It’s December and pretty much every network and streaming service seemingly has a show aimed at spreading holiday cheer. For those looking to skip re-runs of Christmases past, there’s a bounty of fresh shows and specials targeted to traditionalists, romantics and family friendly entertainment.
For those hungry for more, or just plain hungry, this guide has you covered on some of the notable musicals, romcoms, animated and cooking shows airing and streaming throughout the holiday season.
All times are Eastern Standard Time.
Already available
“Santa Camp,” HBO Max. This documentary follows the non-profit New England Santa Society, made up of more than 100 professional Christmas performers, who decide to tackle the lack of diversity among Santa stand-ins at their annual summer camp in New Hampshire. The group enlists a Black Santa, a Santa with a disability, and a transgender Santa to help make playing Santa more inclusive.
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“The 12 Days of Christmas Eve,” Lifetime. Kelsey Grammer co-stars opposite his daughter, Spencer Grammer, in this fresh take on “A Christmas Carol,” as a successful businessman who is so caught up in success, he forgets about what really matters in life, family. When he gets into a car accident on Christmas Eve, he gets 12 tries at redoing the day over to make things right.
“Christmas with You,” Netflix. Freddie Prinze Jr. plays a single dad and music teacher named Miguel, whose daughter Cristina is a massive fan of the pop star Angelina (played by Aimee Garcia). What Cristina doesn’t know is that Angelina’s career is in jeopardy, and she is in danger of being dropped by her record label if she doesn’t release a new hit soon. When Angelina stumbles upon a video Cristina posted online of her singing one of Angelina’s songs, she decides to go meet her for an ego boost. Angelina meets Miguel and offers to help him — and herself — by writing a holiday song with him.
Holiday eating
“The Great American Baking Show Celebrity Holiday,” The Roku Channel, Dec. 2., Ellie Kemper and Zach Cherry host a holiday baking competition with celebrities including Oscar-winner Nat Faxon, “Saturday Night Live” cast member Chloe Fineman and former NFL player Marshawn Lynch compete in bake-offs before famous baker judges, Paul Hollywood and Prue Leith.
“Mary Berry’s Ultimate Christmas,” PBS, Dec. 19 at 9 p.m., Beloved British home cook Dame Mary Berry takes viewers inside her approach to hosting a holiday feast attended by special guests.
Check out the full holiday lineup here:
“Emancipation,” directed and executive produced by Antoine Fuqua and starring and produced by Will Smith, will premiere in theaters on Friday and on Apple TV+ on Dec. 9, 2022. (Apple Studios/TNS)
‘Emancipation’
MPAA rating: R (for strong racial violence, disturbing images and language)
How to watch: In theaters Friday; on Apple TV+ Dec. 9
In March 1863, two months after President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, a Black man known as Peter (other accounts name him as Gordon) escaped a Louisiana plantation, endured 10 days in alligator-infested marshes and found his way to Baton Rouge, where he received medical attention and soon enlisted in the Union Army. His survival alone is an astonishing story, but what immortalized him was a photograph of the raised welts and scars crisscrossing his back, brutal evidence of a lifetime of whippings. The widely circulated image, variably referred to as “Whipped Peter” or “The Scourged Back,” is credited with fueling the abolitionist movement at a crucial Civil War midpoint, igniting the outrage of Northerners who had never seen the horrors of Southern slavery up close.
Director Antoine Fuqua and his star, Will Smith, reenact the shooting of that photograph toward the end of “Emancipation,” their swampy, sloggy action-movie treatment of Peter’s journey. Fuqua doesn’t show us the lashings that produced those scars, leaving them to the imagination of an audience presumably acquainted with, and likely exhausted by, the many grueling depictions of racist violence in movies and TV series. The pointedly titled “Emancipation” means to focus on acts of physical and spiritual defiance, and it dramatizes the apparatus of chattel slavery primarily to show that apparatus being subverted or overthrown. Here, even a cotton gin can be repurposed as an instrument.
Read the full review here:
Jessica Chastain, left, as Tammy Wynette and Michael Shannon as George Jones in “George & Tammy” on Showtime. (Dana Hawley/Showtime/TNS)
‘George & Tammy’
Rating: TV-MA (may be unsuitable for children under age 17)
How to watch: 9 p.m. ET Sunday, Showtime and Paramount Network; streaming on Showtime and Paramount+
“George & Tammy,” which premieres Sunday on Showtime, stars Jessica Chastain as Tammy and Michael Shannon as George. Written by Abe Sylvia (who also wrote the Chastain feature “The Eyes of Tammy Faye”) with daughter Georgette Jones’ “The Three of Us: Growing Up With Tammy and George” as the optioned source material, the limited series keeps the focus on the years when the two were in and out of each other’s lives.
As biopics go, “George & Tammy” is better than most, beautifully acted, nicely filmed, full of music and not lacking for crazy, infamous events. (The Driving a Tractor to Get a Drink Scene, George Taking a Shot at reformed drinking partner Earl “Peanutt” Montgomery, played by Walton Goggins — they’re here and much more.) But a series that claims to represent real historical events can lead one to wonder, distractedly, what truly happened and what was embellished or didn’t happen at all.
Looking for more streaming and movie options — or just want to get caught up on the latest entertainment news? Look no further:
Now that it’s December, we can confidently say that the Christmas (or whatever holiday you celebrate) season is here. Which means a slew of new holiday content to stream, if you haven’t been mainlining Hallmark holiday movies already.
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Kim Kardashian and Ye have reached a settlement in their divorce, averting a trial that had been set for next month, court documents show.
A stage musical about woke princesses that uses hit songs by Britney Spears will land on Broadway this summer. “Once Upon a One More Time,” featuring Spears’ tunes, including “Oops!… I Did It Again,” “Lucky,” “Stronger” and “Toxic,” will start performances in May at the Marquis Theatre. The musical has an original story written by Jon Hartmere about classic fairy tale princesses — Cinderella, Snow White and Little Mermaid, among them — who are transformed after reading “The Feminine Mystique,” a landmark feminist text. “Once Upon a One More Time” first played at The Shakespeare Theatre Company,. The cast will be announced at a later date.
“The Wiz” will ease on down the road back to Broadway in an all-new adaptation set for 2024. But before its return to New York, the Tony Award-winning musical will kick off a national tour next year in Baltimore, where the original production debuted in 1974. The “entirely reimagined revival” will be helmed by theater vet and Black Theater United founding member Schele Williams (“Motown the …
Robert Downey Jr. examines the life of his father, iconoclastic underground filmmaker Robert Downey Sr., in “Sr.,” an intimate portrait of aging, parenthood and the way creativity is passed down through generations. It’s not quite warm and fuzzy but it is heartwarming, and Downey Jr. — one of the world’s biggest movie stars, but also one of the most guarded — lets his defenses down and gives …
The son of a disapproving mother heads off to boot camp to “make himself a man” — big quotes around that phrase — in “The Inspection,” a tough drama that takes a while to find its center. Even if the movie spends most of its time dealing with the ins and outs of basic training, its depiction of the relationship between mother and child is what, eventually, represents the beating heart of the …
Premiering this week on Disney+, whose corporate parent conveniently acquired the property in its ingestion of Lucasfilm, “Willow” is a series-long sequel to the 1988 fantasy film in which an aspiring sorcerer (Warwick Davis in the title role) from a race of little people sets off to deliver a human baby, found like Moses in the bulrushes, into responsible large-people care. There are a lot of …
Ultraviolence at the holidays takes on many forms. I’ve seen children tear open presents in ways that would garner a hard-R rating for graphic, disturbing intensity. At the movies, I’ve seen what some of you have seen — “Dead Snow,” for example. It’s technically an Easter movie, but all that snow makes it feel Christmassy. Norwegian director Tommy Wirkola’s 2009 festivus of gore imagines the …
In the summer and fall of 2022, “Bros” and “Fire Island” made inroads as high-profile gay rom-coms, queering the familiar genre. Now, arriving just in time for Christmas, we have “Spoiler Alert,” a heart-rending holiday weepie about two men in love, facing cancer together. Based on the memoir by TV journalist Michael Ausiello, “Spoiler Alert” tells the story of Ausiello’s marriage to Kit …
100 best dramas of all time, according to critics
100 best dramas of all time, according to critics
This compilation of the 100 best movie dramas of all time shows the deep richness of films made since the beginning of the last century, from countries across the globe.
Stacker compiled data on all feature-length dramas with at least four critic reviews through Metacritic and ranked them according to Metascore, with ties broken internally by Metacritic. Rankings are accurate as of Jan. 26, 2021.
The top picks come from the United States, Europe, and Asia, and run the gamut from Charlie Chaplin’s silent movies starring the Tramp to animated features such as “Dumbo.” The collection continues with crime films ranging from “The Reversal of Fortune,” covering the murder trial of Claus von Bulow, to dramas tackling war, such as “The Hurt Locker.”
Charlie Chaplin’s genius shines through without dialogue even as talkies were beginning to make their appearance in such releases as “City Lights” and “Modern Times,” which considered the social and economic effects of the then-new assembly lines. Among the most current films, released in 2020, “Nomadland” takes an updated look at some of those same issues, in this case, the uncertainty of today’s economy, which leaves older Americans scrambling for work while living in vans and RVs. The character played by Frances McDormand is left rudderless after the gypsum plant in her hometown closes.
A group of Chinese and Japanese releases made the list, some by the noted director Akira Kurosawa. He described his “Rashomon” as a reflection of life, where meanings are sometimes unclear. His “Seven Samurai” merged the characteristics of American Westerns with Japanese traditions such as the swordplay drama.
Westerns made in the United States looked at some fundamental questions of the country, including the meaning of law and democracy and the still-open question of the place of guns in our society. Other movies on the list focus on love, greed, and fear—emotions that know no boundaries and are common to all of our lives.
Read on to find out which of the films you have seen and whether you agree with critics.
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#100. Masculin Féminin (1966)
– Director: Jean-Luc Godard
– Metascore: 93
– IMDb user rating: 7.6
– Runtime: 103 minutes
This romantic drama consists of a series of vignettes that follow young Parisians. The dialogue was written the night before each scene, and in some cases improvised. The film was shot in Sweden: The famous director from that country, Ingmar Bergman, went to see it and pronounced it “a classic case of Godard: mind-numbingly boring.”
#99. Reversal of Fortune (1990)
– Director: Barbet Schroeder
– Metascore: 93
– IMDb user rating: 7.2
– Runtime: 111 minutes
This film tells the story of the urbane, Danish-born Claus von Bülow, who was accused of trying to kill his wealthy socialite wife, Sunny von Bülow, in their Newport, Rhode Island, mansion by giving her an overdose of insulin. He is found guilty but his conviction is overturned on appeal. He is represented by Alan Dershowitz, who has frequently been in the news during the last few years as an ardent defender of former President Donald Trump. Jeremy Irons won an Oscar for best actor for his portrayal of von Bulow. Sunny von Bulow lived until 2008, never awakening from her coma.
#98. The Magnificent Ambersons (1942)
– Directors: Orson Welles, Fred Fleck, Robert Wise
– Metascore: 93
– IMDb user rating: 7.7
– Runtime: 88 minutes
In this movie about the dwindling fortune of a wealthy Midwestern family, a woman is kept from the man she loves by her heir. RKO executives decided they needed to cut the film and redo the ending, but Orson Welles was already in Brazil working on a new movie, so the task was assigned to director Robert Wise and writer James Cotton. A happy ending replaced Welles’ original, and the change caused a falling out among the men. They eventually reconciled, but in Wise’s case, the break lasted more than 40 years.
#97. Call Me By Your Name (2017)
– Director: Luca Guadagnino
– Metascore: 93
– IMDb user rating: 7.9
– Runtime: 132 minutes
This film tells the story of a romance between a teenager and an older man working for his father in Italy in the 1980s. Before the movie was shot, there was only one rehearsal, of a scene in which the men roll on the grass making out. During a scene in which the men hike to a waterfall, they shout with excitement, but in truth they were walking through stinging nettle that covered the mountainside.
#96. The Servant (1963)
– Director: Joseph Losey
– Metascore: 93
– IMDb user rating: 7.9
– Runtime: 116 minutes
When a British aristocrat hires a valet, the result is a tense psychological battle. The director, Joseph Losey, was at one time was blacklisted in Hollywood. While shooting “The Servant,” he was hospitalized for two weeks, but filming did not stop. Dirk Bogarde kept going, guided by Losey’s over-the-phone instructions.
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#95. The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (1972)
– Director: Luis Buñuel
– Metascore: 93
– IMDb user rating: 7.9
– Runtime: 102 minutes
“The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie” can be described as a plotless series of dreams of six middle-class people trying to have a meal together. It includes three of what director Luis Buñuel said were his recurring dreams: forgetting his lines while on stage, following his dead cousin into a house full of cobwebs after meeting him on the street, and waking up to his dead parents staring at him.
