Rank the last 10 Best Picture Oscar Winners

The latest trend these past 24 hours has been to rank the last ten Best Picture winners. A fairly easy breezy task when you take into account how there were only a handful of great films that have won the big prize in recent years.

So, the last ten years, that means 2013-2023.

12 Years A Slave
Parasite
Birdman
The Shape of Water
Moonlight
Spotlight
Green Book
Nomadland
CODA
Everything Everywhere All at Once

Go ahead, rank it out.

The one thing that stands out the most with these winners is that they’re not that lengthy. There’s no movie that goes beyond 140 minutes — EEAAO has the longest runtime of the last 10 winners.

Whereas I can remember when you needed an epic to truly contend for the big prize: “Titanic,” “The English Patient,” “Schindler’s List,” “Dances With Wolves,” “Braveheart,” “Gladiator,” “The Return of the King” …

Not anymore. The last Best Picture winner to go over 2 hours and 30 minutes was released in 2006 (“The Departed”). The last 3-Hour Best Picture winner was in 2003 (“The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King”).

So, what is the definition of a Best Picture winner these days? Well, it’s sure as hell not the token Oscar bait we were used for so many decades. L

Maybe it’s because Hollywood movies just aren’t as culturally relevant as they used to be. One can remember a time when Best Picture winners such as “Gladiator,” “Titanic,” “The Silence of the Lambs,” “Forrest Gump,” and “The Lord of the Rings” were actually seen by millions of Americans.

Now? Who's actually seen “CODA”? “Nomadland”? These just aren’t films that Americans get excited about. “Oscar-Bait” can now veer away from the classicist Hollywood epic and more towards genre and socio-political statements done via the indie realm. That’s not necessarily a bad thing. It’s just resulted in some bad winners, that’s all.