Marnie
Directed by Alfred Hitchcock
1964
The Hitchcock film scholars argue about most, and the production that ruined his working relationship with Tippi Hedren: a compulsive thief is caught by someone who decides to keep her.
★ 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.
The Quiet American
Directed by Phillip Noyce
2002
Miramax delayed releasing it after September 11 because the politics looked unpatriotic: Graham Greene's novel about American certainty in 1952 Saigon, with Michael Caine giving his best late performance.
★ 3.5
Sleuth
Directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz
1972
Laurence Olivier and Michael Caine were both up for Best Actor, which has happened only a handful of times: a mystery writer invites his wife's lover to a country house full of games.
★ 3.8
Basic Instinct
Directed by Paul Verhoeven
1992
Paul Verhoeven made the decade's most notorious mainstream thriller and never once blinked: an interrogation scene everyone still knows, and a novelist who may be writing what happens next.
★ 3.9
Point Break
Directed by Kathryn Bigelow
1991
Kathryn Bigelow made the most physically committed action film anyone had attempted: an FBI agent infiltrates a crew of surfers who rob banks in president masks, and starts preferring their company.
★ 3.9
Fatal Attraction
Directed by Adrian Lyne
1987
It became a national argument for months and put a phrase into the language: a married man has a weekend affair in Manhattan, and Glenn Close will not let it end there.
★ 4.3
Rope
Directed by Alfred Hitchcock
1948
Alfred Hitchcock disguised half the cuts so the film plays like one unbroken take: two students host a dinner party in the apartment where they have done something, and the camera never leaves.
★ 4.5
Inside Man
Directed by Spike Lee
2006
Spike Lee's biggest commercial hit is also his slyest: a rehearsed crew takes hostages inside a Wall Street bank, Denzel Washington negotiates, and Jodie Foster turns up representing somebody nobody can place.
★ 4.7
First Blood
Directed by Ted Kotcheff
1982
Before the sequels turned him into a cartoon, Rambo was a homeless veteran the police would not leave alone: Ted Kotcheff shot the Pacific Northwest cold and wet, and Stallone barely speaks.
★ 4.7
Get Carter
Directed by Mike Hodges
1971 · United Kingdom
Michael Caine plays a gangster with no charm whatsoever and it is his best performance: Newcastle in 1971 shot as a real place, and every British crime film since has borrowed the tone.
★ 4.8
Kiss Me Deadly
Directed by Robert Aldrich
1955
Film noir's meanest specimen: Robert Aldrich turned Mickey Spillane's detective into a thug worse than the criminals he chases, and gave the genre an ending nobody in 1955 was ready for.
★ 4.9
Bullitt
Directed by Peter Yates
1968
The San Francisco car chase runs almost eleven minutes with no music at all, only engines: everything since has been a response to it, and Steve McQueen keeps his talking to a minimum.
★ 4.9
The Taking of Pelham One Two Three
Directed by Joseph Sargent
1974
Tarantino took the color-coded aliases straight from this for Reservoir Dogs: four men hijack a subway car under Manhattan and Walter Matthau negotiates with them by radio, entirely deadpan.
★ 5.0
Sin City
Directed by Robert Rodriguez and Frank Miller
2005
Rodriguez shot the whole thing on green screen and used Frank Miller's comic panels as storyboards: monochrome with single splashes of color, and Miller got a co-director credit for it.
★ 5.1
Margin Call
Directed by J.C. Chandor
2011
J.C. Chandor shot it in seventeen days on one office floor and got Jeremy Irons and Kevin Spacey anyway: an investment bank works out overnight that it is holding something worthless.
★ 5.2
The Constant Gardener
Directed by Fernando Meirelles
2005 · United Kingdom
Fernando Meirelles shot Kenya the way he shot Rio, handheld and saturated: a mild British diplomat starts pulling at what his wife was investigating, and Rachel Weisz took the Oscar for playing her.
★ 5.3
Thief
Directed by Michael Mann
1981
Michael Mann's first theatrical feature, with Tangerine Dream on the score and real ex-burglars advising: a safecracker who has planned his whole future on a diner napkin tries to buy his way out.
★ 5.5
A Better Tomorrow
Directed by John Woo
1986 · Hong Kong
It made Chow Yun-fat a superstar and started an entire Hong Kong genre: two brothers on opposite sides of the law, and a gunman in a trenchcoat lighting a cigarette with money.
★ 5.7
The Secret in Their Eyes
Directed by Juan Jose Campanella
2009 · Argentina
The camera drops out of the sky into a packed football stadium and does not cut for five minutes: an Argentine investigator reopens a case he could never leave alone.
★ 5.7
True Romance
Directed by Tony Scott
1993
Tarantino sold this script to pay for Reservoir Dogs and Tony Scott shot it with real affection: a comic book clerk and a call girl leave Detroit with the wrong suitcase.
★ 5.7