West Side Story
Directed by Robert Wise and Jerome Robbins
1961
Romeo and Juliet moved to two New York gangs, and the dancing spills out of the theater into real streets: nothing on film snaps like Robbins's choreography.
★ 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.
The Sound of Music
Directed by Robert Wise
1965
It saved a studio from bankruptcy and has never left the culture since: Salzburg in the mountains, a nun who cannot behave, and songs everyone somehow already knows.
★ 7.2
An American in Paris
Directed by Vincente Minnelli
1951
It ends with a seventeen-minute ballet and no dialogue, staged against sets copied from French painters: Gene Kelly and Vincente Minnelli bet a whole musical on one uninterrupted dance.
★ 6.0
My Fair Lady
Directed by George Cukor
1964
Audrey Hepburn's singing was dubbed by Marni Nixon and Julie Andrews was passed over for the part she created on stage: the Cecil Beaton costumes remain the most beautiful ever filmed.
★ 4.9
Funny Face
Directed by Stanley Donen
1957
Richard Avedon served as visual consultant and shot the photographs himself: Audrey Hepburn is a bookshop clerk turned Paris model, and the darkroom sequence is the most beautiful red ever filmed.
★ 3.0
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