I watched every Best Picture winner. Here’s what I learned.

Hey y’all, so in order to pass some time due to an unspecified event that led to a sudden need to stay inside for most of the day every day, I decided to curate a little cultural education for myself and watched every film to have won the Academy Award for Best Picture (or for Outstanding Picture, in the case of Wings) in chronological order. I started this project in March and finished yesterday. I noticed a few trends and quirks about the evolution of film and what the Academy likes, so here are my post-journey thoughts, observations, and reflections, none of which I will pretend are new or unique:the Best Picture winners (hereafter BPWs), as I’m sure is true of films in general, do tend to get better as time goes on. All of the BPWs of the 1970s, for example, are very good movies, and although there have been some duds and question marks in more recent Oscar history I would almost universally prefer to watch one of the films from the last five decades than from the first five of the Academy’s existence. For reference, I made a rough chart of the BPWs’ Tomatometer by year (I recognize that Tomatometer is a flawed metric, but it’s handy for the sake of demonstration. I do generally think that older films are not reviewed as critically as they ought to be on RT, and consequently have a higher Tomatometer than they probably deserve), and you can see there is a general upward trend as time goes by.I would say that around 1969 is when the films start to feel “modern,” in terms of visual storytelling and technique as well as in their willingness to tackle and depict more “adult” themes and images. Midnight Cowboy is noticeably darker than all the films preceding it, and from then on the BPWs are much less shy about depicting more mature and serious subject matter in a head-on and explicit way. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the MPAA rating system was introduced in 1968 (not to imply that movies became more “adult” because of MPAA ratings, but quite the opposite: that the level of demand for darker and more mature movies necessitated the abandonment of the Hays Code and the development of the MPAA ratings).Speaking of ratings, BPWs are most likely to be rated R, especially recently. 31 of the 52 films that have won Best Picture since the MPAA ratings were introduced have been rated R, including 21 of the last 29 and 13 of the last 15 winners.Good lord does the Academy enjoy period pieces. Of the 91 BPWs, about 50 (give or take a few depending how strict your definition is) are “historical” movies of some sort (i.e., taking place at some defined point in the past). This is a pretty constant theme from the beginning of the BPWs to the present day.Here are my general rankings for the 91 Best Picture Winners, based entirely on my own personal preference and not their “greatness” as films or anything (I don’t pretend to be a critic, I was just really bored for a few months). I would say about a third of BPWs (~30) are good to great, the middle third (~30-~60) are good enough to watch casually, nos. ~60-~80 are just boring, and nos. ~80-~91 are actually bad (though the bottom four are significantly worse than the others and all have few redeeming qualities unless you’re interested in laughing at ineptitude. I will warn you in advance that it isn’t worth it). I’m sure some of you snobs out there are going to take issue with some of my placements, and that’s fine, sound off if you’d like.The English Patient, Shakespeare in Love, Kramer vs. Kramer, Ordinary People and (to a certain extent) Titanic get a worse rap than they deserve. Perhaps some shouldn’t have won in the years that they were nominated but each are good movies in their own right.All told, I am glad that I underwent this little project, if only just to be able to say that I have done it. I finally got around to seeing a few classics that had previously avoided me, and discovered a few great films I had never heard of before (how the hell did I not know about The Apartment until now? It’s a damn good movie, y’all). If for whatever reason any of you might be interested in attempting to do this, reach out and I might have some tips for how to make it a little easier or more accessible!*edits for formatting and spelling.**fixed chart link. via /r/movies https://ift.tt/2DZNeQ0