- Directors: Mervyn LeRoy, Michael Curtiz
- IMDb user rating: 6.3
- Runtime: 141 minutes

This historical epic takes place in 18th-century Italy and follows the exploits of its titular hero (Fredric March). It stars screen legend Olivia de Havilland as a love interest in one of her earliest major roles. Despite winning four Oscars, The New York Times found the film to have wasted its cast on "a pointless script and unimaginative direction."

- Director: Lowell Sherman
- IMDb user rating: 6.3
- Runtime: 66 minutes

Mae West delivers a star-making performance as barroom singer Lady Lou in this pre-Hays Code romantic dramedy. It was adapted from West's stage play "Diamond Lil," in which she similarly dispensed her languid brand of sharp wit. The film also features one of the earliest performances by Cary Grant as one of Lou's potential suitors. With a sole Oscar nomination for Best Picture, it lost out to the war drama "Cavalcade."

- Director: John Ford
- IMDb user rating: 6.2
- Runtime: 108 minutes

John Ford's adaptation of Sinclair Lewis' Pulitzer Prize-winning novel tells the story of Dr. Martin Arrowsmith (Ronald Colman), who, enlisted to help fight a bubonic plague outbreak, abandons protocol in order to save as many lives as possible. The film was nominated for four Oscars, winning none.

- Director: Jean Negulesco
- IMDb user rating: 6.2
- Runtime: 102 minutes

While staying together in Italy, three American women (Dorothy McGuire, Jean Peters, and Maggie McNamara) undergo separate romantic journeys in this visually sumptuous dramedy. It's one of two film adaptations based on the same source novel, the other being 1964's "The Pleasure Seekers." Frank Sinatra performed the movie's Oscar-winning title song.

- Director: Richard Fleischer
- IMDb user rating: 6.2
- Runtime: 152 minutes

This musical comedy was beset by production problems and controversies before arriving in theaters, where it became a bomb of epic proportions. Thanks to an aggressive campaign from Fox Studios, it scored nine Oscar nominations despite its many flaws. It won Oscars for Best Special Effects and Best Original Song.

- Director: Frank Lloyd
- IMDb user rating: 5.8
- Runtime: 112 minutes

This pre-Code drama spans multiple decades and centers on two British families from starkly different economic backgrounds. Despite high critical marks for production value, to this day it has failed to find a welcoming audience. It won three Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director.

- Director: Wesley Ruggles
- IMDb user rating: 5.8
- Runtime: 123 minutes

This epic adventure from RKO Studios was one of the most expensive films ever made at the time of its release and a huge box office success to boot. It was also the only Western to win Best Picture at the Oscars until "Dances with Wolves" took home the trophy at the 1991 Oscars. Based on an Edna Ferber novel, the film finds numerous people converging on an Oklahoma boomtown in the late 19th century.

- Directors: Charles Reisner, Christy Cabanne, Norman Houston
- IMDb user rating: 5.7
- Runtime: 130 minutes

There were no official nominees at the second Academy Awards in 1930, prompting the Academy to retroactively put this plotless musical comedy in the running for Best Picture. As the title might suggest, the film is little more than a compendium of song-and-dance numbers from MGM's stable of stars such as Joan Crawford, Norma Shearer, Stan Laurel, and Oliver Hardy.

- Director: Harry Beaumont
- IMDb user rating: 5.5
- Runtime: 100 minutes

The second-ever Academy Award for Best Picture went to Hollywood's first all-talking musical, which was also alternately released as a silent film. The story follows two sisters (Bessie Love and Anita Page) as they pursue their Broadway dreams, getting romantically entangled along the way. "It is questionable whether it would not have been wiser to leave some of the voices to the imagination," wrote critic Mordaunt Hall for The New York Times.

- Directors: Harry Beaumont
- IMDb user rating: 5.4
- Runtime: 100 minutes

Jacques Audiard's audacious movie musical stars Karla Sofía Gascón as the titular Emilia Pérez, a former drug lord who creates a new life for herself after she undergoes gender-affirming surgery and assumes a different identity. LGBTQ+ critics took umbrage with the film's trans representation, while recently unearthed offensive tweets from Gascón added another element of controversy. "Emilia Pérez" earned an impressive 13 Oscar nominations, but it only picked up the two awards it was largely favored to win, Best Supporting Actress for Zoe Saldaña and Best Original Song for "El Mal." Gascón also had to endure being the predictable target of host Conan O'Brien's jokes during the ceremony's opening monologue.

Additional writing by Louis Peitzman.