Best Picture Winners 2000 - 2004

The count for the first century of Academy is 40 decent picks out of 70 (and a few really good choices.)

2000 - Technically, the last winner of the 20th century was Gladiator. It's a decent choice, it was nice to see a picture directed by Ridley Scott (of Blade Runner and Alien fame) have a film win best picture. I like nominee Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon better, but it was amazing to have foreign language film be nominated - no way it would win. Nominee Taffic is also a good film, better than nominee Erin Brockovich. Chocolat didn't deserve to be nominated, but it was while the best film made that year, Christopher Nolan's Memento was not.

2001 - Most of the nominees this year I really didn't care for: Gosford Park, In The Bedroom, Moulin Rouge!... The winner, A Beautiful Mind is okay. But the best film nominated was Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring (the Academy would try to atone for its mistake a couple of years later.

2002 - Another collection of not very good film nominees - Gangs of New York and The Hours and even the winner, Chicago. Nominees Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers or The Pianist would have been better choices.

2003 - Finally one of the Lord of the Rings films won Best Picture, but Return of the King is the worst of the trilogy. The film had an external ending or multiple endings. Better choices for winner this year would have been nominees Lost in Translation or Master and Commander, but I guess it's an acceptable choice if you see the Oscar recognizing the whole trilogy. Nominees Seabiscuit and Mystic River were lesser films.

2004 - I don't like the winner of Best Picture this year, Million Dollar Baby, Clint Eastwood's euthanasia track. The other nominees are okay: The Aviator, Finding Neverland, Ray and Sideways. But the best films made that year are the kind the Academy rarely acknowledges, Spiderman II and even better The Incredibles.

Current total: 43 out of 76 are decent choices.