It's a topic that never gets old—Oscar's screw-ups. The times the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences doled out little gold-plated men to the undeserving, the mediocre, and the just plain wrong. If you're the sort of person who likes to get worked up about that sort of thing, there's plenty to get worked up about.

Some of the more storied controversies are not so cut and dried. Sure, it stinks that Citizen Kane didn't get the 1941 Best Picture prize, but breathes there a man with a heart so dead that he'll tell you How Green Was My Valley, that year's winner, is objectively bad? Similarly, the varied denials of director Martin Scorsese and his works—specifically Raging Bull and GoodFellas —rankle, but there are masses out there carrying the very strong conviction that Ordinary People and Dances With Wolves—Best Picture winners that "robbed" Scorsese's films in 1980 and 1990, respectively—are fine and wonderful and deserving.

What we've tried to compile here are lists that everyone can agree on. No, not really. Actually, more like the opposite. These are Premiere's picks of the Academy's biggest Best Picture (as the category has been known since 1962) gaffes countered by ten instances in which, for our money, the voters got it right. All of the best still have highly resonant qualities that may not literally transcend time, but at least hold us intimately to the times they depict. Movies you can go back to again and again, as opposed to those which should be approached with extreme caution. —Glenn Kenny