We love to argue over the all the times the Oscars have gotten it wrong. For every memorable, iconic Best Picture winner, there are two trophy-winning movies that have either been forgotten or just seem a little embarrassing in retrospect (Crash being the enduring recent example).

But sometimes, the Academy voters get it exactly right They’ve been at it for 95 years after all; they’ve had plenty of time to make enduring choices, if only by chance. As fun as it is to slag their bad choices, we’re here today to recognize awards that truly hold up, and remind ourselves us of great movies we might actually want to, you know, actually watch again.

The screenplay so good, the movie about the screenplay (Mank) earned 10 Oscar nominations itself. Mankiewicz and Welles took a much-deserved prize, which was impossibly Citizen Kane’s sole Oscar win. We can keep debating who deserves the credit for the script without casting doubt on its significance.

Joan Crawford won exactly one Oscar in her long career. By 1945, she was already in comeback mode, and Mildred Pierce was the reinvention that proved that she wasn’t going to just fade away. It’s likely her best, and probably most iconic performance, at least until Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?

It might have felt like stunt casting, which is rarely a good idea, but non-actor Harold Russell gives an impressively understated performance in The Best Years of Our Lives as Homer Parish, a returning WWII veteran struggling following the amputation of both of his hands—just as Russell himself had. His win was entirely deserved, and also deeply meaningful.

Whenever someone mimics the cackling, cantankerous old prospector-type character, they’re paying homage to Walter Huston. The actor had very little interest in this role (seeing himself as more of a leading-man type), but his son John (the director) had some pull in bringing him onboard. Unlike those later parodies, Huston invests his character with heart and humanity, even while doing an entirely unhinged little jig.

The expressionist photography, in beautiful black and white; those weird and disorienting Dutch angles…The Third Man is a visual feast, and that’s all down to Krasker, who never did better work than he did here. Few Cinematographers ever have.

West Side Story is a great musical with elements that don’t hold up terribly well today. (Natalie Wood is great in other movies, but a convincing Puerto Rican immigrant she is not). Rita Moreno’s performance is not one of them—she steals every single scene she’s in. What’s less great is that it took 60 years for another Latina actress to take home an Oscar (and for the same role no less).

The Academy has always struggled with horror movies, rarely rewarding anything that smells like a genre picture. Ruth Gordon’s performance in Rosemary’s Baby is an exception; her Minnie Castavet starts off as a tease—a stock nosy neighbor character—only offering hints of more sinister intentions that will soon come horrifically to the fore. She’s funny and deeply creepy by turns.

I love a cornball ballad as much as the next middle-aged white person, but the history of Oscar’s Best Original Song category up to the modern day is positively lousy with ‘em: “The Morning After,” “The Way We Were,” “You Light Up My Life,” “Up Where We Belong,” “My Heart Will Go On,” etc. Here, we get a thoroughly non-generic bit of Blaxploitation-era funk from Isaac Hayes that’s also entirely inseparable from the film to which it’s attached. Just try thinking of Shaft the movie without humming it.

I’m not sure it’s his absolute best performance (that’s probably in The Conversation), but Popeye Doyle is certainly the most memorable character brought to life by one of our most accomplished (and still living!) actors.

The Godfather looms large in the pantheon of 1970s cinema, and it’s one of our finest films full stop. The sequel is better, using everything we learned about these characters in the first installment to pull them deeper into the American tragedy of the wildly successful but rarely happy Corleone family. One of only two sequels to have ever won Best Picture, The Godfather, Part II might have been passed over on that basis, but the Academy was smarter than that—at least this time. Some would argue that the way to play a villain is to invest them with humanity and empathy, which is all well and good, but Louise Fletcher earned an Oscar for investing Nurse Ratched with believability: We believe she is one of the worst villains in film history, and we love to hate her for it.

The movie that catapulted Barbara Kopple to the top ranks of American documentary filmmakers is also a gritty, inspiring, and harrowing look at the stakes (up to, and including murder) involved when workers stand up for their rights. It’s also a portrait of righteous ferocity in a bygone era, when blue-collar workers, united, stood and fought for their rights rather than merely begging for scraps.

Longtime Scorsese collaborator Schoonmaker isn’t quite the household name the iconic director is, but, without her work editing his films, it’s entirely possible we wouldn’t be that familiar with his name, either. Her early-career win for Raging Bull cemented her place in the pantheon and still represents some of her most visceral, impressive work.

Sometimes the lines get blurred, but here, Joe Pesci is practically the platonic ideal of a Best Supporting Actor. He’s clearly not the main character, but a memorable, quotable presence, providing unlikely comic relief and just a few hints of pathos.

Try to imagine modern pop culture without Marge Gunderson’s impressions. Though sometimes painted as a caricature, Frances McDormand plays Marge as a human being with a recognizable, if heightened, mode of speaking and acting. In the world of the Coen brothers, she’s the most reasonable person you’ll find.

Perhaps the best film from a truly great director, the only problem with Pedro Almodóvar’s film’s win is that it should have been up for an overall Best Picture. Certainly it holds up better than the 1999 winner, American Beauty.