#94. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000)
– Director: Ang Lee
– Metascore: 94
– IMDb user rating: 7.8
– Runtime: 120 minutes
Ang Lee’s epic tells the story of a young Chinese warrior who steals a sword, complete with martial arts battles and stunning scenery. He described the movie as “a dream of China…that probably never existed.” The actress Ziyi Zhang did not have any martial arts training, but rather relied on her dance experience to learn the moves.
#93. La La Land (2016)
– Director: Damien Chazelle
– Metascore: 94
– IMDb user rating: 8.0
– Runtime: 128 minutes
An actress, Mia, played by Emma Stone, and a pianist, Sebastian, played by Ryan Gosling, fall in love in Los Angeles. Gosling took piano lessons two hours a day, six days a week to learn to play the music by heart. One of his own auditions sparked the scene where a casting director interrupts Mia’s performance to take a phone call.
#92. Elevator to the Gallows (1958)
– Director: Louis Malle
– Metascore: 94
– IMDb user rating: 8.0
– Runtime: 91 minutes
A businessman murders his employer, who is also the husband of his mistress. The director, Louis Malle, makes a cameo appearance when he mistakes the character played by Jeanne Moreau for a prostitute. The music was improvised by Miles Davis, who recorded it with a quartet of musicians one night from 11 p.m. until 5 a.m.
#91. The French Connection (1971)
– Director: William Friedkin
– Metascore: 94
– IMDb user rating: 7.7
– Runtime: 104 minutes
The movie is based on a heroin case that actually took place in New York City in the 1970s. The lead characters are based on two real-life detectives, Eddie Egan and Sonny Grasso. One scene, in which the detectives chase a drug dealer while one is dressed in a Santa Claus suit, is based on a real tactic that Egan and Grasso used, realizing that the dealers would not spot them as cops.
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#90. Marriage Story (2019)
– Director: Noah Baumbach
– Metascore: 94
– IMDb user rating: 7.9
– Runtime: 137 minutes
This drama tells the story of a difficult divorce involving a theater couple, that critics called tender, funny and sad, all in one. New Yorker critic Richard Brody described “Marriage Story” as a movie of “duelling monologues, spoken and unspoken: two hours of sharp, painful, witty, and elegant talk that is nonetheless rooted in the impossibility of communication.”
#89. Carlos (2010)
– Director: Olivier Assayas
– Metascore: 94
– IMDb user rating: 7.6
– Runtime: 334 minutes
This TV miniseries features Ilich Ramírez Sánchez, also known as Carlos the Jackal, a Venezuelan revolutionary who founded a global terrorist network and raided the 1975 Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries meeting. He was a Marxist dedicated to the Palestinian cause. Roger Ebert wrote that for Carlos, “his religion and his cause were the same, and they were himself. This is a terrifying portrait of an egomaniac who demands absolute obedience, and craves it even more when his power and relevance are drained away.” The real Carlos warned Assayas repeatedly not to make the movie.
#88. Chimes at Midnight (1965)
– Director: Orson Welles
– Metascore: 94
– IMDb user rating: 7.8
– Runtime: 115 minutes
This comedy drama was directed by Orson Welles and stars him as William Shakespeare’s Sir John Falstaff. The movie was based on a play written by Welles that compressed Shakespeare’s plays Henry IV, V, VI and Richard III into one show.
#87. Lady Bird (2017)
– Director: Greta Gerwig
– Metascore: 94
– IMDb user rating: 7.4
– Runtime: 94 minutes
This coming of age drama stars Saoirse Ronan as a 17-year-old in Sacramento, California. The movie shows Ronan with an eruption of acne, which was real and which she helped to convince the director, Greta Gerwig, to leave in as a realistic touch.
#86. Apocalypse Now (1979)
– Director: Francis Ford Coppola
– Metascore: 94
– IMDb user rating: 8.4
– Runtime: 147 minutes
A secret mission descends into madness in this movie based loosely on Joseph Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness,” with the Vietnam War in 1970 substituted for the Congo. Rotten Tomatoes called it a “haunting, hallucinatory Vietnam War epic” that is “cinema at its most audacious and visionary.” For the movie’s 40th anniversary in 2019, Francis Ford Coppola re-edited it for what he called his final version.
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#85. The Apartment (1960)
– Director: Billy Wilder
– Metascore: 94
– IMDb user rating: 8.3
– Runtime: 125 minutes
Inspired by “Brief Encounter” by Noel Coward, “The Apartment” stars Bud Baxter, an insurance accountant and bachelor played by Jack Lemmon, who lets his bosses use his apartment for their affairs. Shirley MacLaine plays Fran Kubelik, an elevator operator, who tries to kill herself when she realizes one of those bosses is not going to leave his family for her. When director Billy Wilder saw “Brief Encounter,” he wondered about the unknown character who had lent the apartment for the extramarital affair.
#84. Meet Me in St. Louis (1944)
– Director: Vincente Minnelli
– Metascore: 94
– IMDb user rating: 7.5
– Runtime: 113 minutes
A musical comedy about young love, “Meet Me in St. Louis” stars Judy Garland as one of the Smith sisters, trying to meet the shy boy next door. Garland and Minnelli met on the set and were soon married. The movie premiered in St. Louis on Nov. 22, 1944.
#83. Schindler’s List (1993)
– Director: Steven Spielberg
– Metascore: 94
– IMDb user rating: 8.9
– Runtime: 195 minutes
The movie introduced the world to Oskar Schindler, a factory owner who saved 1,200 Jews from the Nazi concentration camps of World War II. He and his wife, Emilie, protected Jewish workers even as he made munitions for the Nazis. Schindler’s original list was found in 1999 in a suitcase hidden in the attic of his apartment in Hildesheim, Germany.
#82. Sideways (2004)
– Director: Alexander Payne
– Metascore: 94
– IMDb user rating: 7.5
– Runtime: 127 minutes
Two college friends, one of whom is about to marry, visit California wine country in this comedy that Roger Ebert called surprisingly moving. The surprising star was pinot noir, the production of which had increased 170{5b4d37f3b561c14bd186647c61229400cd4722d6fb37730c64ddff077a6b66c6} a dozen years later, according to an NPR article. Winemakers called its new popularity The Sideways Effect.
#81. Inside Out (2015)
– Directors: Pete Docter, Ronnie Del Carmen
– Metascore: 94
– IMDb user rating: 8.1
– Runtime: 95 minutes
Riley moves from the Midwest to San Francisco to a new house and new school in this Pixar Animation Studios release that looks inside her mind, where Joy, Sadness, Fear, Disgust, and Anger become cartoon characters. Which emotions didn’t make the cut? Hope, Envy, Ennui, and Pride were among them. “At one point, we fooled around with having 27 different emotions,” director Pete Docter told The Hollywood Reporter. It won the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature Film of the Year.
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#80. The Wild Child (1970)
– Director: François Truffaut
– Metascore: 94
– IMDb user rating: 7.5
– Runtime: 83 minutes
This movie is based on a true story: A child who cannot speak, walk, read, or write is found in a forest outside Aveyron, France, in 1798. A doctor who observes him at an asylum realizes he is not deaf nor intellectually impaired, but has been deprived of human contact. The Los Angeles opening took place a week before a girl was found in that city who had similarly been raised without human interaction. The doctors treating her had a private viewing.
#79. Grave of the Fireflies (1988)
– Director: Isao Takahata
– Metascore: 94
– IMDb user rating: 8.5
– Runtime: 89 minutes
A Japanese anime, “Grave of the Fireflies” was based on Akiyuki Nosaka’s 1967 story. It tells the story of two orphans trying to get through the final months of World War II. Roger Ebert wrote that it belonged on any list of the greatest war films ever made. Isao Takahata himself lived through a terrible air attack on his hometown of Okayama.
#78. The Irishman (2019)
– Director: Martin Scorsese
– Metascore: 94
– IMDb user rating: 7.9
– Runtime: 209 minutes
In “The Irishman,” starring Robert De Niro, Al Pacino, and Joe Pesci, an alleged Mafia hitman confesses to his crimes. De Niro wanted the movie to keep the name of the book on which it was based: “I Heard You Paint Houses.” The house seen at the beginning of the film is the same one that appears in another Scorsese film, “Goodfellas.”
#77. Mr. Turner (2014)
– Director: Mike Leigh
– Metascore: 94
– IMDb user rating: 6.8
– Runtime: 150 minutes
The movie recounts the last 25 years of the life of painter J.M.W. Turner, who died in 1851. He once had himself tied to the mast of a ship before he painted a snow storm. He turned down 100,000 pounds for his work so he instead donate it to the British nation, even though Queen Victoria detested his work. The actor who played Turner, Timothy Spall, took private art lessons from a British artist for about two years to prepare for the role.
#76. Pulp Fiction (1994)
– Director: Quentin Tarantino
– Metascore: 94
– IMDb user rating: 8.9
– Runtime: 154 minutes
Two hitmen look for a suitcase stolen from their boss in this movie with a a roster of stars: Uma Thurman, Bruce Willis, John Travolta, Amanda Plummer, and others. It won the Academy Award for best original screenplay. Seven years earlier, Tarantino had been a 23-year-old high-school dropout who acted part time but was broke, according to Vanity Fair.
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#75. The Manchurian Candidate (1962)
– Director: John Frankenheimer
– Metascore: 94
– IMDb user rating: 7.9
– Runtime: 126 minutes
Frank Sinatra and Janet Leigh star in this political thriller about a former prisoner of war who is brainwashed into becoming an assassin in a Communist plot. The movie was not released in many of the former “Iron Curtain” countries, such as Poland and Hungary, until after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1993, because of the political nature of the plot.
#74. Taxi Driver (1976)
– Director: Martin Scorsese
– Metascore: 94
– IMDb user rating: 8.3
– Runtime: 114 minutes
Robert De Niro plays a disturbed Vietnam veteran who drives a taxi cab overnight in New York City, alongside Jodie Foster as an underage prostitute. Vietnam Veterans of America called De Niro’s character “perhaps Hollywood’s most psychotic Vietnam veteran (and that’s saying something).” Screenwriter Paul Schrader told The Hollywood Reporter that he thought of the cab as a “metal coffin that moved through the city with a kid who appeared to be in the midst of things but really was alone.” Scorsese and others squatted in the back of the cab to film, while the sound man was in the trunk.
#73. 45 Years (2015)
– Director: Andrew Haigh
– Metascore: 94
– IMDb user rating: 7.1
– Runtime: 91 minutes
A couple is about to celebrate their 45th wedding anniversary when the husband receives some disturbing news about an old love that sends their marriage into a tailspin. It is based on David Constantine’s short story, “In Another Country,” in which the body of a man’s former girlfriend is found perfectly preserved in the Alps from 50 years earlier.
#72. The Searchers (1956)
– Director: John Ford
– Metascore: 94
– IMDb user rating: 7.9
– Runtime: 119 minutes
A veteran of the Civil War, John Wayne, sets off to rescue his niece, who has been abducted by Comanches. Buddy Holly and drummer Jerry Allison saw the movie and used Wayne’s trademark line, “That’ll be the day,” for the 1957 album.
#71. The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962)
– Director: John Ford
– Metascore: 94
– IMDb user rating: 8.1
– Runtime: 123 minutes
A senator, famous for shooting the man who terrorized a town, returns for his friend’s funeral in this Western that features two men in love with the same woman. The New Yorker called it the “greatest American political movie.” and it delves into many of America’s fundamental principles around democracy, a free press, and the ongoing debate over guns. John Wayne and James Stewart both played characters 30 years younger than they were in real life.
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#70. Dunkirk (2017)
– Director: Christopher Nolan
– Metascore: 94
– IMDb user rating: 7.8
– Runtime: 106 minutes
During a desperate battle during World War II, Allied soldiers from Great Britain, Belgium, and France are surrounded by Germans and forced to evacuate from the beach in Dunkirk, where they are trapped. The movie won three Oscars: for film editing, sound editing, and sound mixing. Approximately 30 survivors attended the opening in London and found the soundtrack to be louder than the battle.
#69. Amour (2012)
– Director: Michael Haneke
– Metascore: 94
– IMDb user rating: 7.9
– Runtime: 127 minutes
George and Anne Laurent are retired music teachers whose love is challenged when Anne has a stroke. Emmanuelle Riva, 84, became the oldest person ever nominated for a best actress Oscar, besting Jessica Tandy, who received the nomination at age 80 for “Driving Miss Daisy.”
