East of Eden
Directed by Elia Kazan
1955
The only James Dean performance released while he was still alive: Steinbeck's Cain and Abel moved to a California lettuce valley, and Dean improvises his way through it.
★ 7.3
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.
Bicycle Thieves
Directed by Vittorio De Sica
1948 · Italy
Italian neorealism starts with this, and it still guts people: De Sica cast a factory worker as his lead and found a whole society inside one stolen bicycle.
★ 9.1
Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back
Directed by Irvin Kershner
1980
Everyone learned how to make a sequel from this: the pressure builds for two hours, the tone stays darker than anyone expected, and one line near the close rearranged a generation's childhood.
★ 9.4