When I was growing up I entertained the idea of being a filmmaker. The passion for it developed heavily in my high school days and, in the 1990s, I casually dabbled in the industry by way of voice work on a video game, being an extra on a TV show, and even acting in a low budget horror film.

Crazy, right?

During that time, though, my focus was less on legacy films and more on what was trendy as the time: indie cinema. You know… Quentin Tarantino, Kevin Smith, and the foreign films which lead into my interest and eventual involvement with anime.

Years ago I decided to try to watch and collect all the films that had won the Academy Award for Best Picture. At that time I was into acquiring Blu-rays and DVDs, but since then my media library has gone full digital with over 300 films in my iTunes library. (I’m a sucker for those $5 film sales.) 

As I started the project of rebuilding my blog, I began looking for these sort of posts that I threw myself into and stopped refreshing and/or completed. The last update I could find for my Best Picture completion goal was from six years ago. I’ve watched a bunch of movies since then, and the nature of the list has evolved since I’m no longer looking to buy them; merely experience them. Thus, the new additions to the list in this post are followed by a symbol and I no longer denote Blu-ray/DVD afterwards.

What prompted this was watching Parasite last night. That movie was TENSE. Look at the preview picture in this blog post. That’s Shannon halfway through the film. The hype for this film was 100% accurate: suspenseful filmmaking at its absolute finest.

THE UPDATED LIST

1939 Gone with the Wind
1943 Casablanca
1945 The Lost Weekend
1947 Gentleman’s Agreement
1950 All About Eve
1955 Marty
1959 Ben-Hur
1962 Lawrence of Arabia
1964 My Fair Lady
1965 The Sound of Music
1970 Patton
1971 The French Connection
1972 The Godfather
1973 The Sting
1974 The Godfather Part II
1975 One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
1976 Rocky
1984 Amadeus
1986 Platoon
1988 Rain Man
1990 Dances with Wolves
1991 The Silence of the Lambs
1992 Unforgiven
1993 Schindler’s List
1994 Forrest Gump
1995 Braveheart
1997 Titanic
1998 Shakespeare in Love
1999 American Beauty
2000 Gladiator
2001 A Beautiful Mind
2002 Chicago
2003 The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King
2004 Million Dollar Baby
2005 Crash
2006 The Departed
2007 No Country for Old Men
2008 Slumdog Millionaire
2010 The King’s Speech
2011 The Artist
2012 Argo
2014 Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)
2018 Green Book
2019 Parasite