The 88th Academy Awards is just days away and a new film will soon join the list of Best Picture Oscar winners. It is considered the top prize in the film world and can cement a filmmaker’s status in the history of film. After all, a winner’s title will be put on the columns outside the Dolby Theatre forever.
The last 10 films to join the group show the variety of films made today. However, a careful examination of them all can reveal their similarities. The Academy has fallen in love with its own business in recent years, meaning that three of the last four Best Picture winners are about acting or feature Hollywood playing a role. Biopics about a “Great Man” may have started to flounder when it comes to winning, but one still came out on top in the past decade. Social issues, from racism to income inequality is a theme in a few of them.
Some of them will likely be as quickly forgotten as Cimarron or Gandhi or Oliver!. Others will go down as the greatest films ever made, joining The Silence of the Lambs, One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest or Casablanca.
Anyway, let’s look at the last decade of winners, from worst to best. You probably already know what will be at number 10.