Gladiator (2000)
d. Ridley Scott
Awards: 5
Nominations: 12

A slave in ancient Rome finds dignity and a reason to live in gladiatorial combat.

• in the same year, to date, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000), a Best Picture-nominated foreign-language film with the largest number of Academy Awards nominations (10)
• in the same year, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000), the first martial arts film, and the first (and only) Mandarin film to be nominated for Best Picture
• in the same year, the crime drama Traffic (2000), to date, the last Best Picture nominee to have been based on a TV movie or mini-series (UK's Channel 4 TV series Traffik)

A Beautiful Mind (2001)
d. Ron Howard
Awards: 4
Nominations: 8

Mental illness plunges a once-brilliant mathematician into devastating paranoia and schizophrenia.

• to date, the last biopic film to win Best Picture
• three consecutive Best Picture wins for the DreamWorks Studio; with this win, DreamWorks became the second studio to win three Best Pictures in a row (the first was UA - 1975-1977)
• this was the tenth consecutive year that Miramax had a Best Picture nominee (this year, it was In the Bedroom (2001) - a record for any studio
• the first year for a newly-created category - Best Animated Feature Film, won by Shrek (2001), the first-ever Oscar for an animated feature film

Chicago (2002)
d. Rob Marshall
Awards: 6
Nominations: 13

Bob Fosse's cold, glittering, cynical musical about death and showbiz.

• the first musical film to win Best Picture since 34 years later (Oliver! (1968)), and to date, the last one to win (or be nominated) for Best Picture
• Chicago tied the record set by Mary Poppins (1964) of 13 nominations for a musical
• in the same year, Best Picture nominee The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (2002) - only the third sequel to be nominated for Best Picture

The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003)
d. Peter Jackson
Awards: 11
Nominations: 11

The spectacular conclusion to J. R. R. Tolkien's epic fantasy trilogy. "The Journey Ends"

• the third of only three films to win 11 Academy Awards (including Best Picture) (the other two were Ben-Hur (1959) and Titanic (1997))
• the first - and only - film to win more than 10 awards (including Best Picture) and not receive an acting nomination; it was one of only ten films in all of Academy history that won Best Picture without receiving a single acting nomination - other notable examples were in 2008, 1995, 1987, and 1958
• the first - and only - fantasy film to win Best Picture
• the Best Picture winner with the longest title
• the Best Picture winner joined two other Best Picture winners that experienced clean sweeps - all three films won every award for which they were nominated (and none of the films were nominated for acting awards!) (also Gigi (1958) - 9 for 9, and The Last Emperor (1987) - 9 for 9)
• the second film trilogy in Oscar history (after Francis Ford Coppola's Godfather pictures in 1972, 1974, and 1990) to have all three of its movies nominated for Best Picture - and the only threequel to have its third installment win the top prize
• the film was the first movie with a credited female screenwriter(s) to win Best Picture since World War II - it was co-scripted by Fran Walsh and Philippa Boyens

Million Dollar Baby (2004)
d. Clint Eastwood
Awards: 4
Nominations: 7

A cranky, aging boxing trainer agrees to work with an underdog female boxer in this macho tearjerker.

• in six of the last ten years, the Best Picture winners had a central character who died at the end
• to date, the last Best Picture winner to be nominated for every major Academy Award (including Best Picture)
• in the same year, to date, The Aviator (2004), the last film to win the most Oscars (5) in its year, without winning Best Picture

Crash (2005)
d. Paul Haggis
Awards: 3
Nominations: 6

The lives of LA's rich and poor, smug and desperate, law abiding and criminal both intersect and collide.

