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

What should have won: Mad Max - Fury Road. 

Though it would have been nice to see George Miller's practical action epic Fury Road win Best Picture, Spotlight has nonetheless grown into one of the Academy's most powerful modern-day winners.

The story of the Boston Globe’s attempts to uncover decades of sexual abuse within the Catholic Church, Tom McCarthy’s elegant and unsettling ode to dogged determination and good investigative journalism is boosted to greatness by a perfectly calibrated cast (including Mark Ruffalo, Michael Keaton, Rachael McAdams, Stanley Tucci, Liev Schreiber and more) and devastating revelations.

Spotlight never does anything particularly showy, unless you count a scene-stealing monologue from an enraged Ruffalo, instead leaving the horrors of its story to do the talking. McCarthy remains just outside the drama, looking in to see what he can find, and the results pack more of a punch than if he’d gone for cheap manipulation.

When it won, Spotlight's defeat of Fury Road and The Revenant seemed odd, but time has proven Spotlight was the right choice for the Best Picture statue after all.