#68. Before Midnight (2013)
– Director: Richard Linklater
– Metascore: 94
– IMDb user rating: 7.9
– Runtime: 109 minutes
This is the third in a series starring Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy, a couple who meet in their 20s and now are at the end of a vacation in Greece. The romantic drama began with “Before Sunrise” in 1995, followed by “Before Sunset” in 2004. The movie is dedicated to Amy Lehrhaupt, who inspired the first movie. She and Richard Linklater had lost touch and he learned in 2010 that she had died only a few weeks before he started shooting “Before Sunrise.”
#67. Carol (2015)
– Director: Todd Haynes
– Metascore: 94
– IMDb user rating: 7.2
– Runtime: 118 minutes
Based on a Patricia Highsmith novel, this is the story of an aspiring photographer, a young woman in her 20s, who has a love affair with an older woman in New York City in the 1950s. As the older woman, Carol Aird, leaves her marriage, her husband questions her fitness as a mother. Carol was inspired by Virginia Kent Catherwood, a Philadelphia socialite with whom Highsmith had a love affair with in the 1940s. Catherwood lost custody of her daughter because she was gay.
#66. La Dolce Vita (1960)
– Director: Federico Fellini
– Metascore: 95
– IMDb user rating: 8.0
– Runtime: 174 minutes
“La Dolce Vita” looks at Federico Fellini’s week in the life of a tabloid journalist, Marcello Mastroianni, who is living in Rome, and the beautiful women he pursues, an heiress and a superstar actress, while engaged. The scene at the Trevi Fountain was shot in the spring while it was cold—Mastroianni was drunk because he had an entire bottle of vodka to try to stay warm.
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#65. A Separation (2011)
– Director: Asghar Farhadi
– Metascore: 95
– IMDb user rating: 8.3
– Runtime: 123 minutes
Set in Tehran, “A Separation” is the first Iranian film to win an Oscar, for best foreign language film. It follows a bank employee named Nader, whose wife leaves him when he refuses to move abroad to make a better life for their daughter. Nader hires a married woman, Razieh, to care for his father who has Alzheimer’s disease. Angry after he finds his father tied to the bed, he shoves her. She is pregnant, and when she falls outside the apartment and loses her baby, her unstable husband takes Nader to court, though there are many doubts about what caused her miscarriage.
#64. Zero Dark Thirty (2012)
– Director: Kathryn Bigelow
– Metascore: 95
– IMDb user rating: 7.4
– Runtime: 157 minutes
“Zero Dark Thirty” tells the story of the hunt for Osama bin Laden. The movie was controversial because of its treatment of the CIA’s torture of terrorism suspects during the administration of President George W. Bush. The New Yorker, in an article titled “Zero Conscience in ‘Zero Dark Thirty,’” accused director Kathryn Bigelow of milking “the U.S. torture program for drama while sidestepping the political and ethical debate that it provoked.”
#63. Anatomy of a Murder (1959)
– Director: Otto Preminger
– Metascore: 95
– IMDb user rating: 8.0
– Runtime: 161 minutes
When an Army lieutenant is accused of murdering a bartender, his defense is temporary insanity, saying the bartender raped his wife. But then problems arise. The police surgeon finds no evidence of rape, and a lawyer discovers the lieutenant is exceedingly jealous and his wife is a flirt. James Stewart plays a small town lawyer in the movie, but his father found it to be so distasteful that he took out an ad advising people not to see it.
#62. The Hurt Locker (2008)
– Director: Kathryn Bigelow
– Metascore: 95
– IMDb user rating: 7.5
– Runtime: 131 minutes
Set in Iraq, this movie looks at an elite squad that disarms bombs. The title comes from Vietnam War era military slang meaning a serious injury, whether physical or emotional. Soldiers in Iraq talked of explosions sending one to the hurt locker, and it can also refer to suicide or snipers.
#61. Double Indemnity (1944)
– Director: Billy Wilder
– Metascore: 95
– IMDb user rating: 8.3
– Runtime: 107 minutes
This film noir features murder and insurance fraud, and an insurance representative seduced into the scheme. The plot was based on the 1920s murder trial of Ruth Snyder, which author James M. Cain turned into a novel. She was later executed in the electric chair in Sing Sing Correctional Facility in New York and was photographed by the New York Daily News as she died. It was the first photograph of an execution in an electric chair.
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#60. Portrait of a Lady on Fire (2019)
– Director: Céline Sciamma
– Metascore: 95
– IMDb user rating: 8.1
– Runtime: 122 minutes
A painter is commissioned for a wedding portrait of a young woman at the end of the 18th century in Brittany. The portrait is meant to be completed in secret but a romance develops the two women. In real life, director Céline Sciamma and Adele Haenel, who plays the bride-to-be Heloise, are former lovers who parted on good terms.
#59. My Fair Lady (1964)
– Director: George Cukor
– Metascore: 95
– IMDb user rating: 7.8
– Runtime: 170 minutes
Rex Harrison and Audrey Hepburn star in the musical inspired by George Bernard Shaw’s “Pygmalion,” in which Professor Henry Higgins bets that he can teach flower girl Eliza Doolittle to speak properly. The marbles that Higgins put into Doolittle’s mouth in the movie aren’t marbles at all, but grapes. Hepburn had expected to sing her own numbers, and she walked out when she first learned that she would be dubbed. She later apologized, but promised herself would never accept another musical role unless she could do her own singing. Marni Nixon sang most of her songs.
#58. The Social Network (2010)
– Director: David Fincher
– Metascore: 95
– IMDb user rating: 7.7
– Runtime: 120 minutes
Mark Zuckerberg creates what will become Facebook as a Harvard University student, but is sued by the Winklevoss twins and Divya Narendra, who claim he stole their idea. Zuckerberg reportedly had no plans to see the movie, but relented and went with some employees. He later said that it got his clothes right even if there were other inaccuracies.
#57. L’Argent (1983)
– Director: Robert Bresson
– Metascore: 95
– IMDb user rating: 7.5
– Runtime: 85 minutes
A fake 500-franc note is passed person to person until the situation turns tragic and ends in murder. The movie is the last that was directed by Robert Bresson, a French director known for a minimalist style that was more popular with critics than theater goers. He retired after failing to raise funds for an adaptation of the Book of Genesis.
#56. The Bride of Frankenstein (1935)
– Director: James Whale
– Metascore: 95
– IMDb user rating: 7.8
– Runtime: 75 minutes
Dr. Frankenstein and his monster are not dead but have survived, and Dr. Frankenstein is forced by the mad Dr. Pretorius to create a woman to be the monster’s companion. Colin Clive, who plays Frankenstein, had broken his leg in a riding accident not long before filming, and was seated in many of his scenes.
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#55. Lovers Rock (2020)
– Director: Steve McQueen
– Metascore: 95
– IMDb user rating: 7.6
– Runtime: 70 minutes
The movie looks at the Black life in Britain in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s, following a woman named Martha attending a blues party. The name refers to a music genre, a romantic version of reggae created by British-born children of Caribbean immigrants. The house parties drew young people who were not welcome at the white clubs, and the Janet Kay song “Silly Games” is at its center. The movie is the second in Steve McQueen’s “Small Axe” series.
#54. Modern Times (1936)
– Director: Charles Chaplin
– Metascore: 96
– IMDb user rating: 8.5
– Runtime: 87 minutes
Charlie Chaplin is in his Little Tramp character as a factory worker, trying to live in modern industrial society, but failing to keep up on the assembly line. He is mistaken for a communist when he waves a red flag he picks up, is arrested, and meets The Gamine in the police van. The boss of the factory is drawn from Henry Ford.
#53. Gravity (2013)
– Director: Alfonso Cuarón
– Metascore: 96
– IMDb user rating: 7.7
– Runtime: 91 minutes
In “Gravity,” astronauts are working on the Hubble Space Telescope when disaster strikes: A Russian satellite explodes and sends space debris ripping into the telescope and the space shuttle. The astronauts, played by Sandra Bullock and George Clooney, are marooned and struggling to survive.
#51. The Battle of Algiers (1966)
– Director: Gillo Pontecorvo
– Metascore: 96
– IMDb user rating: 8.1
– Runtime: 121 minutes
The people of Algiers are fighting for independence from France, with the National Liberation Front or FLN leading the resistance. The violence increases with torture and bombings. The story is mostly told through two characters, Ali La Pointe on one side and Colonel Mathieu on the other. The film is one of few movies to be nominated in nonconsecutive years for an Oscar: for best foreign film in 1966, and for screenplay and direction in 1968.
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#50. Mean Streets (1973)
– Director: Martin Scorsese
– Metascore: 96
– IMDb user rating: 7.2
– Runtime: 112 minutes
#49. Children of Paradise (1945)
– Director: Marcel Carné
– Metascore: 96
– IMDb user rating: 8.4
– Runtime: 189 minutes
The story of an actress and the men who love her, including a mime who comes to her aid when she is unfairly accused of pickpocketing a watch, was shot during the Nazi occupation in Paris and Nice, with the designer and the composer both in hiding because they were Jewish. The Nazi had banned all movies over 90 minutes, so Marcel Carné made two movies and showed them together after France was liberated.
#48. The Grapes of Wrath (1940)
– Director: John Ford
– Metascore: 96
– IMDb user rating: 8.0
– Runtime: 129 minutes
Based on John Steinbeck’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, “Grapes of Wrath” follows a poor family forced off their land in the Midwest, who travel to California during the Great Depression. Producer Darryl Zanuck investigated the migrant camps to see if Steinbeck had overstated the conditions there, and was appalled to find out that he had not.
#47. Parasite (2019)
– Director: Bong Joon Ho
– Metascore: 96
– IMDb user rating: 8.6
– Runtime: 132 minutes
In this film about class in Korea, the destitute Kim family moves in on the wealthy Park family after the son begins to tutor the Park daughter. Soon all of the Kims have been hired, but when the Parks go camping for a weekend, the story takes a strange turn. The film won four Academy Awards: best picture, best director, best original screenplay, and best international feature. In an interview with The Atlantic, Bong Joon Ho described tutoring for a rich family while he was in college, and thinking it would be fun if his friends could infiltrate the house one by one.
#46. Nashville (1975)
– Director: Robert Altman
– Metascore: 96
– IMDb user rating: 7.7
– Runtime: 160 minutes
This drama follows a number of people preparing for a political convention for an independent candidate who wants to ban lawyers from Congress and rewrite the national anthem runs for president. The result is five days of Nashville country and gospel music. The film was largely improvised, and all of the actors or actresses wrote and performed their own songs.
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#45. Rocks (2019)
– Director: Sarah Gavron
– Metascore: 96
– IMDb user rating: 7.6
– Runtime: 93 minutes
This coming of age movie is set in London, where a teenager takes care of her younger brother after their mother leaves. The critic Carlos Aguilar wrote in the Los Angeles Times that it “differentiates itself from other recent explorations of modern girlhood set amid immigrant communities.” It won awards from the British Independent Film Awards and at the Brussels and Dublin international film festivals.
#44. Killer of Sheep (1978)
– Director: Charles Burnett
– Metascore: 96
– IMDb user rating: 7.3
– Runtime: 80 minutes
“Killer of Sheep” captures Los Angeles’ Watts neighborhood in the mid-1970s. Life in Watts is seen through Stan, who worn down by working in a slaughterhouse. Discouraged by money problems, he takes joy in small moments. “The film offers no solutions; it merely presents life—sometimes hauntingly bleak, sometimes filled with transcendent joy and gentle humor,” according to its website. It was shot on location in Watts on a budget of less than $10,000, most of it grant money. It won a prize at the 1981 Berlin International Film Festival.
#43. 12 Years a Slave (2013)
– Director: Steve McQueen
– Metascore: 96
– IMDb user rating: 8.1
– Runtime: 134 minutes
Solomon Northrup is a free man from upstate New York, but he is abducted and sold into slavery before the Civil War. The tree where several men were lynched in the movie was not only used for lynching, but is surrounded by graves. The movie marked the feature film debut for Lupita Nyong’o, who won the Oscar for best supporting actress.
#42. Rosemary’s Baby (1968)
– Director: Roman Polanski
– Metascore: 96
– IMDb user rating: 8.0
– Runtime: 137 minutes
A young couple wants to have a child but Rosemary, played by Mia Farrow, is convinced she is the victim of a satanic plot by her elderly neighbors and her husband. The movie was Roman Polanski’s Hollywood debut. Farrow was served divorce papers by Frank Sinatra while on the set; he reportedly wanted her to stop filming.
#41. Manchester by the Sea (2016)
– Director: Kenneth Lonergan
– Metascore: 96
– IMDb user rating: 7.8
– Runtime: 137 minutes
A loner returns to his hometown from Boston after his brother dies to take care of his 16-year-old nephew and is haunted by an unspeakable tragedy from his past. The movie takes place along the Massachusetts coast; the town was called Manchester until 1989, when the name was changed by the state legislature, 344 years after it was incorporated.
