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.

Oliver!

Directed by Carol Reed
1968

The last musical to hold Best Picture for thirty-four years, and the last G-rated winner: Carol Reed turns Dickens into an enormous street spectacle and the songs never let up.

★ 2.7

Ray

Directed by Taylor Hackford
2004

Jamie Foxx wore prosthetics that sealed his eyes shut for up to fourteen hours a day: Ray Charles approved the performance himself, then died months before the film opened.

★ 4.4

West Side Story

Directed by Robert Wise and Jerome Robbins
1961

Romeo and Juliet moved to two New York gangs, and the dancing spills out of the theater into real streets: nothing on film snaps like Robbins's choreography.

★ 7.3

Cabaret

Directed by Bob Fosse
1972

Fosse solved the problem every musical has: nobody bursts into song from the heart, every number is performed on a stage, and fascism rises quietly outside the room.

★ 7.3

Nashville

Directed by Robert Altman
1975

Altman's method arrives here fully formed: twenty-four characters, overlapping microphones, and five days of country music and politics that add up to a portrait of the whole country.

★ 7.5