Every Best Picture Oscar Movie Winner Of 21st Century Ranked Worst To Best

18. CODA (2021)

What should have won: West Side Story.

Like Slumdog Millionaire, CODA is living proof that sometimes - just sometimes - all we really need is a movie that will make us smile, allowing us to step inside a life removed from our own and fill us with hope and warmth about beautiful lives imperfectly lived.

The story of an aspiring singer (Emilia Jones) who's the only hearing member of her Deaf family, and a necessary part of their stumbling fishing business, CODA is a sweet family drama and a confident coming-of-age heartbreaker, offering stimulating if simplistic insight into a way of life rarely seen on the big screen. 

Thanks to the searing work of co-stars Troy Kotsur and Marlee Matlin as Jones’ loving but complicated parents, Sian Heder's crowd-pleaser is straightforward in its execution but injected throughout with real, human feeling. 

It can't compete with the Best Picture winners around it - and should never have beaten Steven Spielberg's electric West Side Story remake - but CODA is still a lovely and admirable achievement.