Singin' in the Rain
Directed by Gene Kelly and Stanley Donen
1952
Nothing else on film is this happy, and the subject is an industry in a panic: Hollywood's terror at the arrival of sound became two hours of pure delight.
★ 9.7
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.
Duck Soup
Directed by Leo McCarey
1933
The Marx Brothers at their fastest and most anarchic, and they left Paramount soon after it underperformed: the mirror sequence has been stolen by everybody in comedy since.
★ 7.2
The Blues Brothers
Directed by John Landis
1980
It held the record for cars destroyed on film and works as a music documentary besides: Aretha Franklin, Ray Charles, James Brown and Cab Calloway all get a full number.
★ 6.1
South Park: Bigger, Longer, and Uncut
Directed by Trey Parker
1999
It is a musical written by people who love musicals: Trey Parker and the composer Marc Shaiman took an Oscar nomination for a song nobody could print, and the censorship satire is exact.
★ 5.3
Swing Time
Directed by George Stevens
1936
Astaire and Rogers never danced better than in the last number here, which they shot until her feet bled: the plot is nonsense and the dancing is the argument for the whole genre.
★ 5.0
Team America: World Police
Directed by Trey Parker
2004
The puppetry is entirely straight-faced and never winks: Trey Parker and Matt Stone spent a fortune on marionettes so they could aim a Jerry Bruckheimer parody at absolutely everyone.
★ 3.5
White Christmas
Directed by Michael Curtiz
1954
The first film shot in VistaVision, which was invented to compete with CinemaScope: Bing Crosby sings a song he had already made famous twelve years earlier, and it still works.
★ 2.6
Gigi
Directed by Vincente Minnelli
1958
It won all nine awards it was nominated for, the biggest clean sweep the Oscars had seen: Lerner and Loewe wrote it straight for the screen, and Paris in 1900 looks fabulously expensive.
★ 2.2
Viva Las Vegas
Directed by George Sidney
1964
Elvis Presley made thirty-one films and only this one holds up: Ann-Margret matches him move for move, the studio got nervous about it, and the title song outlived everything.
★ 1.2