic concerns and aesthetic inclinations in all sorts of wonderful ways. It’s not particularly subtle, and its quirks certainly aren’t for everyone, but its uniqueness and refusal to simply please the lowest common denominator are precisely what make del Toro’s work so special.
6
‘Anora’ (2024)
The most recent Best Picture winner is another one whose victory stirred up a fair bit of controversy. Sean Baker, a director constantly drawn to stories about marginalized people, wrote and directed Anora, a dramedy about a young stripper who impulsively marries the son of a Russian oligarch. It’s the kind of story you wouldn’t typically expect to see rewarded at the Oscars—let alone with the biggest award in Hollywood—, which made its Best Picture win one of the most exciting in recent memory.Anora‘s character writing and pacing aren’t perfect, but as one of the most richly detailed, sympathetic, and complex portrayals of a sex worker character in cinema’s history, it’s a must-see. Mikey Madison‘s Oscar-winning performance ties the whole thing together beautifully, but it’s the tender and nuanced way in which Baker looks at this story that makes Anora such an unforgettable film.
5
‘Spotlight’ (2015)
Based on the true story of how the Boston Globe uncovered the massive scandal of child molestation within the local Catholic Archdiocese, Spotlight is the best kind of Oscar bait, the kind that results in an actually great film. Supported by an incredible ensemble and a breathtaking Oscar-winning script (making this one of the very few films that won Best Picture and only one other award), it’s undoubtedly the most harrowing Best Picture winner of the last decade.
Spotlight is bolstered by a phenomenal sense of pacing that prevents the story from ever feeling didactic or dull.
But poignant though it may be, Spotlight is also bolstered by surprisingly strong direction from Tom McCarthy, a criminally underrated Howard Shore score, and a phenomenal sense of pacing that prevents the story from ever feeling didactic or dull. It’s a hard-hitting film about a vital story, and though some might disregard it as “too simple” for the Best Picture Oscar, its emotional and intellectual effects are anything but simple.
4
‘Moonlight’ (2016)
Stories of queer pain and tragedy are aplenty, but films like Moonlight that explore gay characters and stories without shying away from the dark bits while being ultimately hopeful and full of light aren’t common at all. One of the best indie films of the last 10 years, this gorgeously tender coming-of-age will sadly forever be attached to the Best Picture announcement scandal at the 2017 Oscars, but its quality far transcends that unfortunate mix-up.
Sweet, vulnerable, and raw, Moonlight is so profoundly human and so full of empathy that it’s hard not to become enamored with its characters and their stories. Visually beautiful and full of exceptional performances (including the one that earned Mahershala Ali his first Oscar), this Best Picture winner has only gotten better and lovelier with age.
3
‘Parasite’ (2019)
The first—and so far only—foreign film that’s ever won Best Picture, Parasite made history at the 2020 Academy Awards. Bong Joon Ho‘s magnum opus about the symbiotic relationship between the wealthy Parks and the destitute Kimsswept the ceremony, winning an admirable four Oscars, something not at all common for international pictures. Thematically scathing and tonally adventurous, this modern masterpiece had one of the most universally loved Best Picture victories of the 21st century.
After all, it’s hard to deny that Parasite is one of the best thriller masterpieces of the last decade. It’s a genre-bending work of art full of masterful performances, genius writing, and some jaw-dropping direction. Just as importantly, Parasite is narratively resonant, telling a story of class inequality that, while not particularly subtle, definitely and effortlessly should resonate with any viewer.
2
‘Everything Everywhere All At Once’ (2022)
For the 2022-23 awards race, Everything Everywhere All At Once seemed to come out of nowhere. A hyperactive sci-fi comedy of this sort isn’t the type of movie that one might typically expect to sweep awards season, but suddenly, the Daniels‘ story about a middle-aged Chinese woman swept into an existence-saving multiversal adventure started winning everything that mattered. By the time it came to the Oscars, its taking home a whopping seven of them wasn’t that much of a surprise anymore.
It was a well-deserved sweep, too. Everything Everywhere is nothing short of one of the best and most original sci-fi films of the 21st century. The hectic but electrifying picture has an exquisitely quirky sense of humor, plenty of adrenaline-pumping and hilarious action scenes, and some masterful performances—including Oscar-winning turns by Michelle Yeoh, Ke Huy Quan, and (much more controversially) Jamie Lee Curtis. It’s a blast of fun throughout every second of its nearly 2-and-a-half-hour runtime.
1
‘Oppenheimer’ (2023)
He was once just an up-and-coming indie filmmaker, but nowadays, Christopher Nolan may very well be the king of Hollywood. That reputation was only further cemented by the kind of cultural phenomenon that Oppenheimer, a 3-hour-long epic about the controversial titular physicist, instantly became. One wouldn’t usually expect this kind of movie to make that much noise among the mainstream public, but Nolan’s name was enough to make this the third-highest-grossing R-rated film of all time.
Oppenheimer also happens to be one of the best epics of the last 30 years, which made its winning seven Oscars deeply satisfying. It’s a culmination of everything that its director’s auteurial style has been building toward up to this point, where every element works in perfect coordination with the others to deliver such a hard-hitting masterpiece that you hardly feel the long runtime. Oppenheimer might just be the best movie of the 2020s so far, and it arguably is also the greatest Best Picture winner of the last 10 years.