It’s…interesting that the only Black Best Actress in the history of the Oscars, past or present (including this year, when there are no Black women among the nominees) is a portrait of a woman grief-stricken, harried, and victimized. None of that detracts from the triumph of Berry’s performance; she plays the character as a raw nerve, even as she begins to demand something more of a life that’s been needlessly cruel to her at every turn.

A gorgeous, poetic movie that felt like it kicked off a new era for the Academy, Moonlight only gets better with age (which can’t be said about many an Oscar-winning film). It’s worth remembering as much more than just the movie that almost didn’t get awarded its rightful Oscar.

Get Out does absolutely everything a movie should do, and it’s all right there on the page: it’s funny and thrilling, with well-drawn characters and an incredibly sharp and well-earned sense of satire. It should have won Best Picture (no sleight to Guillermo del Toro’s The Shape of Water, also quite good)—but one of the most important cultural touchstones of the past decade more than deserved this award, at least.

Is Parasite a satire? A social drama? A horror movie?

Yes? Bong Joon-ho’s story of the members of a poor family who wheedle their ways into the household of some rich people is both wildly entertaining and as sharp as they come, and probably one of Oscar’s smartest Best Picture choices ever. It’s a film that proves that, even as American cinema sags under the pressures of our four-quadrant blockbuster era, there are still movies with bite to be found if you don’t mind subtitles.

This week, I am heading to Hollywood for my 20th Oscars. To put it crassly, I am now only one behind Meryl Streep.

Johnny Carson, who hosted the ceremony five times, perfectly described the Academy Awards as “two hours of sparkling entertainment spread out over a four-hour show”.

There is so much truth in that, but The Oscars are still a gold head and shoulders above any other awards show – the only one where everybody turns up. Even Eminem. Eventually.

A no-show in 2003 when Lose Yourself won best original song (he was looking after his daughter and slept through the whole thing), there he was in 2020 with a surprise performance of his 8 Mile anthem on the rather contrived 17th anniversary of its win.

No matter how cool or counter-cultural the figure, in the end they all want to go.

Part of the beauty of covering the Oscars is the time difference. UK audiences wake up on a Monday morning, while over in LA it is still Sunday evening, and the winners are heading into the uber-A-list Vanity Fair party, holding Oscars in their hands.

Over the years, I have broadcast as Danny Boyle danced for joy with the cast of Slumdog Millionaire, congratulated Kate Winslet on no longer being the “Colin Montgomerie of the Oscars” after winning for The Reader, following five defeats in a row, and, in 2011, I witnessed a truly extraordinary encounter involving GMTV’s reporter and Tom Hanks. Media caption,

Oscars 2023: The best picture contenders in 40 seconds

She was mid-interview with him, live on TV, when Colin Firth started to walk by, brandishing his Oscar for The King’s Speech. Her decision? Simply to push Tom Hanks away mid-sentence and grab Firth.

Hanks’ response was magnificent. He spent the whole of Firth’s interview walking back and forth, in shot directly behind him, throwing his hands up in the air in pretend fury, while mouthing his mock incredulity at the camera.

Then in 2017, there was the excitement of being live on air into Dotun Adebayo’s Radio 5 Live show, at the exact moment (05:08), when La La Land was wrongly read out as the best picture winner.

Listening back, what is extraordinary is that it takes 2 mins 27 secs for the mistake to be corrected.

I thought that would never be beaten as the biggest Oscars story I would cover, but I was wrong. As wrong as a G.I. Jane joke about Jada Pinkett Smith.

That is what prompted Will Smith to attack Chris Rock on stage at last year’s ceremony, with “the slap heard around the world”.

I commentated on Radio 5 Live Breakfast as Smith arrived at Vanity Fair, posing for pictures with his family, for a full five minutes. On air I dubbed the incident “Men in Thwack”, a name which totally failed to catch on.

Smith is currently banned from attending the Oscars until 2033, by which time Clint Eastwood will be 102. That year could be my 30th Oscars. Unlikely.

So now seemed as good a time as any to reveal the five nominees in my newly made-up category: best Oscars story.

1. ‘Bono! Bono! Bono!’ (2014)

On 2 March 2014, the Russian President Vladimir Putin received unanimous approval from the country’s parliament to send troops into Crimea.

The following day it was me, not that event, which was the subject of an editorial in the Daily Telegraph.

The reason? I had shouted “Bono” a lot, live on Radio 4’s Today programme. I have just listened back, with a stopwatch. There were 7 Bonos in eighteen seconds.

U2’s frontman had been nominated in best original song for the Nelson Mandela biopic, Long Walk to Freedom.

Today’s presenter, Jim Naughtie, threw live to me in LA, where the red carpet was a melee of movie stars.

I had just started my analysis about how Gravity had won the most awards, but 12 Years A Slave was best picture, when Bono arrived. And I went for it. Again and again.

“Even 24 hours later, many listeners’ toes remain stubbornly curled,” The Daily Telegraph’s editorial began.

