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.

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

El Cid

Directed by Anthony Mann
1961

Charlton Heston and Sophia Loren in the last great historical epic before the genre collapsed: real castles in Spain, thousands of extras on horseback, and Miklos Rozsa's score doing the heavy lifting.

★ 2.8