The Godfather: Part II
Directed by Francis Ford Coppola
1974
Coppola did what almost nobody manages, and made a sequel with a real claim to surpassing the original: two eras of one family run side by side, and the colder one wins.
★ 9.8
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.
Lawrence of Arabia
Directed by David Lean
1962 · United Kingdom
There is no better argument for seeing a film on the largest screen you can find: Lean's desert swallows the frame, and a British officer dissolves inside it over nearly four hours.
★ 9.8
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
Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope
Directed by George Lucas
1977
Modern Hollywood begins here: Lucas told the oldest story there is inside a universe that looked used and lived in, and the blockbuster has run the business ever since.
★ 9.5
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
The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King
Directed by Peter Jackson
2003
Eleven nominations and eleven wins, a clean sweep no film has bettered: Jackson closed a decade-long gamble with battles at an unattempted scale and an ending that earns its farewells.
★ 9.1
The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring
Directed by Peter Jackson
2001
Everyone said the book could not be filmed: Jackson shot three films at once in New Zealand and delivered a Middle-earth so furnished you stop noticing it was invented.
★ 8.9
Saving Private Ryan
Directed by Steven Spielberg
1998
War films look different since the first twenty minutes of this one: Spielberg put the camera in the surf at Omaha Beach and veterans left cinemas unable to speak.
★ 8.8
Ran
Directed by Akira Kurosawa
1985 · Japan
Kurosawa was seventy-five and his eyesight was failing when he made it: King Lear moved to feudal Japan, with a great battle that plays to music and nothing else.
★ 8.7
The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers
Directed by Peter Jackson
2002
Gollum changed what a digital character could be: Andy Serkis acted him fully and the industry rebuilt itself around motion capture, all inside a four-month night siege in the rain.
★ 8.6
The Bridge on the River Kwai
Directed by David Lean
1957
Lean built an epic about the seduction of a job well done: a British colonel in a Japanese prison camp finds a strange satisfaction in building their bridge properly.
★ 8.2
Das Boot
Directed by Wolfgang Petersen
1981 · Germany
No war film has ever been this claustrophobic: Petersen ran a camera the length of a U-boat again and again until the steel walls start pressing in on you.
★ 8.1
Princess Mononoke
Directed by Hayao Miyazaki
1997 · Japan
It held the Japanese box office record until Titanic arrived: Miyazaki staged a war between an iron town and the forest gods and refused to name a villain.
★ 8.0
Aguirre, the Wrath of God
Directed by Werner Herzog
1972
Herzog shot it for almost nothing on a real Amazon river with a lead actor he fought with constantly: Kinski's stare and a shrinking raft do everything.
★ 7.7
Gladiator
Directed by Ridley Scott
2000
It dragged the Roman epic back after thirty-five years of dormancy: Russell Crowe's fury is the whole engine, and the arena sequences still deliver everything they promise.
★ 7.5
Gone with the Wind
Directed by Victor Fleming
1939
Adjusted for inflation no film has ever earned more, and it is still telling the old South's version of itself: enormous, ravishing, and not to be trusted.
★ 7.4
Forrest Gump
Directed by Robert Zemeckis
1994
People still argue about whether it is sentimental or sly, and both readings hold: a simple man walks through forty years of American history without ever noticing.
★ 7.2
Titanic
Directed by James Cameron
1997
For twelve years no film made more money anywhere on earth: Cameron built the ship, sank it more or less in real time, and made a generation cry in public.
★ 7.2
The Thin Red Line
Directed by Terrence Malick
1998
Malick came back after twenty years and made a war film about grass, light and the voices in men's heads: Guadalcanal, filmed as though the island were the subject.
★ 7.2
Letters from Iwo Jima
Directed by Clint Eastwood
2006
Eastwood made two films about the same battle, and the Japanese one is the better: shot almost entirely in Japanese, with a general nobody in America had heard of.
★ 6.9