35 Best Picture Oscar Winners, Ranked From Worst to Best
Updated March 14, 2023 with this year's winner
Over the past three decades, we've seen a diverse range of films earn the award for Best Picture at the Oscars. The winners represent all genres and epochs, from dark thrillers to historical epics to modern westerns, offering a little something for everybody.
But with such a broad selection of films, it's tough to decide which ones are really the best of the best. Each title has earned the most prestigious award in entertainment, so it's a given that they're all great — but the reality is that some are still better than others.
To determine the ultimate hierarchy of Best Picture Oscar winners in the last 30 years, we've ranked every winner by Metascore, which represents the consensus of top professional critics.
Wondering where your favorite movie landed on our list? Scroll through the slideshow on this page to see our countdown of Best Picture winners, ranked from worst to best.
Additional content by Jason Dietz.
(1987) The winner of the best picture at the 60th Academy Awards tells the riches-to-rags story of the final emperor of China, Pu Yi (John Lone). This historical epic is stunningly beautiful, especially in the rarely-filmed Forbidden City locations. The Last Emperor won all nine Oscars for which it was nominated.
"Bernardo Bertolucci's visually ravishing spectacle about the life of Pu Yi is a genuine rarity: a blockbuster that manages to be historically instructive and intensely personal at the same time." — Jonathan Rosenbaum, Chicago Reader
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