The Four Near-Perfect Best Picture Winners At The Oscars, According To Rotten Tomatoes

CJ Entertainment

Since the first awards ceremony in 1929, the Academy Awards — colloquially known as the Oscars — have chosen the "best picture" in cinema every single year, with varying results. (Flop choices like "Broadway Melody," "Green Book," and "Crash" still inspire negative discourse about their respective best picture wins, and that's a very abbreviated list when it comes to controversial victors.) Still, a lot of the time, the Oscars at least gets it sort of right; to use a recent example, "The Shape of Water" is a good movie, but it was also competing against "Get Out" and "Lady Bird," so even a well-liked film like Guillermo del Toro's unexpected love story can spark a larger discussion about the Oscars and how they choose their winners. But I digress. Some of the historical best picture winners are (almost) universally beloved, with 99% ratings on Rotten Tomatoes.

With acclaimed films like "Moonlight" and "Schindler's List" not far behind on Rotten Tomatoes' ranking of every best picture winner in Oscars history (both movies have a 98% rating), the following four films are, apparently, pretty close to perfect. From a few Hollywood classics to a more recent movie that absolutely cleaned up during its Oscars ceremony, here are the four best picture winners that are practically perfect in every way.

Warner Bros. Pictures, Inc.

One of the greatest love stories ever told on-screen also won best picture at the 15th annual Academy Awards in 1942. "Casablanca," directed by Michael Curtiz, takes place in the titular city in Morocco during World War II, where American ex-pat Rick Blaine (Humphrey Bogart) operates a bar and makeshift casino that attracts all sorts, from refugees to Nazi officials to people fleeing the regime. Aside from some purloined papers given to him by a friend — who's subsequently killed over them — Rick's life is business as usual until the love of his life, Ilsa Lund (Ingrid Bergman), appears in Casablanca along with her husband Victor Laszlo (Paul Henreid), a freedom fighter with the Czech Republic. As we later learn, Ilsa and Rick had a love affair in Paris, during which time she believed her husband Victor died in a concentration camp; when she realized Victor was alive, she left Rick without any explanation, breaking his heart. Still, Rick knows the "right" thing to do is send Ilsa and Victor to safety using his papers, and with the assistance of the openly corrupt police chief Captain Louis Renault, he helps them escape the Nazis.

It's a little surprising that "Casablanca" won best picture considering that it was not a critical darling right away, but it endures as one of the best films about World War II (especially when you consider it was filmed during the conflict) and one of the best movies in cinematic history. Clearly, critics agree; it's sitting pretty at 99% on Rotten Tomatoes.

20th Century-Fox

Helmed by legendary Hollywood director and producer Joseph L. Mankiewicz, the 1950 film "All About Eve" tells the story of two actresses — Bette Davis as Margo Channing and Anne Baxter as Eve Harrington — locked in a battle over fame and relevance. As the movie begins, we learn the story after it's already over from the narrator, the sharp-tongued theater critic Addison DeWitt (George Sanders), who begins with the end: specifically, a scene where Eve wins a prestigious acting award meant for a rising star. Years beforehand, Margo, in the wake of her 40th birthday, worries about her Broadway career and whether or not her age will affect her work ... and this worry only intensifies when a mutual friend brings Eve backstage to meet Margo after the latter performs a show. Eve claims to be a lifelong fan of Margo, who tries to keep an eye on the young ingenue by inviting her into her home; unfortunately for Margo, Eve just ends up basically taking over Margo's life.

A sharp and insightful critique of the way that Hollywood pits women against one another, "All About Eve" became the first best picture winner of the 1950s and also became the first movie in the ceremony's history — to this day! — to earn Oscar nominations for four of its female actors (Davis, Baxter, Celeste Holm, and Thelma Ritter, the last two of whom played Margo's friend and Margo's dresser). It also has a 99% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, which is certainly nothing to scoff at.

Columbia Pictures

Elia Kazan's 1954 masterpiece "On the Waterfront" is such a beloved staple of American cinema that it's actually surprising to see that it only has a 99% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. The story focuses on washed-up prize fighter Terry Malloy (acting legend Marlon Brando), who, after throwing a fight for mob boss Johnny Friendly (Lee J. Cobb), works under Johnny as a longshoreman for the boss' union. After realizing that Johnny will resort to murder to keep his men in line, Terry allies himself with Edie Doyle (Eva Marie Saint) and a priest, Father Pete Barry (Karl Malden). Before long, Terry and Johnny are full-on enemies, especially after Johnny has Terry's older brother Charley Malloy (Rod Steiger) killed when Terry refuses a job offer.

With a rousing score by Leonard Bernstein and a focus on corruption amongst longshoremen in New Jersey, "On the Waterfront" is one of the most important movies in the American canon, so it's not a huge shock that it won best picture at the 27th annual Academy Awards in 1954 (along with trophies for Brando, Saint, and Kazan for lead actor, lead actress, and best director, respectively). If you haven't seen "On the Waterfront," you'll want to add this vital film to your watchlist.

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Years passed before another near-perfect Academy Award-winning best picture emerged from the pack, but thankfully, South Korean director Bong Joon-ho provided one in 2019. Bong, known for hits like "Snowpiercer" and "Memories of Murder," helmed the universally acclaimed, groundbreaking dark comedy — with Han Jin-won as his co-writer — which tells the story of the Kim family, who find themselves seriously down on their luck and stuck in a rundown basement apartment until the family's only son, Ki-woo (Choi Woo-shik), is given the opportunity to tutor for a rich family in Seoul. Slowly but surely, Ki-woo and his family — including his father Ki-taek (Bong's regular collaborator Song Kang-ho), his mother Chung-sook (Jang Hye-jin), and his sister Ki-jung (Park So-dam) — all get jobs with the wealthy Parks without disclosing that they're related, telling patriarch Park Dong-ik (Lee Sun-kyun) and his wife Choi Yeon-gyo (Cho Yeo-jeong) lies about their current employees to infiltrate the house. One night, with the Parks on vacation, the Kims relax at the family's luxurious mansion ... at which point they discover something incredibly dark in the house's basement.

As the first non-English language film to win Best Picture, "Parasite" ended up performing extremely well at the 92nd Academy Awards in early 2020, earning Bong trophies for his screenplay and directing (as well as an Oscar for best international feature film). Decades may have passed between "On the Waterfront" and "Parasite," but they both earned an extraordinary 99% rating on Rotten Tomatoes.