Awardswatch’s Best Picture Nominee Rankings – 2000s Edition

Erik Anderson April 1, 2014

05.

04.

03.

02.

01.

And in the end it turned out quite a bit like the Oscar battle for 2007 films, with No Country For Old Men coming out on top both times.

Answers to the hints given at the beginning, plus a few more stats:

1. Only one director (who also won Best Director during the same decade) has two films in the Top 10.
A: Ang Lee with Crouching Tiger Hidden, Dragon (#6) and Brokeback Mountain (#3).

2. Meanwhile, two Oscar nominated actors have two films each in the bottom five of the list.
A: Sandra Bullock (The Blind Side and Crash) and Johnny Depp (Chocolat and Finding Neverland)

3. Only three Oscar Best Picture nominees received no votes. None of those ended up winning Best Picture…
A: Chocolat, The Blind Side, Seabiscuit

4. If you will rank how the films performed alongside their co-nominees for a given year, only two (2) Best Picture winners ended up fifth in their respective years.
A: A Beautiful Mind (2001), Crash (2005)

5. Using the same pattern ahead, there are three (3) years where in AW and Oscar agreed on the Best Picture prize.
A: Million Dollar Baby (2004), The Departed (2006), No Country for Old Men (2007)

6. One particular year has the most entries in the top ten with three (3).
A: 2007 with Atonement (#9), There will Be Blood (#2), and No Country for Old Men (#1)

7. Another year has all of its nominees in the upper half.
A: 2002. LOTR: Two Towers (15), The Hours (19), The Pianist (21), Chicago (25), Gangs of New York (27)

8. Meanwhile, another year has four of the five BP nominees in the lower end of the list and the fifth one on the brink of being there as well.
A: 2008. Milk (28), The Reader (46), Slumdog Millionaire (48), Frost/Nixon (49). Benjamin Button was 24.

9. The middle ranked film (#28) is a biopic that gained multiple Oscar acting nominations.
A: Milk getting nominations for lead actor Sean Penn and supporting actor Josh Brolin.

10. Only one actor (of both genders) has multiple films in the top ten.
A: Kelly Macdonald appearing in Gosford Park (#7) and No Country for Old Men (#1).

Complete results:

* indicates = Best Picture winner

*01. No Country for Old Men (Ethan Coen and Joel Coen)
02. There Will Be Blood (Paul Thomas Anderson)
03. Brokeback Mountain (Ang Lee)
04. Lost in Translation (Sofia Coppola)
05. Inglourious Basterds (Quentin Tarantino)
06. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (Ang Lee)
07. Gosford Park (Robert Altman)
08. Moulin Rouge! (Baz Luhrmann)
09. Atonement (Joe Wright)
*10. The Departed (Martin Scorsese)
11. A Serious Man (Ethan Coen and Joel Coen)
12. The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (Peter Jackson)
*13. The Hurt Locker (Kathryn Bigelow)
14. In the Bedroom (Todd Field)
15. The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (Peter Jackson)
16. Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World (Peter Weir)
*17. The Lord of the Rings: the Return of the King (Peter Jackson)
18. Up (Pete Docter)
19. The Hours (Stephen Daldry)
*20. Million Dollar Baby (Clint Eastwood)
21. The Pianist (Roman Polanski)
22. District 9 (Neill Blomkamp)
23. Sideways (Alexander Payne)
24. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (David Fincher)
*25. Chicago (Rob Marshall)
26. Traffic (Steven Soderbergh)
27. Gangs of New York (Martin Scorsese)
28. Milk (Gus van Sant)
*29. Gladiator (Rodley Scott)
30. Mystic River (Clint Eastwood)
31. Good Night and Good Luck (George Clooney)
32. Babel (Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu)
33. Juno (Jason Reitman)
34. The Queen (Stephen Frears)
35. Little Miss Sunshine (Jonathan Dayton, Valerie Faris)
36. Erin Brockovich (Steven Soderbergh)
37. The Aviator (Martin Scorsese)
38. Michael Clayton (Tony Gilroy)
39. Letters from Iwo Jima (Clint Eastwood)
40. Capote(Bennett Miller)
41. Munich (Steven Spielberg)
42. Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire (Lee Daniels)
43. An Education (Lone Scherfig)
44. Avatar (James Cameron)
45. Up in the Air (Jason Reitman)
46. The Reader (Stephen Daldry)
*47. A Beautiful Mind (Ron Howard)
*48. Slumdog Millionaire (Danny Boyle)
49. Frost/Nixon (Ron Howard)
50. Ray (Taylor Hackford)
*51. Crash (Paul Haggis)
51. Finding Neverland (Marc Forster)
53. Chocolat (Lasse Hallstrom)
53. The Blind Side (John Lee Hancock)
53. Seabiscuit (Gary Ross)

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Erik Anderson

Erik Anderson is the founder/owner and Editor-in-Chief of AwardsWatch and has always loved all things Oscar, having watched the Academy Awards since he was in single digits; making lists, rankings and predictions throughout the show. This led him down the path to obsessing about awards. Much later, he found himself in film school and the film forums of GoldDerby, and then migrated over to the former Oscarwatch (now AwardsDaily), before breaking off to create AwardsWatch in 2013.

He is a Rotten Tomatoes-approved critic, accredited by the Cannes Film Festival, Telluride Film Festival, Toronto International Film Festival and more, is a member of the International Cinephile Society (ICS), The Society of LGBTQ Entertainment Critics (GALECA), Hollywood Critics Association (HCA) and the International Press Academy. Among his many achieved goals with AwardsWatch, he has given a platform to underrepresented writers and critics and supplied them with access to film festivals and the industry and calls the Bay Area his home where he lives with his husband and son.