The Best Picture Winners of the 21st Century — Ranked
From American Beauty in 2000 to Anora last year, our stable of critics have ranked the winners from worst to best…
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26 items
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Showing 1 to 24 of 26 results
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2004
Crime/detective
Drama
15
Oscar-winning ensemble drama directed by the screenwriter of Million Dollar Baby, starring Sandra Bullock, Don Cheadle and Matt Dillon. The lives of an apparently unconnected group of people in Los Angeles are altered irrevocably by a series of random but highly eventful incidents.
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2001
Documentary
Drama
12
Oscar-winning biographical drama starring Russell Crowe. Maths genius John Forbes Nash Jr battles paranoid schizophrenia, suffering delusions that threaten to derail his academic career and his marriage, before eventually having the opportunity to win an economics Nobel Prize.
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Everything Everywhere All at Once
2022
Comedy
Fantasy
15
Sci-fi action comedy starring Michelle Yeoh. Evelyn Wang has reached a crossroads in her life. Her business is failing, her marriage is crumbling, she doesn't get along with her daughter or her father and the IRS is auditing her accounts. When a rift in the multiverse suddenly opens, revealing a plethora of parallel realities, Evelyn is plunged into a high-stakes battle against a terrifying force - one that is surprisingly close to home.
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2018
Documentary
Comedy
12
Road movie based on a true story, starring Viggo Mortensen and Mahershala Ali. New York, 1962. Nightclub bouncer "Tony Lip", in need of temporary employment, gets himself hired as a driver for concert pianist Don Shirley. It transpires that Shirley, a black man, requires not only transport but protection during his upcoming tour of the segregated Deep South. Though the intellectual Shirley and the slovenly, bigoted Tony initially clash, a firm friendship develops.
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2021
Comedy
Romance
12A
Oscar-winning comedy drama starring Emilia Jones. Ruby is in her senior year at high school, with her whole life ahead of her. However, she is also the sole hearing child of deaf adults, and her spare time is spent helping with the family fishing business. Ruby's priorities begin to change when she joins the school choir, leading to an important life decision affecting her loved ones and her own future happiness.
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2010
Drama
History
12
Oscar-winning historical drama starring Colin Firth, Helena Bonham Carter and Geoffrey Rush. As part of his royal duties, Prince Albert is required to speak at public events, a task made all the more difficult owing to his severe stammer. The death of his father and subsequent abdication of his older brother means that "Bertie" is to be crowned king. Unconventional speech therapist Lionel Logue is enlisted to help the future George VI find his voice - and despite Logue's disregard for all things stately, the two men form an unlikely bond.
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2011
Drama
Comedy
PG
Silent romantic drama starring Jean Dujardin and Bérénice Bejo. In 1927, matinée idol George Valentin is the toast of Tinseltown. A female fan charms him at the premiere of his latest film, and so begins the inexorable rise to fame of the talented Peppy Miller. But with the silent era giving way to the talkies, the future looks to be less bright for Valentin.
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Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)
2014
Comedy
Drama
15
Oscar-winning comedy drama starring Michael Keaton, Edward Norton and Emma Stone. Veteran actor Riggan Thomson was once a Hollywood superstar thanks to his role as the Birdman in a trilogy of superhero movies. With his career now in the doldrums, Thomson attempts to revive his fortunes by producing, writing and starring in a Broadway play. But a litany of setbacks, a hostile critic out to savage the play and his own insecurities soon push Thomson to the edge of insanity.
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2012
Thriller
Documentary
15
Thriller based on a true story, starring Ben Affleck. CIA agent Tony Mendez goes under cover as a Hollywood producer to smuggle six Americans out of Iran. With time running out, Mendez must assemble a convincing cover by creating a fake film production, with the help of Hollywood bigwig John Chambers, before their targets are found and executed.
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2020
Drama
12A
Road movie starring Frances McDormand. Following the death of her husband and the loss of her job, a sixty-something Nevadan sells her belongings and buys a van, which she uses to travel the States while working odd jobs. Along the way, she meets a number of fellow travellers and starts to embrace America's "nomad" communities.
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2002
Drama
Crime/detective
12
Oscar-winning musical starring Catherine Zeta-Jones, Renée Zellweger and Richard Gere. In 1920s Chicago, chorus girl Roxie Hart shoots her lover and winds up in jail, believing her dreams of stardom are over. Enter hotshot lawyer Billy Flynn, whose clients include double murderess Velma Kelly, and Roxie begins to realise that there's no such thing as bad publicity.