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#40. 12 Angry Men (1957)
– Director: Sidney Lumet
– Metascore: 96
– IMDb user rating: 9.0
– Runtime: 96 minutes
The foreman of a jury holds out on a verdict, trying to force his fellow jurors to reconsider the case. The director, Sidney Lumet, had the actors repeat their lines while in the same room to give them a sense of what it would be like to be shut up together. The movie, which examines group dynamics as the jury deliberates and jurors change their view, is used by professors in MBA programs.
#39. The Shop Around the Corner (1940)
– Director: Ernst Lubitsch
– Metascore: 96
– IMDb user rating: 8.1
– Runtime: 99 minutes
A romantic comedy, “The Shop Around the Corner” features a love story between two gift shop employees in Budapest who think they dislike each other but are actually falling for each other as anonymous pen pals. The director held off making the film until both James Stewart and Margaret Sullivan were available.
#38. Ran (1985)
– Director: Akira Kurosawa
– Metascore: 96
– IMDb user rating: 8.2
– Runtime: 162 minutes
The setting is medieval Japan and an elderly warlord turns over his empire to his three sons, only to have them turn on each other. Over the course of writing the script, it came to be based on Shakespeare’s “King Lear.” Akira Kurosawa’s wife died during the filming and he halted work but returned to finish. “Ran” was his 28th film and the Cannes Film Festival honored him in 1985 with a special trophy for achievement when it opened.
#37. Days of Being Wild (1990)
– Director: Wong Kar-Wai
– Metascore: 96
– IMDb user rating: 7.6
– Runtime: 94 minutes
The drama features a man trying to find out who his real mother is after learning that the prostitute who has raised him is not. But she refused to reveal his mother’s name. This is the first part of a trilogy. “In the Mood for Love” from 2000 is the second part; “2046,” released in 2004, is the last.
#36. Roma (2018)
– Director: Alfonso Cuarón
– Metascore: 96
– IMDb user rating: 7.7
– Runtime: 135 minutes
”Roma” explores the life of a maid in the 1970s, working for a middle-class family in Mexico. When the husband runs off with his mistress, the wife asks the maid, Cleo, to join the family on a vacation. Meanwhile Cleo has learned she is pregnant. ”Roma” was based on Liboria “Libo” Rodriguez, the nanny who cared for director Alfonso Cuarón’s family: She is still part of his family’s life.
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#35. Dumbo (1941)
– Directors: Samuel Armstrong, Norman Ferguson, Wilfred Jackson, Jack Kinney, Bill Roberts, Ben Sharpsteen, John Elliotte
– Metascore: 96
– IMDb user rating: 7.2
– Runtime: 64 minutes
Dumbo is a young elephant who is made fun of because of his oversized ears, but all of that ends when his friend shows him he can fly. Dumbo was so popular that Time magazine planned to put him on its cover as the “Mammal of the Year” in a play on “Man of the Year,” but when Japan attacked Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, those plans were scrapped and Dumbo was replaced by Gen. Douglas MacArthur. Dumbo still appeared inside in the cinema section.
#34. American Graffiti (1973)
– Director: George Lucas
– Metascore: 97
– IMDb user rating: 7.4
– Runtime: 110 minutes
“American Graffiti” salutes the early 1960s in this movie of rock ‘n’ roll, hot rods, and four teenage friends contemplating their futures. Inspired by George Lucas’ upbringing in Modesto, California, this coming of age movie was his second feature film. Wolfman Jack was chosen to play himself because Lucas remembered hearing him on the radio while Lucas was in high school.
#33. A Streetcar Named Desire (1951)
– Director: Elia Kazan
– Metascore: 97
– IMDb user rating: 8.0
– Runtime: 122 minutes
Based on Tennessee Williams’ Pulitzer Prize-winning play, “A Streetcar Named Desire” stars Vivien Leigh as Blanche DuBois, a high school teacher who moves in with her sister when the family loses its home to creditors, and clashes with her brother-in-law. The set of the Kowalski apartment gets smaller throughout the film to emphasize Blanche’s claustrophobia. The Catholic League of Decency threatened the film with a condemned rating, forcing cuts, and Kazan’s full version wasn’t seen until 1993.
#32. Battleship Potemkin (1925)
– Director: Sergei M. Eisenstein
– Metascore: 97
– IMDb user rating: 8.0
– Runtime: 66 minutes
The setting is the Russian Revolution, and the crew of the Battleship Potemkin revolts against the officers. Demonstrations break out in Odessa, resulting in a massacre. Some countries, including the United Kingdom and France, banned the movie not because of indecency, but because of fears that it would encourage sympathy for Communism. The New Yorker called Sergei Eisenstein cinema’s first modernist.
#31. 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days (2007)
– Director: Cristian Mungiu
– Metascore: 97
– IMDb user rating: 7.9
– Runtime: 113 minutes
A woman helps a friend get an abortion in Romania in the 1980s when abortions were illegal. Contraception was also illegal in the country under the regime of dictator Nicolae Ceausescu, who tried to build his country through population growth, resulting in orphanages filled with unwanted children. The movie, despite widespread praise, failed to get an Oscar nomination and some critics thought that was because of the subject.
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#30. Gone with the Wind (1939)
– Directors: Victor Fleming, George Cukor, Sam Wood
– Metascore: 97
– IMDb user rating: 8.1
– Runtime: 238 minutes
This Southern classic of a romance between the manipulative Scarlett (Vivien Leigh) and Rhett Butler (Clark Gable) was set against the Civil War and Reconstruction. The film was based on the book by Margaret Mitchell about an antebellum South of plantations, including the movie’s beloved Tara, and gracious living. In 2020, HBO Max restored the movie, noting that it denied “the horrors of slavery” on which that world rested.
#29. Rififi (1955)
– Director: Jules Dassin
– Metascore: 97
– IMDb user rating: 8.2
– Runtime: 118 minutes
In this French crime thriller based on a book of the same name, four men plot a jewelry heist from the show window of the famous Mappin & Webb, but then things go wrong. The heist scene is more than a half hour long and plays without dialogue or music. Critic Roger Ebert wrote that “Rififi” was one of two films that invented the modern heist movie.
#28. Le Petit Soldat (1963)
– Director: Jean-Luc Godard
– Metascore: 97
– IMDb user rating: 7.2
– Runtime: 88 minutes
“Le Petit Soldat” looks at love across the political divide of Algeria, as a man and woman on opposite sides of the war for independence from France fall for one another. The movie, Jean-Luc Godard’s second after “Breathless,” was actually completed in 1960, but French censors delayed its release. They banned it for scenes of brutal methods on both sides, the French government and the Algerian fighters.
#27. My Left Foot (1989)
– Director: Jim Sheridan
– Metascore: 97
– IMDb user rating: 7.9
– Runtime: 103 minutes
Christy Brown, an Irish man with cerebral palsy, learns to write and paint with his left foot, the only limb he can control. Despite a diagnosis after his birth that he is mentally impaired and should be placed in an institution, his mother sees his intelligence and talent. When he died in 1981, he had produced hundreds of paintings and had written four books of poetry, four novels, and a memoir.
#26. Jules and Jim (1962)
– Director: François Truffaut
– Metascore: 97
– IMDb user rating: 7.8
– Runtime: 105 minutes
A woman named Catherine chooses between two friends, Jules and Jim, both of whom fall in love with her before World War II in Paris. But after the war, in Germany, Catherine begins to love the other man. The novel that inspired the movie was based on the experiences of Henri-Pierre Roche, and his Catherine was not only alive when the movie was released, but attended the opening.
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#25. Metropolis (1927)
– Director: Fritz Lang
– Metascore: 98
– IMDb user rating: 8.3
– Runtime: 153 minutes
“Metropolis” is a love story set in a seemingly Utopian city that is actually split between the workers and the wealthy. Adolf Hitler and Joseph Goebbels were such fans of the movie that Goebbels told Fritz Lang that he could make him an honorary Aryan though his mother was Jewish.
#24. All About Eve (1950)
– Director: Joseph L. Mankiewicz
– Metascore: 98
– IMDb user rating: 8.2
– Runtime: 138 minutes
An aging Broadway star takes a fan into her circle, unaware that the younger actress wants her parts and her fiance. Bette Davis and Gary Merrill, co-stars in the movie, fell in love during its filming and married a few weeks after it was finished. In a 1983 interview, Davis said being chosen for the film saved her career after a series of failures: “He resurrected me from the dead,” she said of the director, Joseph Mankiewicz.
#23. Rashomon (1950)
– Director: Akira Kurosawa
– Metascore: 98
– IMDb user rating: 8.2
– Runtime: 88 minutes
A bride’s rape and the murder of her husband, a samurai, are described by three people at the trial: the bride herself, the samurai’s ghost, and a bandit who allegedly committed them. Later, a priest, the woodcutter who found the body, and another man find shelter in what remains of a gatehouse called Rashomon and the story unfolds with twists. Akira Kurosawa said of the movie that it was a reflection of life.
#22. Seven Samurai (1954)
– Director: Akira Kurosawa
– Metascore: 98
– IMDb user rating: 8.6
– Runtime: 207 minutes
Another classic from Akira Kurosawa, “Seven Samurai” recounts the tale of a 16th-century village that hires warriors to protect against bandits. The BBC wrote that Kurosawa combined the conventions of the traditional Western with a melding of two Japanese genres, the swordplay film and the period drama.
#21. Pan’s Labyrinth (2006)
– Director: Guillermo del Toro
– Metascore: 98
– IMDb user rating: 8.2
– Runtime: 118 minutes
The stepdaughter of a ruthless Spanish army officer embraces a fantasy world in Spain in 1944. The faun in the movie was inspired by a dream Guillermo del Toro had as a child: A faun would step out from behind a grandfather clock at midnight. The ruined town seen when the film opens is Belchite Zaragoza, in Aragón, Spain, destroyed during the Spanish Civil War.
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#20. The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948)
– Director: John Huston
– Metascore: 98
– IMDb user rating: 8.2
– Runtime: 126 minutes
Two Americans join with a prospector to search for gold in the Sierra Madre mountains in Mexico. They find treasure but their good luck is threatened by greed and bandits. The movie won three Oscars—best actor in a supporting role, best director, and best screenplay—and was nominated for best picture.
#19. Pépé le Moko (1937)
– Director: Julien Duvivier
– Metascore: 98
– IMDb user rating: 7.7
– Runtime: 94 minutes
Pepe le Moko takes refuge in the casbah of Algiers, from the police, from rivals hoping to vanquish him, and from women who want him. Homesick and trapped, he is lured out by a Parisian beauty. A BBC documentary reported that the film was an inspiration for Graham Greene’s “The Third Man.”
#18. Touch of Evil (1958)
– Director: Orson Welles
– Metascore: 99
– IMDb user rating: 8.0
– Runtime: 95 minutes
This film noir set on the Mexican border includes kidnapping, murder, and corruption. Janet Leigh’s agent rejected the part for her without consulting her because of the low pay, but she took it after receiving a letter from Orson Welles. Charlton Heston regretted not giving the Mexican drug enforcement officer whom he played an accent. “I took the easy answer: ‘He’s very well educated, mostly in the U.S., he comes from a bilingual family; he speaks perfect English,’” he wrote in his autobiography. “That was lazy of me, and wrong. No one speaks perfect English, and no one not raised speaking it is totally without an accent.”
#17. Moonlight (2016)
– Director: Barry Jenkins
– Metascore: 99
– IMDb user rating: 7.4
– Runtime: 111 minutes
The story tracks three periods of an African American man’s life: his adolescence, mid-teenage years and young adulthood. The three actors who played Chiron never met during production, according to the director. The movie is based on a play by MacArthur Fellow Tarell Alvin McCraney, “In Moonlight Black Boys Look Blue,” which had not been produced.
#16. City Lights (1931)
– Director: Charles Chaplin
– Metascore: 99
– IMDb user rating: 8.5
– Runtime: 87 minutes
This is another Charlie Chaplin classic, in which a tramp falls in love with a blind flower girl and helps her get money for an operation that could restore her sight. Winston Churchill visited the set and Chaplin made a short movie with him. Albert Einstein attended the opening in Los Angeles, while George Bernard Shaw was at the premiere in London.
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#15. Army of Shadows (1969)
– Director: Jean-Pierre Melville
– Metascore: 99
– IMDb user rating: 8.2
– Runtime: 145 minutes
A story of resistance fighters in Nazi-occupied France, this movie offers a clear-eyed look at what it was like to fight the Germans and collaborators. The head writer and co-director were veterans of the resistance. The director hired dancers for the scene of German soldiers marching down the Champs Elysees to get the correct look.
