Oscars: 10 Best Pictures That Actually Were The Best

2. No Country For Old Men - 2008

Virtually every film written and directed by Joel and Ethan Coen received glowing critical notices, but it took until their 12th movie, this violent Cormac McCarthy adaptation, for them to be given Hollywood's biggest prize. The Coens won an impressive hat trick of Best Picture, Director and Screenplay (as well as actor Javier Bardem winning for his role as psycho killer Anton Chigurh), brilliantly capturing the characters, landscapes and dark heart of McCarthy's neo-western storytelling. Other nominees: That year's Oscar race was billed as a straight fight between two darkly violent sort-of-westerns as No Country narrowly, and rightly, won the vote from Paul Thomas Anderson's oil drama There Will Be Blood. Prestigious British literature adaptation Atonement and quirky pregnancy comedy-drama Juno were good films and not without their admirers, but lacked the overall genius of the Coens. Other deserving contenders: A third revisionist western, the beautifully shot Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, was strangely overlooked when that was the popular genre of the moment. David Fincher's true life serial killer drama Zodiac was a far better film than his next, Benjamin Button, which gained much more Oscar attention. Gothic musical Sweeney Todd, probably the last great Tim Burton film, won more attention at the Golden Globes. France, meanwhile, gave us quality contenders like The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, and Persepolis, but we'd have to wait another four years for a French winner.