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2008
Crime/detective
Drama
15
Danny Boyle's Oscar-winning drama starring Dev Patel and Freida Pinto. Teenager Jamal Malik is one question away from winning the top prize on the Indian version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? when the police intervene and accuse him of cheating. Under brutal interrogation, Jamal recounts the story of his life in the slums of Mumbai and how fate has brought him to this place and time.
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2008
War
Drama
15
Oscar-winning thriller starring Jeremy Renner. A US Army bomb-disposal team working out the last 38 days of their tour in Iraq are joined by Staff Sgt William James, whose unorthodox methods make him initially unpopular with his colleagues.
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2017
Fantasy
Romance
15
Romantic fantasy drama starring Sally Hawkins and Michael Shannon. Elisa, a non-speaking woman, works as a cleaner in a top-secret US government facility during the Cold War. When she forms a connection with a mysterious being who is imprisoned there, she decides to help him escape, despite the close watch kept on him by the creature's obsessive captor.
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2006
Crime/detective
Drama
18
Oscar-winning crime drama starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Matt Damon and Jack Nicholson. In the brutal South Boston underworld, a criminal gang led by the ruthless Frank Costello plants a man in the police force in a concerted effort to keep one step ahead of the law. But the authorities also have their mole, and a deadly game of cat and mouse ensues as both men struggle to conceal their true identity.
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2004
Drama
Sport
12
Boxing drama starring Clint Eastwood, Hilary Swank and Morgan Freeman. A lonely, ageing trainer agrees to coach a poor waitress who comes to his gym. But, although they succeed in the boxing world, a twist of fate has repercussions for them both.
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2015
Drama
Documentary
15
Oscar-winning drama based on a true story, starring Mark Ruffalo, Michael Keaton and Rachel McAdams. Boston, 2001: while researching a story about a priest accused of child abuse, journalists at The Boston Globe uncover evidence of other such cases and a massive cover-up by senior people in the Catholic Church.
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2000
Adventure
Drama
15
Period epic starring Russell Crowe and Joaquin Phoenix. Rome, the second century AD: dying emperor Marcus Aurelius chooses the city's beloved general, Maximus Decimus Meridius, as his successor - a decision that results in a bitter power struggle with Aurelius's son Commodus, who sentences Maximus and his family to death. The general escapes, but he and Commodus are destined to meet again.
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2024
Drama
Comedy
18
Comedy drama starring Mikey Madison. New York erotic dancer Ani is overjoyed when a young and extremely wealthy Russian client, Ivan, proposes to her. The two are quickly married, but this fairy-tale ending curdles when it transpires that the immature Ivan has a powerful family that wants the union annulled - immediately.
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The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King
2003
Adventure
Fantasy
12
The Oscar-winning final part of Peter Jackson's adaptation of JRR Tolkien's fantasy adventure. The hobbit Frodo continues his journey to destroy the ring before the evil Lord Sauron can seize it. He is accompanied deep into Mordor by Gollum, who has a darker motive for keeping the "precious" ring close.
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2013
Drama
Documentary
15
Period drama based on a true story, starring Chiwetel Ejiofor and Michael Fassbender. Solomon Northup is a black man living free with his family in 1800s New York, that is until he is kidnapped and sold to a plantation owner in the Deep South. Escape is never far from his mind, but as the years pass by his resolve is sorely tested.
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2023
Drama
Romance
15
Biographical drama starring Cillian Murphy and Emily Blunt. During the Second World War, American physicist J Robert Oppenheimer and fellow scientists race against time to develop an atomic bomb before the Nazis. But, during the 1950s Red Scare, his name is dragged through the mud by US officials.
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2025
Thriller
Crime/detective
15
Thriller starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Sean Penn and Chase Infiniti. Years after the collapse of his political revolutionary group, Bob Ferguson lives in paranoid seclusion with his teenage daughter, Willa. But the merciless Colonel Lockjaw, a one-time target of Bob's group, has been hunting its members ever since, and has unfinished business with Bob.
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2007
Crime/detective
Thriller
15
Oscar-winning crime thriller from the Coen brothers, starring Tommy Lee Jones, Javier Bardem and Josh Brolin. After going on the run with $2 million from a botched desert drugs deal, hapless cowboy Llewelyn Moss is pursued across Texas by sociopathic hitman Anton Chigurh and ageing sheriff Ed Tom Bell.
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