#14. The Night of the Hunter (1955)
– Director: Charles Laughton
– Metascore: 99
– IMDb user rating: 8.0
– Runtime: 92 minutes
A widow’s children resist telling their mother’s new husband, a preacher, where their father hid the $10,000 he stole. A serial killer, Dutch-born Harry Powers, was the inspiration for the character of the preacher. Charles Laughton wrote in Esquire of Robert Mitchum, who played the preacher: “All this tough talk is a blind, you know. He’s a literate, gracious, kind man, with wonderful manners, and he speaks beautifully—when he wants to. He’s a tender man and a very great gentleman. You know, he’s really terribly shy.”
#13. Fanny and Alexander (1982)
– Director: Ingmar Bergman
– Metascore: 100
– IMDb user rating: 8.1
– Runtime: 188 minutes
Viewers meet the Ekdahl clan through the eyes of 10-year-old Alexander in a movie that has been described as Ingmar Bergman’s most autobiographical and his goodbye to cinema. The children grow up in a wealthy and loving family, but after their father’s death, their mother marries a bishop with whom Alexander has a strained relationship.
#12. Sweet Smell of Success (1957)
– Director: Alexander Mackendrick
– Metascore: 100
– IMDb user rating: 8.0
– Runtime: 96 minutes
A Broadway columnist, J.J. Hunsecker, convinces a press agent to break up his sister’s romance. New York City police detective Eddie Egan, the inspiration for Gene Hackman’s ‘Popeye’ Doyle in “The French Connection,” makes a return appearance. Lt. Harry Kello, a narcotics officer, is based on Egan.
#11. Notorious (1946)
– Director: Alfred Hitchcock
– Metascore: 100
– IMDb user rating: 7.9
– Runtime: 102 minutes
In this post wartime drama, a woman is asked to spy on Nazis in South Africa. Director Alfred Hitchcock approached Nobel Prize-winner Robert Millikan about how to make an atomic bomb. Millikan would not say but agreed that the uranium could fit in a wine bottle.
#10. Three Colors: Red (1994)
– Director: Krzysztof Kieslowski
– Metascore: 100
– IMDb user rating: 8.1
– Runtime: 99 minutes
In this romantic drama, a retired judge is found to be invading people’s privacy and listening in on their phone calls. The movie is part of a trilogy, with the others titled “Blue”and “White.” The director asked Irène Jacob if she had ever wanted a different name and she did: Valentine. It became the name of her character.
#9. The Conformist (1970)
– Director: Bernardo Bertolucci
– Metascore: 100
– IMDb user rating: 8.0
– Runtime: 113 minutes
This political drama involves an Italian fascist sympathizer who is trying to order the assassination of his former teacher. A phone number used in the film is that of Jean-Luc Godard, whom Bernardo Bertolucci admires. Bertolucci first considered Brigitte Bardot for the character of Anna Quadri, before casting Dominique Sanda.
#8. Boyhood (2014)
– Director: Richard Linklater
– Metascore: 100
– IMDb user rating: 7.9
– Runtime: 165 minutes
The film looks at the life of a boy named Mason, played by Ellar Coltrane, from childhood until he begins college, including scenes of family dinners, graduations, and the other milestones. Ethan Hawke and Patricia Arquette play his parents. The movie was 12 years in the making and in an interview with The Guardian, Linklater described Coltrane this way: “Ellar was the kind who was going to be his own guy, he had not come out of a cookie cutter.”
#7. Casablanca (1942)
– Director: Michael Curtiz
– Metascore: 100
– IMDb user rating: 8.5
– Runtime: 102 minutes
This classic features Rick Blaine, an expatriate cafe owner played by Humphrey Bogart, and his former lover, Ingrid Bergman, who is trying to flee Casablanca with her husband at the beginning of World War II. The movie includes Rick’s memorable line, “Here’s looking at you, kid,” and the song, “As Time Goes By,” played by Dooley Wilson as Sam. Casablanca won three Oscars for best picture, best director, and best screenplay.
#6. The Leopard (1963)
– Director: Luchino Visconti
– Metascore: 100
– IMDb user rating: 8.0
– Runtime: 186 minutes
In the midst of social disruption in Sicily in the 1860s, the Prince of Salina, or the Leopard, tries to hold on to his position. As his fortunes decline, a former peasant, Don Calogero Sedara, becomes wealthy. The director was disappointed that Burt Lancaster was cast as the prince, but after the men had a public confrontation, he changed his mind. Visconti had wanted Laurence Olivier for the part.
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#5. The Godfather (1972)
– Director: Francis Ford Coppola
– Metascore: 100
– IMDb user rating: 9.2
– Runtime: 175 minutes
“The Godfather” is the first of Francis Ford Coppola’s three films about the Corleone crime family in New York. As the series begins, Vito Corleone is still the godfather of the operation and a generational dispute erupts over whether to traffick drugs. Meanwhile his youngest son, Michael, a decorated World War II veteran, tries to steer clear of the family’s criminal operations. Marlon Brando used cotton wool to stuff his cheeks prior to his audition, so that Don Corleone would “look like a bulldog.” For the filming, he wore a mouthpiece, which is showcased at the American Museum of the Moving Image in Queens, New York.
#4. Citizen Kane (1941)
– Director: Orson Welles
– Metascore: 100
– IMDb user rating: 8.3
– Runtime: 119 minutes
The final word from newspaper magnate, Charles Foster Kane, is one the best known in film history: rosebud. A reporter works to decipher its meaning and to illuminate Kane’s life. The movie was a failure with audiences at first, and booed at the 1941 Academy Awards ceremony, but then was re-released in the 1950s.
#3. Journey to Italy (1954)
– Director: Roberto Rossellini
– Metascore: 100
– IMDb user rating: 7.4
– Runtime: 97 minutes
This drama starring Ingrid Bergman features an unhappily married couple on vacation in Naples. The husband is played by George Sanders, who in his autobiography wrote that he found making this movie to be exasperating. He found the director, Roberto Rossellini, to be more interested in scuba diving. The hotel where the couple stays was featured once in “The Sopranos.”
#2. Lawrence of Arabia (1962)
– Director: David Lean
– Metascore: 100
– IMDb user rating: 8.3
– Runtime: 228 minutes
“Lawrence of Arabia” is an account of T.E. Lawrence, who has been described by biographer Scott Anderson as a “young, bashful Oxford scholar who rode into battle at the head of an Arab army and changed history.” He united the troops during World War I to fight the Turks; many Arab countries banned the film but in Egypt, Omar Sharif organized a viewing for President Gamal Abdel Nasser and it went on to be hit there.
#1. Au Hasard Balthazar (1966)
– Director: Robert Bresson
– Metascore: 100
– IMDb user rating: 7.9
– Runtime: 95 minutes
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100 best dramas of all time, according to critics
This compilation of the 100 best movie dramas of all time shows the deep richness of films made since the beginning of the last century, from countries across the globe.
Stacker compiled data on all feature-length dramas with at least seven critic reviews through Metacritic and ranked them according to Metascore, with ties broken internally by Metacritic, where the data goes further than what’s presented online. Data is from November 2022.
The top picks come from the United States, Europe, and Asia, and run the gamut from silent Soviet movies to animated features such as “Dumbo.” The collection continues with crime-heavy films ranging from “Reversal of Fortune,” covering the murder trial of Claus von Bülow, to dramas tackling war, such as “The Hurt Locker.”
Charlie Chaplin’s genius shines through without dialogue even as talkies were beginning to make their appearance in such releases as “City Lights” and “Modern Times,” which considered the social and economic effects of the then-new assembly lines. Among the more current films, 2020’s “Nomadland” takes an updated look at some of those same issues—in this case, the uncertainty of today’s economy, which leaves older Americans scrambling for work. The character played by Frances McDormand is left rudderless after the gypsum plant in her hometown closes.
A group of Chinese and Japanese releases made the list, some by the noted director Akira Kurosawa. He described his “Rashomon” as a reflection of life, where meanings are sometimes unclear. His “Seven Samurai” merged the characteristics of American Westerns with Japanese traditions such as the swordplay drama.
Westerns made in the United States looked at some fundamental questions of the country, including the meaning of law and democracy and the still-open question of the place of guns in our society. Other movies on the list focus on love, greed, and fear—emotions that know no boundaries and are common to all of our lives.
Read on to find out which of the films you’ve seen and whether you agree with critics.
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#100. The Magnificent Ambersons (1942)
– Director: Orson Welles
– Metascore: 93
– Runtime: 88 minutes
In this movie about the dwindling fortune of a wealthy Midwestern family, a woman is kept from the man she loves by her heir. RKO executives decided they needed to cut the film and redo the ending, and chopped 43 minutes while director Orson Welles was in Brazil. Welles later lamented, “They destroyed ‘Ambersons’ and they destroyed me.” The search is still on for the missing footage, as fans have long clamored for a look at the original print, with Welles’ more downbeat ending.
#99. Reversal of Fortune (1990)
– Director: Barbet Schroeder
– Metascore: 93
– Runtime: 111 minutes
This film tells the story of the urbane, Danish-born Claus von Bülow, who was accused of trying to kill his wealthy socialite wife, Sunny von Bülow, in their Newport mansion by giving her an overdose of insulin. He is found guilty but his conviction is overturned on appeal. He is represented by Alan Dershowitz, who has frequently been in the news during the last few years as an ardent defender of former President Donald Trump. Jeremy Irons won an Oscar for Best Actor for his portrayal of von Bülow. Sunny von Bülow lived until 2008, never awakening from her coma.
#98. Call Me by Your Name (2017)
– Director: Luca Guadagnino
– Metascore: 93
– Runtime: 132 minutes
This film tells the story of a romance between a teenager and an older man working for the boy’s father in Italy in the 1980s. Before the movie was shot, there was only one rehearsal, of a scene in which the men roll on the grass making out. During a scene in which the men hike to a waterfall, they shout with excitement, but in truth they were walking through stinging nettle that covered the mountainside.
#97. Petite Maman (2021)
– Director: Céline Sciamma
– Metascore: 93
– Runtime: 72 minutes
“Petite Maman” is a French fantasy drama written and directed by Céline Sciamma. The film follows 8-year-old Nelly (played by Joséphine Sanz) as she comes to terms with the death of her maternal grandmother by bonding with her mother. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg: How the two connect is what makes this movie fall into the fantasy category.
#96. The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (1972)
– Director: Luis Buñuel
– Metascore: 93
– Runtime: 102 minutes
“The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie” can be described as a plotless series of dreams of six middle-class people trying to have a meal together. It includes a few of what director Luis Buñuel said were his recurring dreams, such as preparing to take the stage to act in a role he doesn’t know, and following his dead cousin into a house full of cobwebs after meeting him on the street.
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#95. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000)
– Director: Ang Lee
– Metascore: 94
– Runtime: 120 minutes
Ang Lee’s epic tells the story of a young Chinese warrior who steals a sword, complete with martial arts battles and stunning scenery. He described the movie as “a dream of China…that probably never existed.” The actor Ziyi Zhang did not have any martial arts training, but drew on her dance experience to help learn the moves.
#94. La La Land (2016)
– Director: Damien Chazelle
– Metascore: 94
– Runtime: 128 minutes
An actor, Mia, played by Emma Stone, and a pianist, Sebastian, played by Ryan Gosling, fall in love in Los Angeles. Gosling took piano lessons two hours a day, five days a week for three months to learn to play the music by heart. One of his own auditions sparked the scene where a casting director interrupts Mia’s performance to take a phone call.
#93. Elevator to the Gallows (1961)
– Director: Louis Malle
– Metascore: 94
– Runtime: 91 minutes
A businessman murders his employer, who is also the husband of his mistress. The score was improvised by Miles Davis, who varied his tunes even between takes.
#92. Early Summer (1951)
– Director: Yasujirō Ozu
– Metascore: 94
– Runtime: 125 minutes
Japanese director Yasujirō Ozu began making movies in the 1920s, dabbling in genres from comedy to drama. But it was after World War II that his films began to share similar concepts, grappling with post-war Japan and loss, multi-generational relationships, and women’s rights. “Early Summer” is considered one of Ozu’s most ambitious projects and ties the themes he explored throughout his career into one story.
#91. The French Connection (1971)
– Director: William Friedkin
– Metascore: 94
– Runtime: 104 minutes
The movie is based on a heroin-smuggling case that actually took place in New York City in the 1960s, and the lead characters were inspired by two real-life detectives, Eddie Egan and Sonny Grasso. “I went around for three months with Egan and Grasso, the two ‘French Connection’ cops, and the film is mostly made up of stuff that I saw them do, as well as what they told me happened in the real case,” star Gene Hackman told Yahoo! in 2021.
