Oscar Best Picture

1960 · Billy Wilder · 125 min · Comedy, Drama, Romance

The Apartment is Billy Wilder's sharpest balancing act, a film that manages to be wickedly funny about corporate sleaze while also being deeply moving about loneliness and self-respect. Jack Lemmon and Shirley MacLaine give two of the finest performances of their careers, and Wilder's screenplay with I.A.L. Diamond remains one of Hollywood's best. The tonal shifts will challenge some viewers, but the film's willingness to take its characters seriously, even when the material is comic, is exactly what elevates it above standard romantic comedy.

2020 · Chloe Zhao · 108 min · Drama

Nomadland is a quiet, devastating film about grief, freedom, and the gap between the American dream and American reality. Frances McDormand delivers one of the most stripped-down performances of her career, and Chloe Zhao's direction blends fiction and documentary with such seamlessness that the line between the two disappears entirely. It's not a fast film or an easy one, but its images and its people stay with you long after the credits roll.

1977 · Woody Allen · 93 min · Comedy, Romance

Annie Hall changed what a romantic comedy could be, and its influence on the genre is hard to overstate. Diane Keaton's performance remains a high point of American screen comedy, and the film's structural inventiveness still feels fresh decades later. Alvy Singer's self-absorption limits the emotional range, and some of the cultural references have faded. But as a portrait of how relationships fall apart despite the best intentions of the people in them, it still finds the nerve.