It went onto explain how my “cries of ‘Bono!’ had no more effect than Alan Partridge shouting after his presumed friend Dan,” and made the fair point that, “the rule seems to be that six times or more is enough to open the gates of the realm of madness.”

The thing that people forget is Bono did come back. Unfortunately, all he said was, ‘I don’t want to talk about what Nelson Mandela meant to me.” Not an answer worth seven shouts of anyone’s name.

2. Sandra Bullock wins Oscar and Razzie (2010)

For many of my years reporting on The Oscars, the night before the ceremony was all about the Razzies. These awards “honour” the very worst films of the year and used to be presented during a live show, which all the “winners” avoided.

In 2010 Sandra Bullock managed what no one had ever done; to win a Razzie and an Oscar on consecutive days.

There I was in a local community theatre in LA, watching film geeks laugh as they proclaimed her worst actress for All About Steve, a supposed romantic comedy, in which she played a disco-boot-wearing crossword compiler, obsessed with a local TV reporter (played by a pre-fame Bradley Cooper), with whom she ends up trapped down a mine. It is worse than it sounds.

The huge surprise was that she turned up to collect her Razzie, receiving a standing ovation from the very people who had voted for her awfulness.

Bullock’s acceptance speech was hilarious: “They said that no-one went to see this film, but I know there are over 700 members here. And if I’ve won, that means the majority have to have voted for it, so that means 352 have seen it.”

Bullock then wheeled on a cart, full of All About Steve DVDs and announced that she was going to give one to each person there.

“Thank you,” came a shout from the audience.

“You say that now…” she replied with superb comic timing, something badly missing in the film.

The following night she won best actress for The Blind Side. When I spoke to her afterwards, I wanted to bring up the unique double without being rude, so opted for: “How close will you keep your Oscar to your Razzie?”

Her answer was class: “Right next to each other. It’s all about the balance.”

3. Steve Guttenberg and The Academy (2001)

I covered my first Oscars for Channel 4’s The Big Breakfast, way back in 2001, the year Gladiator was named best picture. The presenter Melanie Sykes was dispatched to the Vanity Fair party, where she ended up in a dispute with Julia Roberts, after touching her best actress Oscar for Erin Brockovich.

My job was to go to the Oscar party of celebrity chef Wolfgang Puck. The guestlist was not quite as A-list, so few of my interviews made it to air.

One that did was with the 80s star, Steve Guttenberg. When he arrived, I asked him where he had watched the ceremony.

“I was there at the Shrine Auditorium,” he replied.

Failing to hide my surprise I asked: “How did you get a ticket?”

“I’m a member of the Academy,” he explained.

My reflex response: “What? The Police Academy?”

Even now I wince when thinking about this and did not bring it up when I next interviewed him, in 2008 when he was playing Cinderella’s father Baron Hardup in the Bromley pantomime.

4. Vomity Fair (2012)

I have a simple rule for when on work trips; do not eat shellfish. In 2012 I broke that rule and never will again.

The day before the Oscars, one of my colleagues hit a milestone birthday and to celebrate, we went to a famous Hollywood restaurant where Charlie Chaplin, Marilyn Monroe and Humphrey Bogart used to frequent.

To my horror, the incredibly kind cameraman Travis, had organised a huge plate of oysters to start the celebrations. One by one people turned them down and I felt a rising sense of panic. I literally took one for the team and started to eat. They were delicious. What happened 24 hours later, less so.

There I was standing on the red carpet of the Vanity Fair party, when things started to feel very, very wrong. To put it delicately, Vanity Fair became Vomity Fair. The red carpet went all the colours of the rainbow. It is the only time I’ve seen a squeegee mop at The Oscars.

5. Spike Lee’s ‘cup of tea’ (2019)

In 2019, Spike Lee’s BlacKkKlansman was nominated for best picture. Word spread that when Green Book was announced as the winner, the veteran director had turned his back and left the auditorium in protest.

About 90 minutes later he arrived at Vanity Fair and we tried to get to the bottom of what had happened.

“Green Book seems very similar to Driving Miss Daisy. They just changed the driving positions,” was as far as he would go, before I tried once more.

“Is there something about Green Book that offends you?” I asked.

“Offends?” he replied, his eyes suddenly sparkling, knowing he’d come up with something good.

“Are you British?” he asked me.

“Are you British?” he asked the BBC’s Dan Johnson who was next to me. We confirmed we both were.

“Then let me give you a British answer,” he continued.

“It wasn’t my cup of tea.”

Lee then let out the most marvellous cackling laugh and hopped around in a circle of self-delight, coming back to our microphones once more to repeat, “not my cup of tea!” whilst waggling a finger, before bouncing off altogether, his work done.

By the next day, T-shirts with his quote were on sale and Trevor Noah chose it as his Moment of Zen on The Daily Show.

The Oscars are not everyone’s cup of tea, but come Monday, why not make yourself one, sit back and enjoy the mayhem.

Colin Paterson will be live from the red carpet at the Vanity Fair Oscars Party on both BBC Breakfast and Radio 5 Live Breakfast, Monday 13 March. He will be shouting. A lot.