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#90. Marriage Story (2019)
– Director: Noah Baumbach
– Metascore: 94
– Runtime: 137 minutes
This drama tells the story of a difficult divorce involving a theater couple, which critics called tender, funny, and sad, all at once. New Yorker critic Richard Brody described “Marriage Story” as a movie of “[dueling] monologues, spoken and unspoken: two hours of sharp, painful, witty, and elegant talk that is nonetheless rooted in the impossibility of communication.”
#89. Carlos (2010)
– Director: Olivier Assayas
– Metascore: 94
– Runtime: 334 minutes
This movie—which originally aired as a TV miniseries—features Ilich Ramírez Sánchez, also known as Carlos the Jackal, a Venezuelan revolutionary who founded a global terrorist network and raided the 1975 Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries meeting. He was a Marxist dedicated to the Palestinian cause. Roger Ebert wrote that for Carlos, “his religion and his cause were the same, and they were himself. This is a terrifying portrait of an egomaniac who demands absolute obedience, and craves it even more when his power and relevance are drained away.”
#88. Chimes at Midnight (1967)
– Director: Orson Welles
– Metascore: 94
– Runtime: 115 minutes
This comedy drama was directed by Orson Welles, who also stars as William Shakespeare’s Sir John Falstaff. The movie was based on a play written by Welles that compressed both parts of Shakespeare’s “Henry IV” play, as well as “Henry V,” “Henry VI,” “Richard III,” and “The Merry Wives of Windsor,” into one show.
#87. Chess of the Wind (1976)
– Director: Mohammad Reza Aslani
– Metascore: 94
– Runtime: 93 minutes
The story behind “Chess of the Wind” may be just as exceptional as the film itself. Originally released in 1976, the Iranian movie was banned by the Islamic Republic following the 1979 Iranian Revolution. Upon its release, the Qajar Dynasty period piece was met with negative reception. It was considered lost until director Mohammad Reza Aslani’s son found a print of the film at a junk shop in 2014. In 2020, it was resurrected and released in several countries to glowing reviews.
#86. Apocalypse Now (1979)
– Director: Francis Ford Coppola
– Metascore: 94
– Runtime: 147 minutes
A secret mission plunges its soldiers into madness in this movie based loosely on Joseph Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness,” with Vietnam in 1970 substituted for the Congo. Rotten Tomatoes called it a “haunting, hallucinatory Vietnam War epic” that is “cinema at its most audacious and visionary.” For the movie’s 40th anniversary in 2019, Francis Ford Coppola re-edited it for what he called his final cut.
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#85. The Apartment (1960)
– Director: Billy Wilder
– Metascore: 94
– Runtime: 125 minutes
Inspired by the British romantic drama “Brief Encounter,” written by Noël Coward, “The Apartment” centers on C.C. Baxter, an insurance accountant and bachelor played by Jack Lemmon, who lets his bosses use his apartment for their affairs. When director and co-writer Billy Wilder saw “Brief Encounter,” he wondered about the unknown character who had lent the apartment for the extramarital affair.
#84. Meet Me in St. Louis (1945)
– Director: Vincente Minnelli
– Metascore: 94
– Runtime: 113 minutes
A musical comedy about young love, “Meet Me in St. Louis” stars Judy Garland as one of the Smith sisters, trying to date the shy boy next door. Garland and director Vincente Minnelli met on the set and were soon married. The movie premiered in St. Louis on Nov. 22, 1944.
#83. Schindler’s List (1993)
– Director: Steven Spielberg
– Metascore: 94
– Runtime: 195 minutes
The movie introduced the world to Oskar Schindler, a factory owner who saved 1,200 Jews from the Nazi concentration camps of World War II. He and his wife, Emilie, protected Jewish workers even as he made munitions for the Nazis. Schindler’s original list was found in 1999 in a suitcase hidden in the attic of a home in Hildesheim, Germany.
#82. Sideways (2004)
– Director: Alexander Payne
– Metascore: 94
– Runtime: 127 minutes
Two college friends, one of whom is about to marry, visit California’s wine country in this comedy that Roger Ebert called “surprisingly moving.” The unexpected star was pinot noir, the production of which had increased 170{5b4d37f3b561c14bd186647c61229400cd4722d6fb37730c64ddff077a6b66c6} by 2017, according to an NPR article. Winemakers called its newfound popularity the “Sideways” effect.
#81. Inside Out (2015)
– Directors: Pete Docter, Ronnie del Carmen
– Metascore: 94
– Runtime: 95 minutes
Riley moves from the Midwest to San Francisco to a new house and new school in this Pixar release that looks inside her mind, where Joy, Sadness, Fear, Disgust, and Anger reside as cartoon characters. “At one point, we fooled around with having 27 different emotions,” director Pete Docter told The Hollywood Reporter. Which emotions didn’t make the cut? Hope, Envy, Ennui, and Pride were among them. The movie ultimately won the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature Film.
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#80. The Wild Child (1970)
– Director: François Truffaut
– Metascore: 94
– Runtime: 83 minutes
This movie is based on a true story: A child who cannot speak, walk, read, or write is found in a forest outside Aveyron, France, in 1798. A doctor who observes him at an asylum realizes he is not deaf nor intellectually impaired, but has been deprived of human contact. Just as “The Wild Child” premiered, a girl was found in Los Angeles who had also been raised without human interaction. The doctors treating her attended a private viewing of the film.
#79. Grave of the Fireflies (1988)
– Director: Isao Takahata
– Metascore: 94
– Runtime: 89 minutes
A Japanese anime, “Grave of the Fireflies” was based on Akiyuki Nosaka’s 1967 short story of the same name. It tells the story of two orphans trying to get through the final months of World War II. Roger Ebert wrote that it belonged on any list of the greatest war films ever made. Director Isao Takahata himself lived through a terrible air attack on his hometown of Okayama.
#78. The Irishman (2019)
– Director: Martin Scorsese
– Metascore: 94
– Runtime: 209 minutes
In “The Irishman”—starring Robert De Niro, Al Pacino, and Joe Pesci—alleged Mafia hitman Frank Sheeran confesses to his crimes. The movie is based on the Sheeran biography “I Heard You Paint Houses,” whose title contains a double meaning. “The paint is the blood that supposedly gets on the floor when you shoot somebody,” Sheeran explains in the book.
#77. Mr. Turner (2014)
– Director: Mike Leigh
– Metascore: 94
– Runtime: 150 minutes
The movie recounts the last 25 years of the life of painter J.M.W. Turner, who died in 1851. Among his achievements? He once had himself tied to the mast of a ship before he painted a snow storm. He also turned down 100,000 pounds for his work to instead donate it to Great Britain, even though Queen Victoria detested his work. The actor who played Turner, Timothy Spall, took private art lessons from a British artist for about two years to prepare for the role.
#76. Pulp Fiction (1994)
– Director: Quentin Tarantino
– Metascore: 94
– Runtime: 154 minutes
Two hitmen look for a suitcase stolen from their boss in this movie with a roster of stars: Uma Thurman, Bruce Willis, John Travolta, Samuel L. Jackson, and others. It won the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay. Seven years earlier, Tarantino had been a broke 23-year-old high-school dropout who acted part-time, according to Vanity Fair.
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#75. The Manchurian Candidate (1962)
– Director: John Frankenheimer
– Metascore: 94
– Runtime: 126 minutes
Frank Sinatra and Janet Leigh star in this political thriller about a former prisoner of war who is brainwashed into becoming an assassin for communists. The movie was not released in many of the former “Iron Curtain” countries until after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1993, because of the political nature of the plot.
#74. The Servant (1964)
– Director: Joseph Losey
– Metascore: 94
– Runtime: 116 minutes
When a British aristocrat hires a valet, the result is a tense psychological battle. The director, Joseph Losey, was at one time blacklisted in Hollywood, and moved abroad to keep working.
#73. Taxi Driver (1976)
– Director: Martin Scorsese
– Metascore: 94
– Runtime: 114 minutes
Robert De Niro plays a disturbed Vietnam veteran who drives a taxi cab overnight in New York City, alongside Jodie Foster as an underage prostitute. Vietnam Veterans of America called De Niro’s character “perhaps Hollywood’s most psychotic Vietnam veteran (and that’s saying something).” Screenwriter Paul Schrader told The Hollywood Reporter that he thought of the cab as a “metal coffin that moved through the city with this kid who seems to be in the middle of society but is in fact all alone.” Scorsese and others squatted in the back of the cab to film, while the sound man was in the trunk.
#72. 45 Years (2015)
– Director: Andrew Haigh
– Metascore: 94
– Runtime: 91 minutes
A couple is about to celebrate their 45th wedding anniversary when the husband receives some disturbing news about an old love that sends their marriage into a tailspin. It is based on David Constantine’s short story,”In Another Country,” in which the body of a man’s former girlfriend is found perfectly preserved in the Alps from 50 years earlier.
#71. The Searchers (1956)
– Director: John Ford
– Metascore: 94
– Runtime: 119 minutes
A veteran of the Civil War, played by John Wayne, sets off to rescue his niece, who has been abducted by Comanches. Buddy Holly and drummer J.J. Allison saw the movie and used Wayne’s trademark line, “That’ll be the day,” for their 1957 album.
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#70. The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962)
– Director: John Ford
– Metascore: 94
– Runtime: 123 minutes
A senator, famous for shooting the man who terrorized a town, returns for his friend’s funeral in this Western that features two men in love with the same woman. The New Yorker called it the “greatest American political movie,” and it delves into many of America’s fundamental principles around democracy, a free press, and the ongoing debate over guns.
#69. Dunkirk (2017)
– Director: Christopher Nolan
– Metascore: 94
– Runtime: 106 minutes
During a desperate World War II battle, Allied soldiers from Great Britain, Belgium, and France are surrounded by Germans and forced to evacuate from the beach in Dunkirk, where they are trapped. The movie won three Oscars for film editing, sound editing, and sound mixing. Approximately 30 survivors attended the opening in London and found the soundtrack to be louder than the battle.
#68. Before Midnight (2013)
– Director: Richard Linklater
– Metascore: 94
– Runtime: 109 minutes
This is the third in a series starring Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy, a couple who meet in their 20s and now are at the end of a family vacation in Greece. The romantic drama began with “Before Sunrise” in 1995, and was followed by “Before Sunset” in 2004. The movie is dedicated to Amy Lehrhaupt, who inspired the first film. She and Richard Linklater had lost touch and he learned in 2010 that she had died only a few weeks before he started shooting “Before Sunrise.”
#67. Carol (2015)
– Director: Todd Haynes
– Metascore: 94
– Runtime: 118 minutes
Based on a Patricia Highsmith novel, “Carol” is the story of a young aspiring photographer who has a love affair with an older woman in New York City in the 1950s. As the older woman, Carol Aird, leaves her marriage, her husband questions her fitness as a mother. Carol was inspired by Virginia Kent Catherwood, a Philadelphia socialite with whom Highsmith had a romance in the 1940s.
#66. Aftersun (2022)
– Director: Charlotte Wells
– Metascore: 95
– Runtime: 102 minutes
“Aftersun” is Charlotte Wells’ directorial debut, and it’s a gem. The movie shares the story of 11-year-old Sophie (Frankie Corio) and her father Calum (Paul Mescal) taking a trip to Turkey, and her reflection on the moment and her relationship with her dad 20 years later. When speaking about the story’s inspiration, Wells, who lost her father as a teenager, said: “It’s not autobiographical, per se, but I think of it as being emotionally autobiographical. And, over the course of writing, I got more and more of myself into both characters.”
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#65. La Dolce Vita (1961)
– Director: Federico Fellini
– Metascore: 95
– Runtime: 174 minutes
“La Dolce Vita” portrays a week in the life of an engaged tabloid journalist (played by Marcello Mastroianni) living in Rome, and the beautiful women he pursues, an heiress and a superstar actor. The scene at the Trevi Fountain was shot in January—Mastroianni was drunk because he had downed an entire bottle of vodka to try to stay warm.
#64. Double Indemnity (1944)
– Director: Billy Wilder
– Metascore: 95
– Runtime: 107 minutes
This film noir features murder and insurance fraud, and an insurance representative seduced into the scheme. The plot was based on the 1920s murder trial of Ruth Snyder, which author James M. Cain turned into a novel. She was later executed in the electric chair in Sing Sing Correctional Facility in New York and was photographed by the New York Daily News as she died. It was the first photograph of an execution in an electric chair.
