Hoop Dreams
Directed by Steve James
1994
Its exclusion from the documentary Oscar shortlist caused enough outrage that the Academy changed its rules: five years with two Chicago teenagers, and it is barely about basketball.
★ 7.5
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 Sting
Directed by George Roy Hill
1973
The con is played on the audience as much as on the mark, and every turn is earned: Newman and Redford again, with ragtime that put Scott Joplin back on the charts.
★ 7.0
Ferris Bueller's Day Off
Directed by John Hughes
1986
Truancy has never looked this appealing: Ferris talks straight to the audience, takes a Ferrari and a parade, and the whole film is completely on his side.
★ 6.8
The Untouchables
Directed by Brian De Palma
1987
Mamet wrote it and Morricone scored it: De Palma stages a shootout on a station staircase in open tribute to Battleship Potemkin, and turns Prohibition Chicago into pure American myth.
★ 6.6
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
The Interrupters
Directed by Steve James
2011
Steve James followed former gang members whose entire job is talking people out of retaliation: Chicago violence filmed as something interruptible, one conversation on one corner at a time.
★ 5.7
Ordinary People
Directed by Robert Redford
1980
Redford directed this before anyone thought he could, and it goes at what American families do not discuss: a Chicago suburb where everyone is fine, and a son in therapy who is not.
★ 5.6
Thief
Directed by Michael Mann
1981
Michael Mann's first theatrical feature, with Tangerine Dream on the score and real ex-burglars advising: a safecracker who has planned his whole future on a diner napkin tries to buy his way out.
★ 5.5
Risky Business
Directed by Paul Brickman
1983
Tom Cruise became a movie star in one scene in his underwear: Tangerine Dream scores a suburban comedy that is much colder and stranger than its reputation suggests.
★ 4.7
Chicago
Directed by Rob Marshall
2002
Bob Fosse spent years trying to film his own 1975 stage musical and never did: every number plays inside the head of a woman on trial, and the trial is staged as vaudeville.
★ 4.1
Cooley High
Directed by Michael Schultz
1975
The Black American Graffiti, and better: Chicago teenagers in 1964 with a wall-to-wall Motown soundtrack, and Michael Schultz films a few days of hanging around as if nothing mattered more.
★ 4.1
National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation
Directed by Jeremiah Chechik
1989
Written by John Hughes, with Chevy Chase back as the same hapless father a third time: a man books two weeks off to build the perfect family Christmas out of things that break.
★ 3.9
Wayne's World
Directed by Penelope Spheeris
1992
The car scene put Bohemian Rhapsody back in the American top ten seventeen years after its release: two men broadcast a public access show from a basement and address the camera constantly.
★ 3.6