10 classic films to pair with the 2022 Best Picture nominees

EW's countdown to the 2022 Oscars has everything you're looking for, from our expert predictions and in-depth Awardist interviews with this year's nominees to nostalgia and our takes on the movies and actors we wish had gotten more Oscars love. You can check it all out at The Awardist.

Whether you were swept away by the vistas of The Power of the Dog, moved by the grief in Drive My Car, or caught up in the noir twists and turns of Nightmare Alley, there was no shortage of cinematic marvels to fall in love with in 2021.

But some would say there's nothing new under the sun, and history likes to repeat itself. No matter which of the 10 nominees was your favorite, there's a similar classic out there ripe for re-visiting. Here are 10 great pairings to watch based on the Best Picture bracket.

01 of 10

If you liked Belfast, watch How Green Was My Valley (1941)

Oscar Watch This Like That — Rob Youngson / Focus Features; Everett Collection

How Green Was My Valley is perhaps most famous for defeating Citizen Kane for Best Picture, and there are likely those who would see a Belfast win as equally ignominious. But both Belfast and How Green Was My Valley are deeply felt portraits of a family striving to hold itself together in the midst of tragedy and crisis. Both films are distinctly Celtic stories — Belfast in Northern Ireland and How Green Was My Valley in Wales — that use the personal impact on a single family to explore a moment of great change. In Belfast, it's the nationalist fighting known as the Troubles that threatens its central family. How Green Was My Valley gives us the Morgans, who make their living in the Welsh coalfields. As stagnant wages, a strike, and violence plague their small town, they're forced to consider what existence outside their beloved valley might look like, just as Belfast's family must also ponder relocation for the sake of a better life.

02 of 10

If you liked CODA, watch Mr. Holland's Opus (1995)

By and large, Hollywood has ignored the deaf community, or chosen to focus on limited narratives in stories like The Miracle Worker. CODA is unique in so many ways, from its use of deaf performers to its burned-in closed captions. But at its heart, it's a story about a family striving to connect and be there for each other against all odds, as well as a tale about music's power to transform and transcend. Mr. Holland's Opus focuses on hearing music teacher and composer Glenn Holland (Richard Dreyfuss), who struggles to connect with his deaf son over his disappointment that he can't share his love of music with him. But as Holland wrestles between his dedication to his students and his family, he eventually realizes his mistakes, finding ways to communicate with his son and share his music in a way that forges a new, more powerful bond. Both CODA and Mr. Holland's Opus celebrate music and its role in parent-child bonds, regardless of how one hears the notes.

03 of 10

If you liked Don't Look Up, watch Dr. Strangelove or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964)

Pitch-black satire can be a hard sell, but the Academy often eats it up. Adam McKay's Don't Look Up does for climate change and the contemporary cadre of science deniers what Stanley Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove did for the Cold War, nuclear conflict, and warmongering. Both films feature a dizzying array of notable actors in an ensemble cast, though Strangelove has the bizarre and delightful twist of Peter Sellers pulling triple duty as a British RAF officer, the President of the United States, and the title character. Kubrick's film was exceedingly ahead of its time, its bleak outlook an unlikely subject for a comedy. McKay picks up on that nihilistic approach, managing to wring laughs from a movie that is also about the end of the world wrought by humanity's own stupidity and narcissism.

04 of 10

If you liked Drive My Car, watch Vanya on 42nd Street (1994)

Drive My Car and Vanya on 42nd St. — Everett Collection; Laura Pels/Mayfair/Kobal/Shutterstock

Drive My Car is such a unique entity, it nearly defies pairing, but what would one expect from a film based on a Haruki Murakami story? It follows Kafuku (Hidetoshi Nishijima), a stage director, as he grapples with prolonged grief and guilt over the death of his wife while working on a multilingual production of Anton Chekhov's Uncle Vanya, which he was also starring in at the time of her passing. Chekhov is a playwright whose sparse writing reaches profound depths about universal subjects like grief, heartache, and existential dread. Kafuku uses the play — and his late wife's tape recordings of its dialogue — to come to terms with his grief. Louis Malle's Vanya on 42^nd Street pushes that notion even further, digging into the process of staging Chekhov and the lessons to be gleaned from the intimacy of the work. Wallace Shawn and Julianne Moore star as Vanya and Yelena, but the movie is simply a series of three years' worth of performance workshops in which actors come together to understand Uncle Vanya. The vibrancy and vitality of Chekhov's work and the lessons he still has to offer us as a dramatist shine through in both films.

