The 21 Best Oscar-Winning Movies on Netflix Right Now
The Academy Award isn’t everything. Sometimes the winning films truly represent the best films of their years; sometimes they reflect a zeitgeist that looks strange in later years; sometimes they are just completely inexplicable.
But let’s focus on the times the Academy has awarded films that are actually quite good, or at least reflective of their era enough to be interesting. Here are some of the best award winners currently streaming on Netflix.
Quiet on the Western Front (2022)
A new adaptation of Erich Maria Remarque’s 1929 anti-war novel, this new version didn’t win Best Picture or Best Director like the original 1930 version, but Quiet nonetheless ended up being the second most awarded film. on the night of the 2023 Oscars, losing to Best Picture winner Everything Everywhere at Once . While it doesn’t have the same power as the earlier adaptation, it’s still a powerful film about the futility of war, set in the trenches of the First World War.
Oscars for: Best International Feature Film (Germany), Best Original Score (Volker Bertelmann), Best Production Design (Christian M. Goldbeck and Ernestine Hipper), Best Cinematography (James Friend).
My Octopus Teacher (2020)
Director Craig Foster spent a year building a relationship with a wild common octopus in a South African forest, transferring some of the lessons he learned to his relationship with his own son. If Foster can establish contact with such an alien intelligence in its own natural (and naturally dangerous) environment, surely there is hope for humanity? May be?
Oscar: Best Documentary Feature
Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom (2020)
One sweaty, blues-filled afternoon in 1927 Chicago, the great Ma Rainey (Viola Davis) shows up in the studio to record a new album. She has been signed by white promoters and is fully aware that their respect for her is entirely dependent on her profitability as a singer. As the session progresses, tensions rise and conflicts flare, especially between Ma Rainey and Chadwick Boseman’s Livie Green. Davis was nominated for Best Actress and is so good that she practically embodies the carefree blues legend, while Chadwick Boseman was considered a near contender for the posthumous Best Actor award. Unfortunately, the Academy’s notorious stinginess when it comes to black acting seems to have won (in 95 years of awards, there has been exactly one black actress to win and only five actual winners).
Oscar for: Best Costume Design (Ann Roth), Best Makeup and Hairstyling (Sergio Lopez-Rivera, Mia Neal and Jamika Wilson).
Phantom Thread (2017)
One of the Oscars’ favorite directors (Paul Thomas Anderson) teams up with one of the Oscars’ favorite actors (Daniel Day-Lewis) to create this historical drama set in 1950s London. The only surprise, perhaps, is that it only won one award, although it was nominated for several others, including Best Picture.
Oscar for Best Costume Design (Mark Bridges)
The Deer Hunter (1978)
Although less talked about than some of its 1970s contemporaries, The Deer Hunter remains an emotionally devastating look at the Vietnam War, with brilliant performances from Robert De Niro, Christopher Walken and Meryl Streep. It also remains controversial in its politics and sense of story, but even there is a sense of power that harkens back to a time when a popular film could be bothered to push buttons.
Oscars: Best Picture, Best Director (Michael Cimino), Best Supporting Actor (Christopher Walken), Best Film Editing (Peter Zinner), Best Sound (Richard Portman, William McCaughey, Aaron Rochin and Darin Knight).
The Power of the Dog (2021)
As with Brokeback Mountain , much of the press surrounding Jane Campion’s film revolved around its queer themes (gay cowboys? what happens next!?), but its strength lies in Campion’s thoughtful, slow-paced direction (a rarity these days ), as well as in its beautiful cinematography. Benedict Cumberbatch plays one of two very different brothers whose fragile world is shattered by the arrival of newcomers to their Montana ranch circa 1925.
Oscar: Best Director (Jane Campion)
Arrival (2016)
Denis Villeneuve ( Prisoners , Sicario ) has made a name for himself as one of science fiction’s most thoughtful and reliable directors with this slow-paced first contact story that combines cool intelligence with an emotional lead performance from Amy Adams. It received an impressive eight Oscar nominations, including Best Picture, but came away with just one.
Oscar for Best Sound Editing (Sylvain Bellemare)
BlacKkKlansman (2018)
BlacKkKlansman was a comeback of sorts for Spike Lee, although he never really went away—it was by far his biggest commercial success in more than a decade. It contains elements of satire in tone, but is nevertheless based on the true story of Ron Stallworth (played by John David Washington), a black police officer who infiltrates the KKK with some help from his Jewish colleague Flip (Adam Driver). . Opening exactly one year after the white supremacist “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, the timing was not lost on the public.
Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay (Charlie Wachtel, David Rabinowitz, Kevin Willmott and Spike Lee)
American Beauty (1999)
Was it really the best film of 1999? Probably not, but this is definitely the movie everyone has been talking about. Kevin Spacey plays Lester Burnham, a man who tries to destroy his own life through a particularly terrible midlife crisis.
Oscar for: Best Picture, Best Director (Sam Mendes), Best Actor (Kevin Spacey).
