Seven Samurai
Directed by Akira Kurosawa
1954 · Japan
Every film about assembling a team for one last job descends from this one: Kurosawa makes seven men matter, then stages a battle in the mud nobody has equaled.
★ 9.9
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.
Tokyo Story
Directed by Yasujiro Ozu
1953 · Japan
The quiet masterpiece of ordinary life: Ozu finds the ache of a whole century in parents visiting children who have no time for them, and it will find you too.
★ 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
In the Mood for Love
Directed by Wong Kar-wai
2000
Longing has never been filmed better than this: Wong Kar-wai gets more out of a stairwell and one repeated waltz than most directors manage with an entire script.
★ 9.3
Spirited Away
Directed by Hayao Miyazaki
2001 · Japan
The high point of hand-drawn animation: Miyazaki invented a spirit world so dense and so unexplained that it took the Animated Feature Oscar away from every American studio.
★ 9.3
Rashomon
Directed by Akira Kurosawa
1950 · Japan
Kurosawa gave the language a word for irreconcilable testimony and opened Japanese cinema to the world: four accounts of one killing, none of which can be squared with another.
★ 9.1
Parasite
Directed by Bong Joon-ho
2019
The first film not in English to win Best Picture: Bong turned class rage into something so entertaining that the whole world watched it and then argued about what it meant.
★ 8.9
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 General
Directed by Buster Keaton and Clyde Bruckman
1926
Keaton did every stunt himself and dropped a real locomotive through a burning bridge: it flopped, cost him his independence within two years, and is now considered the great silent comedy.
★ 8.6
Late Spring
Directed by Yasujiro Ozu
1949
Ozu made the same film over and over and this is the most perfect version: a daughter who will not marry, a father who will not say what he wants, and one vase.
★ 8.6
Pather Panchali
Directed by Satyajit Ray
1955
Indian cinema arrived in the world with this: Ray shot it on weekends with a first-time crew and no money, and the children seeing a train is pure wonder.
★ 8.5
Ikiru
Directed by Akira Kurosawa
1952 · Japan
Kurosawa's answer to how a life should be spent: a bureaucrat gets one piece of terrible news and starts spending what is left deliberately, which will change how you see your job.
★ 8.5
Yi Yi
Directed by Edward Yang
2000
Nothing else captures an ordinary family like this: Yang holds three generations of a Taipei household in one frame, and the small boy photographing people's backs explains the whole method.
★ 8.4
Yojimbo
Directed by Akira Kurosawa
1961 · Japan
Leone took it wholesale for A Fistful of Dollars and Toho forced a settlement out of court: Kurosawa's samurai playing two gangs against each other is the template everyone still uses.
★ 8.4
A Separation
Directed by Asghar Farhadi
2011
The first Iranian film to win the foreign language Oscar: Farhadi built a moral maze where every person is partly right, and you will change sides several times.
★ 8.4
Grave of the Fireflies
Directed by Isao Takahata
1988 · Japan
Nobody recommends this one lightly: Takahata put two children through the last months of the war in Japan, and being animated makes it harder to bear, not easier.
★ 8.4
Full Metal Jacket
Directed by Stanley Kubrick
1987
The first half is the most quoted boot camp ever filmed: Kubrick found a real Marine drill instructor, let him write half his own material, and made basic training terrifying.
★ 8.3
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
My Neighbor Totoro
Directed by Hayao Miyazaki
1988 · Japan
Children's films almost never dare to have no villain: Miyazaki made eighty minutes of pure safety out of two sisters and a forest spirit, and it became Ghibli's emblem.
★ 8.2
Harakiri
Directed by Masaki Kobayashi
1962
Kobayashi took the samurai film apart from the inside: an old warrior asks to die in a lord's courtyard, and what he says first dismantles the entire code of honor.
★ 8.2