Ranking What Was Really The Best Film Of Every Year 1990-2021

Actually won: No Country For Old Men.

By the time No Country For Old Men was released to universal acclaim, the Coen Brothers should really have already had one or two Best Pictures to their name. Even so, No Country is their finest achievement, and one of the Academy's best winners.

Granted, it faced incredibly tough competition since it went up against Paul Thomas Anderson's There Will Be Blood, but due to its more focussed script and impressive use of ambiguity, No Country had to come out on top.

A tense exploration of lawlessness, morality, memory and crime, there are few modern thrillers that can claim to be as effective as the Coen Brothers' masterpiece.