#63. A Separation (2011)
– Director: Asghar Farhadi
– Metascore: 95
– Runtime: 123 minutes
Set in Tehran, “A Separation” is the first Iranian film to win an Oscar, for Best Foreign Language Film. It follows a bank employee named Nader, whose wife leaves him when he refuses to move abroad to make a better life for their daughter. Nader hires a woman named Razieh to care for his father who has Alzheimer’s disease. When he finds his father tied to the bed, Nader shoves Razieh, who is pregnant and loses her baby when she falls outside the apartment. Her unstable husband takes Nader to court, though there are many doubts about what caused her miscarriage.
#62. Zero Dark Thirty (2012)
– Director: Kathryn Bigelow
– Metascore: 95
– Runtime: 157 minutes
“Zero Dark Thirty” tells the story of the hunt for Osama bin Laden. The movie was controversial because of its treatment of the CIA’s torture of terrorism suspects during the Bush administration. In an article titled “Zero Conscience in ‘Zero Dark Thirty,'” The New Yorker’s Jane Mayer accused director Kathryn Bigelow of milking “the U.S. torture program for drama while sidestepping the political and ethical debate that it provoked.”
#61. Anatomy of a Murder (1959)
– Director: Otto Preminger
– Metascore: 95
– Runtime: 161 minutes
When an Army lieutenant is accused of murdering a bartender, his defense is temporary insanity. Then more problems arise. The police surgeon finds no evidence and a lawyer discovers the lieutenant is exceedingly jealous and his wife is a flirt.
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#60. The Hurt Locker (2009)
– Director: Kathryn Bigelow
– Metascore: 95
– Runtime: 131 minutes
Set in Iraq, this film looks at an elite squad that disarms bombs. It earned director Kathryn Bigelow an Oscar, making her the first woman to achieve the honor. The movie’s title comes from Vietnam War era military slang meaning a serious injury, whether physical or emotional. Soldiers in Iraq talked of explosions sending one to the hurt locker.
#59. Amour (2012)
– Director: Michael Haneke
– Metascore: 95
– Runtime: 127 minutes
George and Anne Laurent are retired music teachers whose love is challenged when Anne has a stroke. At 84, Emmanuelle Riva became the oldest person ever nominated for Best Actress at the Oscars, besting Jessica Tandy, who received the nomination at age 80 for “Driving Miss Daisy.”
#58. Rocks (2021)
– Director: Sarah Gavron
– Metascore: 95
– Runtime: 93 minutes
This coming-of-age movie is set in London, where a teenager takes care of her younger brother after their mother leaves. Critic Carlos Aguilar wrote in the Los Angeles Times that it “differentiates itself from other recent explorations of modern girlhood set amid immigrant communities.” It won awards from the British Independent Film Awards and at the Brussels and Dublin film festivals.
#57. Portrait of a Lady on Fire (2019)
– Director: Céline Sciamma
– Metascore: 95
– Runtime: 122 minutes
A painter is commissioned to create a wedding portrait of a young woman at the end of the 18th century in Brittany. The portrait is meant to be completed in secret, but a romance develops between the painter and her subject. In real life, director Céline Sciamma and Adèle Haenel, who plays the bride-to-be Heloise, are former lovers who parted on good terms.
#56. My Fair Lady (1964)
– Director: George Cukor
– Metascore: 95
– Runtime: 170 minutes
Rex Harrison and Audrey Hepburn star in the musical inspired by George Bernard Shaw’s “Pygmalion,” in which Professor Henry Higgins bets that he can teach Cockney flower seller Eliza Doolittle to speak properly. Hepburn had expected to sing her own numbers, and was disappointed when the filmmakers insisted on dubbing her. Marni Nixon sang most of her songs.
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#55. The Social Network (2010)
– Director: David Fincher
– Metascore: 95
– Runtime: 120 minutes
Mark Zuckerberg creates what will become Facebook as a Harvard University student, but is sued by the Winklevoss twins and Divya Narendra, who claim he stole their idea. Zuckerberg later said that the movie got his clothes right, even if there were other inaccuracies.
#54. Don’t Look Now (1973)
– Director: Nicolas Roeg
– Metascore: 95
– Runtime: 110 minutes
“Don’t Look Now” is as much a thriller as it is a drama. The movie follows the story of a couple mourning the accidental death of their daughter. While on a trip to Venice, they meet a clairvoyant who says their daughter is trying to contact them and warn them of danger.
#53. L’Argent (1984)
– Director: Robert Bresson
– Metascore: 95
– Runtime: 85 minutes
A fake 500-franc note is passed person to person until the situation turns tragic and ends in murder in “L’Argent.” The movie is the last film directed by Robert Bresson, a French director known for his minimalist style that was more popular with critics than theatergoers. He retired after failing to complete an adaptation of the Book of Genesis.
#52. The Bride of Frankenstein (1935)
– Director: James Whale
– Metascore: 95
– Runtime: 75 minutes
Dr. Frankenstein and his monster are not dead but have survived, and Dr. Frankenstein is forced by the mad Dr. Pretorius to create a woman to be the monster’s companion. She is played by Elsa Lanchester, pulling double duty as Mary Shelley in the movie’s opening.
#51. Lovers Rock (2020)
– Director: Steve McQueen
– Metascore: 95
– Runtime: 70 minutes
“Lovers Rock” looks at Black life in Britain in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s, following a woman named Martha attending a party. The name refers to a music genre, a romantic version of reggae created by British-born children of Caribbean immigrants. The house parties drew young people who were not welcome at the white clubs, and the Janet Kay song “Silly Games” is at its center. The movie is the second in Steve McQueen’s “Small Axe” series.
#50. Modern Times (1936)
– Director: Charles Chaplin
– Metascore: 96
– Runtime: 87 minutes
Charlie Chaplin’s Little Tramp character takes a job as a factory worker, trying to live in modern industrial society, but failing to keep up on the assembly line. He is mistaken for a communist when he waves a red flag he picks up, is arrested, and meets The Gamine in the police van.
#49. Gravity (2013)
– Director: Alfonso Cuarón
– Metascore: 96
– Runtime: 91 minutes
In “Gravity,” astronauts are working on the Hubble Space Telescope when disaster strikes: A Russian satellite explodes and sends debris ripping into the telescope and the space shuttle. The astronauts, played by Sandra Bullock and George Clooney, are marooned and struggling to survive.
#48. The Battle of Algiers (1966)
– Director: Gillo Pontecorvo
– Metascore: 96
– Runtime: 121 minutes
The people of Algiers are fighting for independence from France, with the National Liberation Front or FLN leading the resistance. The violence increases with torture and bombings. The story is mostly told through two figures, Ali La Pointe, a real Algerian revolutionary, on one side, and on the other, Colonel Mathieu, a composite character of multiple French counterinsurgency officers.
#47. Sansho the Bailiff (1955)
– Director: Kenji Mizoguchi
– Metascore: 96
– Runtime: 124 minutes
#46. Mean Streets (1973)
– Director: Martin Scorsese
– Metascore: 96
– Runtime: 112 minutes
The streets of New York City’s Little Italy are the setting for this crime film featuring a small-time gangster who works for his uncle making collections. This Scorsese classic stars Harvey Keitel and Robert De Niro.
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#45. Children of Paradise (1945)
– Director: Marcel Carné
– Metascore: 96
– Runtime: 163 minutes
“Children of Paradise” tells the story of an actor and the men who love her, including a mime who comes to her aid when she is unfairly accused of pickpocketing a watch. It was shot during the Nazi occupation in Paris and Nice, with the designer and the composer both in hiding because they were Jewish. The Nazis had banned all movies over 90 minutes, so Marcel Carné made two movies and showed them together after France was liberated.
#44. The Grapes of Wrath (1940)
– Director: John Ford
– Metascore: 96
– Runtime: 129 minutes
Based on John Steinbeck’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, “Grapes of Wrath” follows a poor family forced off their land in the Midwest, who travel to California during the Great Depression.
#43. Nashville (1975)
– Director: Robert Altman
– Metascore: 96
– Runtime: 160 minutes
This drama follows a number of people preparing for a political convention for an independent candidate who wants to ban lawyers from Congress. The result is five days of Nashville country and gospel music. The film was largely improvised, and many of the actors wrote and performed their own songs.
#41. Manchester by the Sea (2016)
– Director: Kenneth Lonergan
– Metascore: 96
– Runtime: 137 minutes
A loner returns to his hometown from Boston after his brother dies to take care of his 16-year-old nephew, but is haunted by an unspeakable tragedy from his past. The movie takes place along the Massachusetts coast.
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#40. 12 Years a Slave (2013)
– Director: Steve McQueen
– Metascore: 96
– Runtime: 134 minutes
Solomon Northup is a free man from upstate New York, but he is abducted and sold into slavery before the Civil War. The movie marked the feature film debut for Lupita Nyong’o, who won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress.
#39. Rosemary’s Baby (1968)
– Director: Roman Polanski
– Metascore: 96
– Runtime: 137 minutes
Young couple Rosemary (Mia Farrow) and Guy (John Cassavetes) want to have a child but Rosemary is convinced she is the victim of a satanic plot by her elderly neighbors and her husband. The movie was Roman Polanski’s Hollywood debut. Its star, Farrow, was served divorce papers by Frank Sinatra while on the set.
#38. 12 Angry Men (1957)
– Director: Sidney Lumet
– Metascore: 96
– Runtime: 96 minutes
The foreman of a jury holds out on a verdict, trying to force his fellow jurors to reconsider the case. The movie, which examines group dynamics as the jury deliberates and jurors change their view, is used by professors in MBA programs.
#37. The Shop Around the Corner (1940)
– Director: Ernst Lubitsch
– Metascore: 96
– Runtime: 99 minutes
This romantic comedy features a love story between two gift shop employees in Budapest who dislike each other but are actually falling for each other as anonymous pen pals. “The Shop Around the Corner” later inspired the 1998 rom-com “You’ve Got Mail,” starring Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan.
#36. Ran (1985)
– Director: Akira Kurosawa
– Metascore: 96
– Runtime: 162 minutes
The setting is medieval Japan and an elderly warlord turns over his empire to his three sons, only to have them turn on each other. The story is loosely based on Shakespeare’s “King Lear.”
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#35. Parasite (2019)
– Director: Bong Joon-ho
– Metascore: 96
– Runtime: 132 minutes
In this film about class in Korea, the destitute Kim family moves in on the wealthy Park family after the son begins to tutor the Park daughter. Soon all of the Kims have been hired, but when the Parks go camping for a weekend, the story takes a strange turn. “Parasite” won four Academy Awards: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Original Screenplay, and Best International Feature Film. In an interview with The Atlantic, Bong Joon-ho described tutoring for a rich family while he was in college, thinking it would be fun if his friends could infiltrate the house one at a time.
#34. Roma (2018)
– Director: Alfonso Cuarón
– Metascore: 96
– Runtime: 135 minutes
“Roma” explores the life of a maid in the 1970s, working for a middle-class family in Mexico. When the husband runs off with his mistress, the wife asks the maid, Cleo, to join the family on a vacation. Meanwhile, Cleo has learned she is pregnant. “Roma” was based on Liboria “Libo” Rodríguez, the nanny who cared for director Alfonso Cuarón’s family when he was growing up.
#33. Dumbo (1941)
– Directors: Samuel Armstrong, Norman Ferguson, Wilfred Jackson, Jack Kinney, Bill Roberts, Ben Sharpsteen, John Elliotte
– Metascore: 96
– Runtime: 64 minutes
Dumbo is a young elephant who is made fun of because of his oversized ears, but all of that ends when his friend shows him he can fly. Dumbo was so popular that Time magazine planned to put him on its cover as the “Mammal of the Year” in a play on “Man of the Year,” but when Japan attacked Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, those plans were scrapped. Dumbo was replaced by Gen. Douglas MacArthur, but he still appeared inside in the cinema section.
#32. American Graffiti (1973)
– Director: George Lucas
– Metascore: 97
– Runtime: 110 minutes
“American Graffiti” salutes the early 1960s, featuring rock ‘n’ roll, hot rods, and four teenage friends contemplating their futures. Inspired by George Lucas’ upbringing in Modesto, California, this coming-of-age movie was his second feature film.
#31. A Streetcar Named Desire (1951)
– Director: Elia Kazan
– Metascore: 97
– Runtime: 122 minutes
Based on Tennessee Williams’ Pulitzer Prize-winning play of the same name, “A Streetcar Named Desire” stars Vivien Leigh as Blanche DuBois, a high school teacher who moves in with her sister when she loses her home to creditors, and clashes with her brother-in-law. The Catholic Legion of Decency threatened the film with a condemned rating, forcing cuts, and Kazan’s full version wasn’t seen until 1993.
#30. Battleship Potemkin (1926)
– Director: Sergei M. Eisenstein
– Metascore: 97
– Runtime: 66 minutes
The setting is the Russian Revolution, and the crew of the Battleship Potemkin revolts against the officers. Demonstrations break out in Odessa, resulting in a massacre. Some countries, including the United Kingdom and France, banned the movie not because of indecency, but because of fears that it would encourage sympathy for communism. The New Yorker called director Sergei M. Eisenstein cinema’s first modernist.