05 of 10

If you liked Dune, watch Lawrence of Arabia (1962)

One's natural inclination might be to pair Denis Villeneuve's space opera with another sci-fi epic, but Dune arguably shares more with Lawrence of Arabia in its filmmaking than any Star Wars or Star Trek entry. The David Lean historical drama is based on the life of T.E. Lawrence (Peter O'Toole) and centers on his experiences in the Ottoman Empire during World War I. The sand-swept vistas of Hejaz and Syria that make up the backdrop for Lawrence's struggles share striking parallels with the sandy spice planet of Arrakis—as do the narratives' focus on personal awakening, caught between heritage and desert peoples they embed themselves with. Both films posit their heroes as messianic figures in the midst of feudal warfare and civil upheaval with implications that stretch far beyond their immediate world (even if they also both embody the "white savior" trope).

06 of 10

If you liked King Richard, watch A Raisin in the Sun (1961)

Director Reinaldo Marcus Green has cited sports classics such as Rocky and Million Dollar Baby as inspirations for his Oscar-nominated film about the Williams sisters and their driven coach-parents, and certainly, that kind of storytelling is present here. But the heart of King Richard is a story of Black excellence and a family fighting to put their values first and succeed in the face of extreme adversity and systemic racism. While the Younger family in A Raisin in the Sun is more focused on building a better life through education and housing, the themes of striving for opportunity, determination, and the power of raw grit and talent make for a compelling through-line. The Williams and the Younger families may be separated by several decades, but the impact of racism — the notion that they have to work twice as hard to get half as far — persists throughout both films. Each are resounding repudiations of accepting things as they are.

07 of 10

If you liked Licorice Pizza, watch American Graffiti (1973)

In the same way that Licorice Pizza encapsulates Paul Thomas Anderson's nostalgia for the San Fernando Valley of the 1970s, George Lucas' American Graffiti invokes that for early 1960s car and rock'n'roll culture. Both films are built on a series of vignettes — Licorice Pizza across the summer and fall of 1973, American Graffiti over a single night at the end of summer 1962 – as its youthful protagonists wrestle with navigating the future of childhood friendships, and the confusion of desire and first love. The nostalgia extends to every inch of both films, from their killer soundtracks with one incredible needle drop after the next, to the eateries and hints at real-life figures re-imagined for this fictional narrative. Whether it's the 1960s, '70s, or today, Licorice Pizza and American Graffiti both have a lot to say about the bittersweet pangs of growing up and just what it means to come of age.

08 of 10

If you liked Nightmare Alley, watch Freaks (1932)

A more obvious pairing here might be the original 1947 adaptation of Nightmare Akkey starring Tyrone Power, and it's a thrill all on its own. But Guillermo del Toro's new take on this tale of con artists, carnies, and destiny shares more with this pre-Code horror film. Set amongst a carnival sideshow like the one that bookends Nightmare Alley, Freaks is also a tale of the monstrosity that lurks inside the most unexpected places. Just as Nightmare Alley's Stan (Bradley Cooper) schemes and cheats to get ahead, Freaks' conniving Cleopatra (Olga Baclanova) seeks to abuse the sideshow performers she disdains and subvert love and desire to gain an inheritance. But both Stan and Cleopatra are met with horrific fates, exposing the grotesque at the core of their being.

09 of 10

If you liked The Power of the Dog, watch Hud (1963)

Oscar Watch This Like That Power of the Dog and Hud (1963) — KIRSTY GRIFFIN/NETFLIX ; Everett Collection

The Power of the Dog is a lacerating study of jealousy, sexuality, and the damaging impact of toxic masculinity on the American psyche. But decades earlier another cowboy with a barbed-wire soul, a spiritual brother to Dog's Phil (Benedict Cumberbatch), lit up the screen. As the title character, Paul Newman is intoxicating and repellent all at once. Replete with resentments, desires, and fractured relationships, Hud is an early case study in how the myth of the West and self-loathing can twist a man's soul. Perhaps Newman himself saw a link between his Hud and Phil. When Thomas Savage's Dog was published as a novel in 1967, Newman was one of the first to option the book for a film, ostensibly starring himself in the Cumberbatch role.

10 of 10

If you liked West Side Story, watch West Side Story (1961)

West Side Story; West Side Story — Niko Tavernise/20th Century Studios; Everett Collection

When Steven Spielberg set out to put his own spin on this iconic musical and right some of history's wrongs (namely, the use of brown face and Hollywood's historically racist casting decisions), he knew that the 1961 Best Picture winner was untouchable in certain respects. Regardless, he and screenwriter Tony Kushner re-imagined much of the storytelling, from an expansive backstory to new takes on legendary musical numbers. But there's nothing that can match the original film for power, passion, and scale. Co-directors Robert Wise and Jerome Robbins crafted a work of true, startling beauty — and in spite of its faults that reflect Hollywood's larger problems of the era, it's a must-see, whether you're watching it for the thousandth time or the first. Plus, who doesn't want a double dose of Rita Moreno?

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