Lost in Translation (2003)
Sofia Coppola emerges decisively from her famous father’s shadow in this stylishly melancholic comedy-drama. This film might have done better at the Oscars if it hadn’t had the misfortune of being released during the same years as The Return of the King , although it serves as a nice counter-programme to this action blockbuster.
Oscar for Best Original Screenplay (Sofia Coppola)
Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit (2005)
Aardman Animations, the makers of Chicken Run / Wallace & Gromit , have never let us down, and this silly, big-hearted adventure is no exception. The sequel will be released in 2024.
Oscar for: Best Animated Feature Film
Jaws (1975)
Academy voters immediately recognized that Jaws was more than just a summer thrill ride, earning it a Best Picture nomination, which it lost along with three others, but all of which it won. One person the Academy has clearly overlooked? Steven Spielberg is apparently the highest-grossing and nominated film he has directed. Just two years later, he received a nomination for Close Encounters of the Third Kind , but had to wait until Schindler’s List to take home the directing prize.
Oscars for: Best Film Editing (Verna Fields), Best Original Dramatic Score (John Williams) and Best Sound (Robert Hoyt, Roger Heman, Earl Madery and John Carter).
Saving Private Ryan (1999)
Fast forward a bit into Steven Spielberg’s career and we come to Saving Private Ryan . While the film famously lost to Shakespeare in Love in the Best Picture race (an upset that seems fair to me), the World War II drama still won five Oscars on awards night, which isn’t too bad.
Oscars for: Best Director (Steven Spielberg), Best Sound Effects Editing (Gary Rydstrom and Richard Hymns), Best Sound (Gary Rydstrom, Gary Summers, Andy Nelson and Ron Judkins), Best Cinematography (Janusz Kaminski), Best Editing film (Michael) Kahn)
Period. End of sentence. (2018)
The short (about 25 minutes) film follows a group of women from the Indian village of Katikera, about 50 miles from Delhi, as they work to overcome centuries of shame associated with menstruation. After learning that sanitary pads can be made from local materials, local women open a factory to make and sell their own pads, starting a quiet but necessary revolution in menstrual health.
Oscar for Best Short Documentary Film
Last Days (1998)
During the final year of World War II and the Holocaust, the Nazis in occupied Hungary accelerated their program of deportation and extermination, even at the expense of military strategy. The documentary follows five survivors—and naturalized American citizens—as they return to the camps they miraculously escaped.
Oscar: Best Documentary Feature
Get Out (2017)
If Jordan Peele’s directorial debut lost the race for best picture of the year, there was no shame in losing to Guillermo del Toro ‘s The Shape of Water . However, Peele’s film is not just a masterpiece of modern horror; it’s a movie that said a lot of things that needed to be said and that we’re still saying. But Peele didn’t just direct the film, he wrote it, and he took home an Oscar that night for his screenplay.
Oscar for Best Original Screenplay (Jordan Peele)
Gladiator (2000)
We still make big historical epics (like Ridley Scott’s The Last Duel , Ridley Scott’s Napoleon or Ridley Scott’s upcoming Gladiator 2 ), but they don’t dominate the box office like they used to. Gladiator is Scott’s story of a high-ranking Roman officer forced into the gladiatorial arena after a clash with the new emperor Commodus; the film became a box office record-breaker and an awards season favorite. In total, he received 12 Academy Award nominations, winning five.
Oscars for: Best Picture, Best Actor (Russell Crowe), Best Costume Design (Janti Yates), Best Sound (Bob Beamer, Scott Millan and Ken Weston) and Best Visual Effects (Tim Burke, Neil Corbould, Rob Harvey and John Nelson)
Fences (2016)
Another August Wilson play on this list (along with Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom ), the Denzel Washington-directed adaptation finds Washington playing Troy Maxson, a 1950s sanitation worker whose bitterness over his own missed opportunities threatens to tear his family apart. Viola Davis won a well-deserved Oscar for her portrayal of Rose, who wants to save her family but only just manages to do so. Honestly, just give her all the awards for everything.
Oscar for Best Supporting Actress (Viola Davis).
Call Me by Your Name (2017)
Troubled lead actor aside, director Luca Guadagnino’s coming-of-age story is a rather sweet and poignant tale of first love set in a hot, sunny summer in northern Italy in the 1980s. Timothée Chalamet’s performance is smart and touching.
Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay (James Ivory)
Mank (2020)
David Fincher’s film about screenwriter Herman J. Mankiewicz (Gary Oldman) and the development of Citizen Kane is impressively dramatic, even harrowing at times. It also performed slightly better at the Oscars than the film it dramatizes, with Kane receiving nine nominations and one win, while Mank received 10 nominations and won two of them.
Oscar for: Best Cinematography (Eric Messerschmidt), Best Production Design (Donald Graham Burt and Jan Pascal).
If Anything Happens, I Love You (2020)
A very short (less than 15 minutes) film with a fairly simple animation style is able to evoke more emotion than many films many times its length. The film follows two parents grieving the death of their daughter in a school shooting, and in the aftermath they find themselves at odds with each other.
Oscar: Best Animated Short Film