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This year’s crop of Best Picture nominees is an interesting bunch, from international films to heavy dissections of the American Dream. Rather than describing them vaguely, let’s take a look at each of this year’s nominees, ranked from worst to first.

In this seventeenth and final part of my retrospective Oscar Outlook, I’ll be offering up my choices for the five best winners of Best Picture. The five films listed include my personal favorite movie, a classic epic with a large scope in story and spectacle, a spirited story that represents the best of Hollywood’s Golden Age, and both halves of an iconic American saga.

In this fourteenth part of my retrospective Oscar Outlook, I’ll be eliminating a pair of films that won Best Picture prizes at the same ceremony, an X-rated masterpiece, and one of the most influential films of the past 20 years.

In this thirteenth part of my retrospective Oscar Outlook, I’ll be eliminating Alfred Hitchcock’s Best Picture winner, a film close to the hearts of Pennsylvanians, and the highest grossing movie of all-time.

In this twelfth part of my retrospective Oscar Outlook, I’ll be eliminating films with wildly different settings — from the trenches to the suburbs to the multiverse.

In this eleventh part of my retrospective Oscar Outlook, I’ll be eliminating five films with big cinematic appeal, and a small scale classic that made a legend of its budding star.

In this tenth part of my retrospective Oscar Outlook, I’ll be eliminating some of the most somber films to win Best Picture, including efforts from modern auteurs Bigelow, McQueen, and Scorsese.

In this ninth part of my retrospective Oscar Outlook, I’ll be eliminating a biographical epic, two war films, a racially-charged counterculture flick, the ultimate COVID movie, and one of Billy Wilder’s darkest works.

In this eighth part of my retrospective Oscar Outlook, I’ll be eliminating the best of the list’s bottom half, including two of the most popular films of the 1970s.