One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
Directed by Milos Forman
1975
Nicholson against Nurse Ratched is the great screen battle of wills: a convict fakes insanity to serve his time in a hospital, and finds the ward already has a ruler.
★ 9.0
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 Shining
Directed by Stanley Kubrick
1980
Whole documentaries exist about what this film means: Kubrick threw out most of King's novel, sent a Steadicam gliding down those corridors, and left a dread nobody can explain away.
★ 9.2
Psycho
Directed by Alfred Hitchcock
1960
The film that invented modern horror: Hitchcock broke an unspoken rule about how a story is meant to behave, and every thriller since has been working in the space he opened.
★ 9.5
Dr. Strangelove
Directed by Stanley Kubrick
1964
Nuclear annihilation has never been this funny, and never will be again: Kubrick worked out that the strategy was already absurd, and simply let his generals talk.
★ 9.6
Apocalypse Now
Directed by Francis Ford Coppola
1979
No production has ever gone further off the rails or shown it more clearly: Coppola's Vietnam abandons the war film for pure hallucination, and the helicopters over the trees are permanent.
★ 9.7