The 20 Greatest Best Picture Winners …

A shout out to HE’s Jeffrey Wells who relayed me to a peculiar piece of film journalism … According to Esquire’s Tom Nicholson, the two all-time winners of the Best Picture Oscar are “Moonlight” and “Parasite”. God almighty, what the hell is wrong with this guy?

I just went through all 92 Best Picture winners on Wikipedia, I’ve seen 84 of them. Not too shabby. Most of the one’s missed are inessential stuff from the ‘20s and ‘30s — where the transition between silent movies and talkies was a wobbly one.

There isn’t much time to rank them all, I’m practically Oscar-ed out, but while I was watching this past Sunday’s ceremony, I riffed on what were the worthiest Best Picture winners and came up with the 20 best:

• The Godfather

• The Godfather Part II

• The Apartment

• Schindler’s List

• Casablanca

• Unforgiven

• The Best Years of Our Lives

• No Country For Old Men

• Midnight Cowboy

• The Silence of the Lambs

• 12 Years A Slave

• The Departed

• Annie Hall

• On the Waterfront

• The French Connection

• Amadeus

• Kramer vs Kramer

• One Flew Over the Cukoo’s Nest