The NeverEnding Story
Directed by Wolfgang Petersen
1984
Michael Ende hated the adaptation enough to sue: a bullied boy steals a book from a shop and reads himself into a world being eaten by nothing, and the puppetry is extraordinary.
★ 3.2
The Movies canon
Sourced and screened.
Every film chosen by hand and annotated for why it matters.
Browse all 731 films or filter by genre, director, place, and year.
Browse all 731 films or filter by genre, director, place, and year.
Harvey
Directed by Henry Koster
1950
James Stewart played it on Broadway and returned to the part for decades: an unfailingly pleasant man insists his closest friend is a six-foot-three invisible rabbit, and his family wants him committed.
★ 3.7
Miracle on 34th Street
Directed by George Seaton
1947
The studio released a Christmas film in May and hid the fact from its own advertising: Edmund Gwenn won an Oscar as a department store Santa who insists he is the real one.
★ 4.2
Harry Potter and Deathly Hallows: Part 2
Directed by David Yates
2011
Ten years and eight films with the same three actors growing up on camera, which no other series has managed: David Yates closes it with the largest battle the series ever attempted.
★ 4.9
Beetlejuice
Directed by Tim Burton
1988
Michael Keaton appears for roughly seventeen minutes and the film belongs entirely to him: Tim Burton makes the afterlife a bureaucracy with waiting rooms, and the possessed dinner party is the peak.
★ 5.2
Pirates of the Caribbean
Directed by Gore Verbinski
2003
Disney executives thought Johnny Depp was ruining their film and considered replacing him: he built a pirate out of Keith Richards, and a theme park ride became a billion-dollar franchise.
★ 5.2
Beasts of the Southern Wild
Directed by Benh Zeitlin
2012
Quvenzhane Wallis was five when she auditioned and became the youngest Best Actress nominee ever: a bayou community below the levee refuses to leave, filmed like a child's own mythology.
★ 5.2
Field of Dreams
Directed by Phil Alden Robinson
1989
They built the field on an Iowa farm and people still drive to see it: a man plows under his corn because a voice tells him to, and the last reel gets everyone.
★ 5.4
Life of Pi
Directed by Ang Lee
2012
The tiger is almost entirely digital and you will not be able to tell: Ang Lee made the most beautiful 3D film there is, about a boy sharing a lifeboat with a predator.
★ 6.0
The Little Mermaid
Directed by Ron Clements and John Musker
1989
Disney's renaissance starts here: Howard Ashman and Alan Menken wrote the songs like Broadway numbers, and the studio remembered how to make an animated musical that adults would sit through.
★ 6.1
Aladdin
Directed by Ron Clements and John Musker
1992
Robin Williams improvised for hours and the animators drew to whatever he gave them: the Genie is still the fastest thing in any Disney film, and every animated star cast since owes him.
★ 6.3
Midnight in Paris
Directed by Woody Allen
2011
Woody Allen's biggest hit at the box office is also his gentlest: a screenwriter stuck on a novel steps into a car at midnight in Paris and is driven straight into the 1920s.
★ 6.3
Edward Scissorhands
Directed by Tim Burton
1990
A boy with blades for hands is brought down from a gothic mansion into a pastel suburb: Tim Burton's most personal fairy tale, with the Danny Elfman score he calls a career favorite.
★ 6.4
Howl's Moving Castle
Directed by Hayao Miyazaki
2004 · Japan
Miyazaki's most beautiful machine is a walking house held together by magic and bad temper: underneath the wonder is an angry anti-war film, made while he watched the invasion of Iraq.
★ 6.6
How to Train Your Dragon
Directed by Chris Sanders and Dean DeBlois
2010
Animation has never conveyed the physical sensation of flight this well: Roger Deakins consulted on the lighting, and a Viking boy who cannot fight befriends the creature he was raised to kill.
★ 6.8
The Wind Rises
Directed by Hayao Miyazaki
2013 · Japan
Miyazaki announced his retirement with it, a retirement he later took back: a young man designs beautiful aircraft that become weapons, and nothing about that is resolved.
★ 6.8
A Matter of Life and Death
Directed by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger
1946 · United Kingdom
Heaven is monochrome and earth is in Technicolor, which is the whole joke: a pilot bails out without a parachute and then has to argue for his life.
★ 7.0
King Kong
Directed by Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack
1933
Willis O'Brien animated it a frame at a time and audiences in 1933 had never seen anything like it: the ape on that building is known to people who never watched it.
★ 7.1
Beauty and the Beast
Directed by Gary Trousdale and Kirk Wise
1991
The peak of the Disney Renaissance, and the moment computers earned a place in hand-drawn animation: the ballroom sequence still looks like nothing anyone had done before.
★ 7.3
The Princess Bride
Directed by Rob Reiner
1987
It barely registered in cinemas and built its whole following on video: pirates, giants, a six-fingered man, and a grandfather reading to a boy who does not want the story.
★ 7.5