Every year, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences hosts the Oscars to celebrate the movies that are meant to be the best in cinema from a given year. And while Oscar voters aren’t always right, they certainly offer us a way to think about what the best movies from a given year actually were.
Of course, sometimes, the Oscars do know what they’re doing. If you need evidence, look no further than these three great movies, which are all available to stream on Peacock now. None of them walked away with Best Picture, but each of them did pretty well with the Academy regardless.
Shrek (2001)
A famously revolutionary animated film when it was first released, Shrek also had the honor of being the first film to win the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature. The film, which tells the story of an ogre who finds himself falling in love with a princess as he transports her back to her husband-to-be, is a subversion of many of the fairy tale tropes that Disney had become so closely associated with throughout its history.
Thanks to great voice performances from Mike Meyers, Eddie Murphy, and Cameron Diaz, Shrek was a tremendous success upon its release, both financially and with Oscar voters.
Promising Young Woman (2020)
Promising Young Woman was one of its most talked-about movies of 2020. The film, which was written and directed by Emerald Fennell (The Crown), tells the story of a young woman who intentionally puts herself in compromising positions so that she can shame the men who try to take advantage of her.
As the movie unfolds, we learn exactly why she does this, and follow the twists and turns that come with her relationship with a new, seemingly unproblematic man. Promising Young Woman was divisive when it was first released, but everyone agreed that Carey Mulligan proved, once and for all, why she’s one of our best working actresses.
Brokeback Mountain (2005)
The movie that famously lost out on Best Picture to Crash, Brokeback Mountain still walked away with three awards, including Best Director for Ang Lee. Telling the story of two cowboys who fall in love while tending sheep in the remotest parts of Montana, Brokeback Mountain is ultimately a tragedy, but before that, it’s one of the most beautiful love stories you’ll ever see.
Heath Ledger (a few years before he played the Joker in The Dark Knight) is absolutely magnetic as a quiet, reserved man who is scared of the ways he feels, and he’s matched by a much more explosive Jake Gyllenhaal. Brokeback Mountain may not have actually won Best Picture, but plenty of people would like to pretend it did.
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