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#29. 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days (2008)
– Director: Cristian Mungiu
– Metascore: 97
– Runtime: 113 minutes
A woman helps a friend get an abortion in Romania in the 1980s, when abortions were illegal. Contraception was also illegal in the country under the regime of dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu, who tried to build his country through population growth, resulting in orphanages filled with unwanted children. The movie, despite widespread praise, failed to get an Oscar nomination and some critics suspected that was because of the subject.
#28. Gone with the Wind (1940)
– Directors: Victor Fleming, George Cukor, Sam Wood
– Metascore: 97
– Runtime: 238 minutes
This Southern classic of a romance between the manipulative Scarlett (Vivien Leigh) and Rhett Butler (Clark Gable) was set against the Civil War and Reconstruction. The film was based on the book by Margaret Mitchell about an antebellum South of plantations, including the movie’s beloved Tara. In 2020, HBO Max restored the movie, noting that it denied “the horrors of slavery” on which that world rested.
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#27. Quo Vadis, Aida? (2021)
– Director: Jasmila Žbanić
– Metascore: 97
– Runtime: 101 minutes
“Quo Vadis, Aida?” is a Bosnian film that dramatizes the heartbreaking events of the Srebrenica massacre, which saw the death of 7,000 Bosniak boys and men, through the eyes of a mother named Aida. “Quo Vadis, Aida?” was nominated for Best International Feature Film at the 93rd Academy Awards.
#26. Le Petit Soldat (1963)
– Director: Jean-Luc Godard
– Metascore: 97
– Runtime: 88 minutes
“Le Petit Soldat” looks at love across the political divide of Algeria, as a man and woman on opposite sides of the war for independence from France fall for one another. The movie, Jean-Luc Godard’s second after “Breathless,” was actually completed in 1960, but French censors delayed its release. They banned it for scenes of brutal methods.
#25. My Left Foot (1989)
– Director: Jim Sheridan
– Metascore: 97
– Runtime: 103 minutes
Christy Brown, an Irish man with cerebral palsy, learns to write and paint with his left foot, the only limb he can control. Despite a diagnosis after his birth that he is mentally impaired and should be placed in an institution, his mother sees his intelligence and talent. When he died in 1981, he had produced hundreds of paintings and had written four books of poetry, four novels, and a memoir.
#24. Jules and Jim (1962)
– Director: François Truffaut
– Metascore: 97
– Runtime: 105 minutes
A woman named Catherine chooses between two friends, Jules and Jim, both of whom fall in love with her before World War II in Paris. But after the war, in Germany, Catherine begins to love the other man. The novel that inspired the movie was based on the experiences of author Henri-Pierre Roche.
#23. All About Eve (1950)
– Director: Joseph L. Mankiewicz
– Metascore: 98
– Runtime: 138 minutes
An aging Broadway star takes a fan into her circle, unaware that the younger actor wants her career and her fiancé. Bette Davis and Gary Merrill, co-stars in the movie, fell in love during its filming and married a few weeks after it was finished. In a 1983 interview, Davis said being chosen for the film saved her career after a series of failures: “He resurrected me from the dead,” she said of director Joseph Mankiewicz.
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#22. Rashomon (1951)
– Director: Akira Kurosawa
– Metascore: 98
– Runtime: 88 minutes
A wife’s assault and the murder of her husband, a samurai, are described by three people at the trial: the woman herself, the samurai’s ghost, and a bandit who allegedly committed the crimes. Later, a priest, the woodcutter who found the body, and another man find shelter in what remains of a gatehouse called Rashomon and the story unfolds with twists.
#21. Pan’s Labyrinth (2006)
– Director: Guillermo del Toro
– Metascore: 98
– Runtime: 118 minutes
The stepdaughter of a ruthless Spanish army officer embraces a fantasy world in Spain in 1944. The faun in the movie was inspired by a dream director Guillermo del Toro had as a child: A faun would step out from behind his grandmother’s armoire at midnight. The ruined town seen when the film opens is Belchite, in Zaragoza, Spain, destroyed during the Spanish Civil War.
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#20. The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948)
– Director: John Huston
– Metascore: 98
– Runtime: 126 minutes
Two Americans join with a prospector to search for gold in the Sierra Madre mountains in Mexico. They find treasure but their good luck is threatened by greed and bandits. The movie won three Oscars—Best Actor in a Supporting Role, Best Director, and Best Screenplay—and was nominated for Best Picture.
#19. Pépé le Moko (1937)
– Director: Julien Duvivier
– Metascore: 98
– Runtime: 94 minutes
In “Pépé le Moko,” the title character takes refuge in the casbah of Algiers—from the police, from rivals hoping to vanquish him, and from women who want him. Homesick and trapped, he is lured out by a Parisian beauty. The film was an inspiration for Graham Greene’s “The Third Man.”
#18. Au hasard Balthazar (1966)
– Director: Robert Bresson
– Metascore: 98
– Runtime: 95 minutes
This film tells the story of a donkey, Balthazar, as he moves from one owner to another—some of whom are kind and some of whom mistreat him—and of his first owner, Marie. The farm girl also finds cruelty and beauty in her life. Director Robert Bresson said in an interview that he was moved to make the movie after reading Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s novel “The Idiot,” in which the main character talks of his fondness for donkeys.
#17. Seven Samurai (2002)
– Director: Akira Kurosawa
– Metascore: 98
– Runtime: 207 minutes
Another classic from Akira Kurosawa, “Seven Samurai” recounts the tale of a 16th-century village that hires warriors to protect the residents against bandits. BBC writer Anne Billson said that Kurosawa combined the conventions of the traditional Western with a melding of two Japanese genres, the swordplay film and the period drama.
#16. Touch of Evil (1958)
– Director: Orson Welles
– Metascore: 99
– Runtime: 95 minutes
This film noir set on the Mexican border includes kidnapping, murder, and corruption. Star Charlton Heston later wrote that he regretted not giving the Mexican drug enforcement officer whom he played an accent. “I took the easy answer: ‘He’s very well educated, mostly in the U.S., he comes from a bilingual family; he speaks perfect English,'” he wrote in his autobiography. “That was lazy of me, and wrong. No one speaks perfect English, and no one not raised speaking it is totally without an accent.”
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#15. Moonlight (2016)
– Director: Barry Jenkins
– Metascore: 99
– Runtime: 111 minutes
The story tracks three periods of Chiron’s life: his adolescence, his mid-teenage years, and finally young adulthood. The three actors who played Chiron barely even met during production, according to The Associated Press. The movie is based on a play by MacArthur Fellow Tarell Alvin McCraney, “In Moonlight Black Boys Look Blue,” which had not been produced.
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#14. City Lights (1931)
– Director: Charles Chaplin
– Metascore: 99
– Runtime: 87 minutes
This is another Charlie Chaplin classic, in which his signature character the Little Tramp falls in love with a blind flower girl and helps her get money for an operation that could restore her sight.
#13. The Night of the Hunter (1955)
– Director: Charles Laughton
– Metascore: 99
– Runtime: 92 minutes
A widow’s children resist telling their mother’s new husband, a preacher, where their father hid the $10,000 he stole. The preacher character was inspired by Dutch-born serial killer Harry Powers.
#12. Fanny and Alexander (1982)
– Director: Ingmar Bergman
– Metascore: 100
– Runtime: 188 minutes
Viewers meet the Ekdahl family through the eyes of 10-year-old Alexander in a movie that has been described as Ingmar Bergman’s most autobiographical, and his goodbye to cinema. The children grow up in a wealthy and loving family, but after their father’s death, their mother marries a bishop with whom Alexander has a strained relationship.
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#11. Sweet Smell of Success (1957)
– Director: Alexander Mackendrick
– Metascore: 100
– Runtime: 96 minutes
A Broadway columnist, J.J. Hunsecker, convinces a press agent to break up his sister’s romance in “Sweet Smell of Success.” The movie was initially poorly received, but appreciation for it has increased over time. In fact, “Breaking Bad” creator Vince Gilligan named two episodes in the first season of the series “Cat’s in the Bag …” and “…And the Bag’s in the River,” direct quotes from “Sweet Smell of Success,” which is one of Gilligan’s favorite movies.
#10. Notorious (1946)
– Director: Alfred Hitchcock
– Metascore: 100
– Runtime: 102 minutes
In this post-wartime drama, a woman is asked to spy on Nazis in South Africa. To clarify a plot point, writer Ben Hecht and director Alfred Hitchcock approached Nobel Prize-winning physicist Robert Millikan about how to make an atomic bomb. Millikan would not say but agreed that the uranium could fit in a wine bottle.
#9. Three Colors: Red (1994)
– Director: Krzysztof Kieślowski
– Metascore: 100
– Runtime: 99 minutes
In this romantic drama, a retired judge is found to be invading people’s privacy and listening in on their phone calls. The movie is part of the Three Colors trilogy, with the others titled “Blue” and “White.”
#8. The Conformist (1970)
– Director: Bernardo Bertolucci
– Metascore: 100
– Runtime: 113 minutes
This political drama involves an Italian fascist sympathizer who is trying to order the assassination of his former teacher. The script is based on Alberto Moravia’s 1951 novel of the same name and it earned writer-director Bernardo Bertolucci an Oscar nomination for his adapted screenplay.
#7. Boyhood (2014)
– Director: Richard Linklater
– Metascore: 100
– Runtime: 165 minutes
The film looks at the life of a boy named Mason, played by Ellar Coltrane, from childhood until he begins college, including scenes of family dinners, graduations, and other milestones. Ethan Hawke and Patricia Arquette play his parents. The movie was 12 years in the making and in an interview with The Guardian, Linklater described Coltrane as “the kind who was going to be his own guy, he had not come out of a cookie cutter.”
#6. Casablanca (1943)
– Director: Michael Curtiz
– Metascore: 100
– Runtime: 102 minutes
This classic features Rick Blaine, an expatriate cafe owner played by Humphrey Bogart, and his former lover, Ingrid Bergman, who is trying to flee Casablanca with her husband at the beginning of World War II. The movie includes Rick’s memorable line, “Here’s looking at you, kid,” and the song, “As Time Goes By,” played by Dooley Wilson as Sam. “Casablanca” won three Oscars for Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Screenplay.
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#5. The Leopard (1963)
– Director: Luchino Visconti
– Metascore: 100
– Runtime: 186 minutes
In the midst of social disruption in Sicily in the 1860s, the Prince of Salina, or the Leopard, tries to hold on to his position. As his fortunes decline, a former peasant, Don Calogero Sedara, becomes wealthy.
#4. Citizen Kane (1941)
– Director: Orson Welles
– Metascore: 100
– Runtime: 119 minutes
The final word from newspaper magnate Charles Foster Kane is one the best-known in film history: rosebud. A reporter works to decipher its meaning and to illuminate Kane’s life.
#3. The Godfather (1972)
– Director: Francis Ford Coppola
– Metascore: 100
– Runtime: 175 minutes
“The Godfather” is the first of Francis Ford Coppola’s three films about the Corleone crime family in New York. As the series begins, Vito Corleone (Marlon Brando) is still the godfather of the operation and a generational dispute erupts over whether to traffick drugs. Meanwhile his youngest son, Michael, a decorated World War II veteran, tries to steer clear of the family’s criminal operations. To create Vito’s signature jowls, Brando wore a mouthpiece called a plumper, which is showcased at the Museum of the Moving Image in Queens, New York.
#2. Voyage to Italy (1954)
– Director: Roberto Rossellini
– Metascore: 100
– Runtime: 97 minutes
This drama starring Ingrid Bergman features an unhappily married couple on vacation in Naples, with her husband being played by George Sanders. Though the concept may seem simple, “Voyage to Italy”—which is also known as “Journey to Italy”—is considered groundbreaking in its portrayal of complex emotions and spirituality. It’s been hailed one of the “most influential films of the postwar era.”
#1. Lawrence of Arabia (1962)
– Director: David Lean
– Metascore: 100
– Runtime: 228 minutes
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#42. Killer of Sheep (2007)
– Director: Charles Burnett
– Metascore: 96
– Runtime: 80 minutes
“Killer of Sheep” captures Los Angeles’ Watts neighborhood in the mid-1970s. Life in Watts is seen through Stan, who is worn down by working in a slaughterhouse. Discouraged by money problems, he takes joy in small moments. “The film offers no solutions; it merely presents life—sometimes hauntingly bleak, sometimes filled with transcendent joy and gentle humor,” according to its website. It was shot on location in Watts on a budget of less than $10,000, most of it grant money.