• the first of only two Best Picture winners to be a film festival acquisition (the second was in 2009)
• the Best Picture winner won the fewest Oscars since Rocky (1976) (both won only 3 Oscars)
• the five low-budget Best Picture nominees fairly evenly split the major nominations - no film received more than 8 nominations; this was also the first time since 1947 that no picture won more than 3 Oscars
• for the first time in 49 years (since 1956) and only the third time in Oscar's 78-year history (it also occurred in 1952), six different films split the top six Oscars (Best Picture, Director, Actor, Actress, Supporting Actor, and Supporting Actress)
• in the same year, to date, Good Night, and Good Luck (2005), the last completely B/W film to be nominated for Best Picture since The Elephant Man (1980)

The Departed (2006)
d. Martin Scorsese
Awards: 4
Nominations: 5

A cop and a criminal go undercover and infiltrate each other's worlds in this crime thriller.

• the first - and only - remake of a foreign film to win Best Picture (it was a loosely-based remake of the action film Infernal Affairs (2002, HK) (aka Mou Gaan Dou, or Wu Jian Dao))
• in the same year, to date, Letters From Iwo Jima (2006) was the last foreign-language film (Japanese) to be nominated for Best Picture

No Country For Old Men (2007)
d. Joel and Ethan Coen
Awards: 4
Nominations: 8

A disillusioned, retiring sheriff tracks a sociopathic killer through modern West Texas.

• the most-recent Best Picture winner to have more than one credited director (Joel and Ethan Coen)
• the Coen Brothers were the third duo directing team to be nominated in Academy Awards history; it was also the first time a sibling team had been nominated in the category; the Coens became only the second pair of directors to win Best Director, after Jerome Robbins and Robert Wise for West Side Story (1961); the only other instance of dual nominations was for co-directors Warren Beatty and Buck Henry for Heaven Can Wait (1978)
• the third consecutive year in which the Best Picture-nominated films were not big-budget studio pictures; all five nominated films were made for budgets of $30 million or less, about a third of the cost for a normal studio production
• the winning Best Picture marked the fourth consecutive year in which a film set in modern times won the top prize - a first for the Oscars!

Slumdog Millionaire (2008)
d. Danny Boyle
Awards: 8
Nominations: 10

Game-show success fuels one man's escape from poverty in this Bollywood-tinged romantic drama.

• to date, the last Best Picture-winning film without any acting nominations; it was the 5th film in the past 50 years to win Best Picture without any acting nominations (this also occurred in 2003, 1995, 1987, and 1958)
• all five titles of the Best Picture-nominated films referred to the film's characters (this also occurred in 1964)
• the second-most winningest UK-produced Best Picture winner with 8 Oscars (tied with Gandhi (1982))
• the third of only three partly foreign language films (English/Hindi) to win Best Picture (the other two were in 1974 and 1987)
• in the same year, Doubt (2008) became the 4th film in Academy history to receive four acting nominations without a Best Picture nomination (this also occurred in 1936, 1948, and 1965)

The Hurt Locker (2009)
d. Kathryn Bigelow
Awards: 6
Nominations: 9

US Army ordnance disposal teams disarm IEDs placed by Iraqi guerrilla fighters.

• for the first time since 1943 (66 years earlier), the Academy decided to return to featuring an expanded field of nominees for Best Picture - there would now be ten films nominated for Best Picture. [From 1931 to 1943, the Oscars had between eight and 12 Best Picture nominees]
• the first - and only - Best Picture directed by a female
• the second of only two Best Picture winners to be a film festival acquisition (the first was in 2005)
• the lowest box-office gross of a Best Picture winner (after 1955), at $14.7 million at the time of its win
• the fifth consecutive R-rated Best Picture winner
• in the same year, Precious (2009) was the first - and only - Best Picture nominee directed and produced by an African-American (Lee Daniels)
• in the same year, Up (2009), the second of two animated films to be Best Picture-nominated (the previous nominee was Beauty and the Beast (1991)), and the first computer (or CG)-animated film to be Best Picture-nominated; also the first animated film to receive a Best Picture nomination since animated films received their own category in 2001
• in the same year, Avatar (2009), the first Best Picture nominee to be entirely filmed using 3-D technology
• it was rare that two science-fiction films were nominated for Best Picture in 2009 (although there were now 10 nominees): District 9 (2009) and Avatar (2009)