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And the Oscar goes to
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Collider · Best Picture
Which Oscar Best Picture
Is Your Perfect Movie?
Five winners · ten questions · one envelope
Five Oscar Best Picture winners. Five completely different visions of what cinema can be and what it can do to you. One of them is the film made for the way your mind works, and ten questions will work out which.
The nominees
2020Parasite
2023Everything Everywhere All at Once
2024Oppenheimer
2015Birdman
2008No Country for Old Men
Question 01 of 10TONE
01
What kind of film experience are you really after?
The best movies do not just entertain. They leave something behind.
Keys 1 to 5 or A to E · Enter to advance
Question 02 of 10THEME
02
Which idea grabs you most in a film?
Great films are driven by a central obsession. What is yours?
Keys 1 to 5 or A to E · Enter to advance
Question 03 of 10STRUCTURE
03
How do you like your story told?
Form is content. The way a story is shaped changes what it means.
Keys 1 to 5 or A to E · Enter to advance
Question 04 of 10VILLAIN
04
What makes a truly great antagonist?
The opposition defines the protagonist. What kind of opposition fascinates you?
Keys 1 to 5 or A to E · Enter to advance
Question 05 of 10ENDING
05
What do you want from a film’s ending?
The final note is the one that lingers. What do you want it to sound like?
Keys 1 to 5 or A to E · Enter to advance
Question 06 of 10WORLD
06
Which setting pulls you in most?
Where a film takes place shapes everything: mood, stakes, what is even possible.
Keys 1 to 5 or A to E · Enter to advance
Question 07 of 10CRAFT
07
What cinematic craft impresses you most?
Every great film has a signature, the element that makes it unmistakable.
Keys 1 to 5 or A to E · Enter to advance
Question 08 of 10PROTAGONIST
08
What kind of main character do you root for?
The protagonist is the lens. Who you follow says something about you.
Keys 1 to 5 or A to E · Enter to advance
Question 09 of 10PACE
09
How do you feel about a film that takes its time?
Pace is a choice. Some films sprint. Others let tension accumulate slowly, deliberately.
Keys 1 to 5 or A to E · Enter to advance
Question 10 of 10AFTERMATH
10
What do you want to feel walking out of the cinema?
The best films leave a mark. What kind of mark do you want?
Keys 1 to 5 or A to E · Enter to advance
★ Best Picture, 2020
Parasite
Bong Joon-ho, 2019
A film that hides its true intentions until the moment it is ready to reveal them.
From the Collider file
- The first film not in the English language to win Best Picture, in the Academy’s
92-year history to that point. - It took four Oscars in one night: Picture, Director, Original Screenplay and International
Feature. - It won the Palme d’Or at Cannes in 2019 by a unanimous jury vote, the first Korean film
to do so. - The Park family’s modernist house was not a location. It was built from scratch on an
outdoor lot.
Reads between the lines
Loves a reveal
Attention to detail
★ Best Picture, 2023
Everything Everywhere All at Once
Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, 2022
A film that refuses to choose between being entertaining and being meaningful.
From the Collider file
- Seven Oscars, including three acting wins for Michelle Yeoh, Ke Huy Quan and Jamie Lee
Curtis. - Michelle Yeoh became the first Asian woman to win Best Actress.
- The visual effects were handled by a team of fewer than ten people, most of them
self-taught. - Ke Huy Quan had all but left acting for two decades before this role brought him back.
Wants everything
Big swings
Soft center
★ Best Picture, 2024
Oppenheimer
Christopher Nolan, 2023
A film about the gap between what we can do and what we should do.
From the Collider file
- Seven Oscars, including Nolan’s first wins for directing and for Best Picture.
- Cillian Murphy and Robert Downey Jr. both took their first Academy Awards for it.
- Kodak engineered a black-and-white 65mm stock that did not previously exist so Nolan could
shoot those sequences on IMAX. - A three-hour, R-rated drama about theoretical physics that passed 950 million dollars
worldwide.
Thinks in decades
Scale and weight
No easy comfort
★ Best Picture, 2015
Birdman
Alejandro G. Iñárritu, 2014
A film doing something that probably should not be possible.
From the Collider file
- Four Oscars, among them Best Picture and Best Director for Iñárritu.
- Emmanuel Lubezki’s win here was the middle of three consecutive cinematography Oscars,
after Gravity and before The Revenant. - Antonio Sánchez’s improvised drum score was ruled ineligible for the score category,
which caused a minor uproar. - The long-take illusion was built from a handful of extended shots joined by hidden cuts.
Formally daring
Camera as character
Ego and art
★ Best Picture, 2008
No Country for Old Men
Joel and Ethan Coen, 2007
A film that treats dread as a form of meaning.
From the Collider file
- Four Oscars: Picture, Director, Adapted Screenplay, and Supporting Actor for Javier Bardem.
- Adapted from Cormac McCarthy’s 2005 novel, with much of his dialogue carried over
intact. - Carter Burwell’s score runs about sixteen minutes and is nearly inaudible by design.
- Roger Deakins was nominated twice that year, for this and The Assassination of Jesse James,
and won for neither.
Trusts silence
Dread over answers
No tidy endings
Ballot tally · your top three
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Ballot counted byCOLLIDERCollider.com · The Awards Desk
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Rohan Naahar
Almontather Rassoul




