The first few months of every year are a great time to catch up on Oscar-nominated films before the Academy Awards. But while you’re scrambling to see all the new movies, why not make some time for past winners, too? While there have certainly been some bad Oscar winners in the past, the Academy is fairly consistent with awarding the best movies.
If you’re a Peacock subscriber, you don’t have access to as many Oscar winners as some other platforms, but there are still options (and some 2025 Oscar hopefuls). To help you zero in on something worth your time, we’ve highlighted five great Oscar-winning movies to stream on Peacock to watch now.
Beetlejuice (1988)
71%Winner of the 1989 Academy Award for Best Makeup and Hair Styling, Beetlejuice got a sequel 35 years later in 2024. While Beetlejuice Beetlejuice might not earn much Oscar love, the original is well worth a watch, especially given how similar the cast is, even more than three decades later. Sure, the special effects don’t stand up nearly as well, but it’s impressive how well the new movie paid homage to its predecessor and the seamless return that Michael Keaton, Winona Ryder, and Catherine O’Hara make into their now older characters. In the original, a newly dead couple calls in the demon exorcist Beetlejuice to scare off a family that wants to buy their home, only to find the decision has disastrous consequences.
Promising Young Woman (2020)
72%Saltburn’s Emerald Fennell won Best Original Screenplay, and Carey Mulligan earned a Best Actress nomination for Promising Young Woman, a dark examination of potential derailed. Everybody said Cassie (Mulligan) was such a promising young woman until one mysterious night, she seemed directionless and unmotivated.
Nonetheless, she’s still bright, cunning, and leading a vindictive secret double life by night. But when she finally gets the chance to right the wrongs of the past, thanks to an unexpected encounter, she gets to work on a plan.
Men in Black (1997)
72%Yes, believe it or not, Men in Black is an Oscar-winning film. Another Best Makeup winner, MIB was also nominated for Best Art Direction and Best Music, but it was probably the massive box office return that turned it into a franchise with four blockbusters spanning more than 20 years. In the original (and by far best) movie, K (Tommy Lee Jones) is a veteran of Men in Black, an agency so secretive that almost nobody in the government knows it exists.
After the departure of his partner, K recruits an unconventional New York cop, J (Will Smith), to the agency, choosing him as his partner over Green Berets, Army Rangers, and Navy SEALs. Now, the odd couple must learn how to work together to stop an alien conspiracy to wreak havoc on the Earth.
Shrek (2001)
84%A runaway Best Animated Feature winner, Shrek has grown into one of DreamWorks Animation’s biggest franchises. The first movie is a true classic. In the Kingdom of Far Far Away, Lord Farquaad (John Lithgow) seeks to rid his domain of fairy tale creatures, banishing them to a swamp. Unfortunately, the swamp’s already occupied by an ogre called Shrek (Mike Myers).
To get the creatures off his land, Shrek cuts a deal with Farquaad: If he can retrieve the lovely Princess Fiona (Cameron Diaz) from the clutches of a fire-breathing dragon to be Farquaad’s wife, Farquaad will move the creatures. With the help of a talking donkey (Eddie Murphy), Shrek gets to work.
The Wolf of Wall Street (2013)
75%Finally, we’re bending the rules just a bit for the last entry because it was quite surprising that The Wolf of Wall Street didn’t earn a win in any of the five categories in which it was nominated. Leonardo DiCaprio delivers possibly his best performance ever as Jordan Belfort, a New York stockbroker who got rich on penny stocks and made a fortune defrauding investors.
Belfort did this while partying beyond the limits of imagination and refusing to cooperate with a securities fraud investigation into Wall Street. Martin Scorsese let all the actors in this one, from DiCaprio and Jonah Hill to a debuting Margot Robbie, just go completely bonkers, and it shows in the movie. It’s not unreasonable to suggest that DiCaprio finally got his Best Actor Oscar in 2016 for The Revenant because he was so egregiously snubbed for Wolf.
