The Sixth Sense
Directed by M. Night Shyamalan
1999
The ending changed how an entire generation watched films, and it is genuinely unguessable: a child psychologist takes on a boy who is frightened of something very specific.
★ 6.8
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.
Rocky
Directed by John G. Avildsen
1976
Stallone wrote it himself and would not sell the script unless he could star: a club fighter from Philadelphia is handed a title shot as a publicity stunt, and takes it completely seriously.
★ 6.8
Blow Out
Directed by Brian De Palma
1981
Travolta's best performance is in a thriller that flopped and spent forty years being rediscovered: a movie sound man records an accident and hears something that should not be on the tape.
★ 6.6
The Philadelphia Story
Directed by George Cukor
1940
Katharine Hepburn was labeled box-office poison and controlled the rights to her comeback vehicle: she picked the director and approved the cast, then let Cary Grant and James Stewart crash her wedding.
★ 6.6
Best in Show
Directed by Christopher Guest
2000
The mockumentary found its permanent subject here, the American hobbyist: five sets of owners take their dogs to a national championship, and each of them reveals far more than intended.
★ 5.7
Silver Linings Playbook
Directed by David O. Russell
2012
A widow and a man just out of a state hospital strike a deal: David O. Russell keeps the camera close enough to be uncomfortable, and Jennifer Lawrence shot it at twenty-one.
★ 5.5
Trading Places
Directed by John Landis
1983
A regulation passed in 2010 is nicknamed after this film: two rich brothers bet a dollar on whether a broker and a hustler can swap lives, and Eddie Murphy runs away with it.
★ 5.4
Philadelphia
Directed by Jonathan Demme
1993
The first major studio film to take AIDS seriously, aimed squarely at people who had not: a lawyer sues the firm that fired him, and Bruce Springsteen wrote the opening song.
★ 4.7