The movies that SHOULD have won the Best Picture Oscar every year – according to the stats

Family drama Ordinary People, directed by Robert Redford, actually took the top prize in a year when nominees also included Scorsese's Raging Bull, David Lynch's Elephant Man and Polanski's Tess. But Michael Apted's The Coal Miner's Daughter, a biopic of country singer Loretta Lynn, actually tops the lot, scoring a perfect 100%.

The award went to the historical drama Chariots of Fire, but of the nominees, the crime romance Atlantic City starring Burt Reynolds and Susan Sarandon actually scores the highest. Even higher than Raiders of the Lost Ark, which also got a nod.

Epic biopic Gandhi took the gong, but Spielberg's tale of a boy and an alien is the best-loved of the nominees, beating Missing, Tootsie and The Verdict too.

Albert Finney stars in this drama based on a play about an actor's personal assistant. It scores a perfect 100% but lost out to Shirley MacLaine's Terms Of Endearment.

Amadeus took the award, but this drama starring Sally Field and Danny Glover pips in by one point when it comes to the RT rating. Sally Field bagged the Best Actress Oscar for her turn as a widow with two kids trying to run a farm in '30s Texas.

Winner Out of Africa actually got the lowest rating of this year's five nominees. Harrison Ford's unusual thriller Witness set in the Amish community was the best-loved — and it holds up well today.

Best Picture winner Platoon is a very fine film, but it can't top the 100% perfection of James Ivory's gorgeous period romance starring Helena Bonham Carter and Julian Sands.

And the award should have gone to... this very likeable comedy-drama about rival TV news reporters starring Holly Hunter, William Hurt and Albert Brooks. Instead, it went to Bertolucci's historical epic The Last Emperor.

This sumptuous period drama of romantic manipulations was pipped to the prize by Rain Man. Both are good, but we prefer the delicious cruelty of John Malkovich and Glenn Close in Stephen Frears's movie.

Daniel Day-Lewis won the first of his three Best Actor Oscars for his portrayal of artist Christie Brown, who suffered from severe cerebral palsy. But on the night, Driving Miss Daisy took the top spot.

There is no way Best Picture winner Dances with Wolves is a superior movie to Scorsese's Goodfellas. The Academy definitely dropped the ball on this one.

The Academy gets it right! The critical consensus agrees that this was definitely the best of the nominees, which also included JFK and the animated Beauty and the Beast.

It was a very close one, but Rotten Tomatoes rates Neil Jordan's surprising crime drama one percent higher than the actual winner, Clint Eastwood's Unforgiven.

The Academy nails it! Spielberg's moving WWII biopic won, and quite rightly too. Technically, fellow nominee The Remains of the Day has an equal Rotten Tomatoes score, but Schindler List's was the right choice.

Going by the numbers alone, this very good (but hardly iconic) drama about quiz show fixing in the '50s should have taken the top prize instead of Forrest Gump. However, the other nominees were Four Weddings and a Funeral, Pulp Fiction and The Shawshank Redemption — not rated quite as high, but all a better choice than Gump.

Braveheart took the top prize, but Ang Lee's Jane Austen adaptation was way more popular with critics.

We can perhaps understand why the Academy went for austere romance The English Patient over Mike Leigh's gritty Brit drama, but the critics didn't concur, giving Secrets & Lies the highest score of the nominees.

Titanic won a boatload of awards this year, including Best Picture, but Curtis Hanson's slick crime noir got more love from the critics, scoring an impressive 99%.

To be fair, Spielberg's visceral war movie scores the same as the actual Best Picture winner Shakespeare in Love, but we prefer Private Ryan, so we're giving it the edge.

American Beauty was the winner this year, but Michael Mann's tense true-life thriller about a chemist who comes under threat when he exposes the big tobacco companies was the better-rated film critically.