Insights

— Los Angeles Times, What critics said: "The subtle colors and textures of the food alone make Ratatouille a three-star Michelin evening." — Entertainment Weekly, What critics said: "A gem of fast action, sophisticated wit and inspired comedy." As Max von Sydow’s medieval knight travels the land witnessing the apocalypse, loads of life-affirming moments lighten the load. The entries span many genres and include some of the greatest movie villains created by the best writers and top film directors in the industry. The genius is in Denis’s technique, manifesting itself in images of shattering emotional precision: sinewy silhouettes of soldiers, abstract tests of will in the desert and, most ravishingly, the euphoria of breaking into dance, courtesy of a loose-limbed Denis Lavant and Corona’s “Rhythm of the Night.”—Joshua Rothkopf, John Ford’s searing Western casts John Wayne as Ethan Edwards, a pathological racist and, yet, the enduring template for today’s modern antihero. We recommend Leigh’s critical breakthrough, featuring nervy turns by Brenda Blethyn and Timothy Spall, as the perfect place to begin your deep dive.—Joshua Rothkopf, This smoky, jazzy noir from director Alexander Mackendrick (The Ladykillers) is one of the great movies about power, influence and print journalism at its midcentury height. An audience of stoners, wowed by its eye-candy Star Gate sequence and pioneering visuals, adopted it as a pet movie. What critics said: "There's almost no single moment in Portrait of a Lady on Fire that couldn't be captured, mounted, and hung on a wall as high art." If the movie were any more hard-boiled, you’d crack your teeth on it.—Phil de Semlyen, Exploding drummers, amps that go to 11, tiny Stonehenges, “Dobly”: This spoof rock documentary—rockumentary, if you must—is monumentally influential on cinema, cringe comedy and, possibly, the music industry itself. As few American films have, Gone With the Wind succeeds both as historical epic and as intimate drama." With countless iconic details—a horse’s severed head, Marlon Brando’s wheezy voice, Nino Rota’s catchy waltz—The Godfather’s authority lives on.—Tomris Laffly, Maybe you’ve heard of this one? But there once was a moment when he needed to get serious, and this is it.—Joshua Rothkopf, Forget The Artist—sorry Uggie—and relish instead the sheer, serotonin-enhancing verve of MGM’s glorious epitaph to cinema’s silent era. A rescue mission? List RulesVote up the top movies of all time. As director, producer, cowriter and star, Welles cemented his status as an innovator. And it’s all topped off by Harrison Ford’s pitch-perfect Indiana Jones, a model of reluctant but resourceful heroism (look at his face when he shoots that swordsman). As one of the great directors of Hollywood’s golden age, Billy Wilder excelled across a variety of cinematic types, but this hard-boiled gem is his most influential work.—Abbey Bender, The first in a five-film autobiographical series, Francois Truffaut’s The 400 Blows is the story of Antoine Doinel (Jean-Pierre Léaud)—stuck in an unhappy home life but finding solace in goofing off, smoking and hanging with his friends—and it’s cinema’s greatest evocation of a troubled childhood. As Phantom Thread makes clear, Anderson hasn’t lost his sense of humor, not by a long shot. Jaws may have set the reputation of those gray-finned creatures back a few centuries, but it took the popular movie thriller to another level, demonstrating that B-movie material could be executed with masterly skill. As ever, the star had the last laugh: Not only was the film a huge commercial success, it also ended on the most heartbreaking close-up in cinema history—the peak of the reaction shot (since cribbed by movies from La Strada to The Purple Rose of Cairo), no dialogue required.—Joshua Rothkopf, There’s never a bad time to revisit one of Jean Renoir’s great masterpieces (along with The Rules of the Game), but this current era of populists, nationalists and shouty rabble-rousers feels like a particularly good one. What critics said: "There is never an … Lawrence (Peter O’Toole), silencing naysayers after having single-handedly crossed deadly desert terrain. And when those cameras were rolling, they captured a self-made icon with a global audience. A landmark of independent black cinema, it’s set to a great soundtrack ranging from blues and classical to Paul Robeson. Anchored by Rodrigo Prieto’s swoonworthy cinematography and a wistful Heath Ledger (whose performance toppled societal perceptions of masculinity), Brokeback Mountain is a milestone in LGBTQ art-house cinema. — Village Voice, What critics said: "Mr. Huston has shaped a searching drama of the collision of civilization's vicious greeds with the instinct for self-preservation in an environment where all the barriers are down. 2019, Ridley Scott’s vision of a dystopian future is one of the most stylish sci-fi films of all time. An unyielding critique of capitalism through the story of an everyman’s losing battle to safeguard a hard-earned job and preserve his dignity in the eyes of his son, Bicycle Thieves continues to inform the most humanist works of our time, from Winter’s Bone to Shoplifters.—Tomris Laffly, Christopher Nolan’s brooding, expansive Batman sequel fuses the comic-book flick with the crime epic, and delivers something truly special: a pop spectacle with passages of surprisingly potent despair. Of Buñuel’s many seismic features (don’t skip his slicin’-up-eyeballs short, “Un Chien Andalou”), begin with this radical satire of class warfare, which sums up everything he did well. Bergman, recovering from a serious bout of pneumonia, wrote the script in the hospital, grappling with a crisis of purpose that he turned into art of the highest caliber.—Joshua Rothkopf, Spike Lee’s bitterly funny, ultimately tragic fresco of a Brooklyn neighborhood during one sweltering summer day was hugely controversial at the time: Critics dinged Lee for his depiction of an uprising in the wake of a police killing. Chishu Ryu and Chieko Higashiyama are dignified and moving as parents who visit their children and grandchildren, only to be neglected. M is like a sonar listening to a pre-Nazi Germany on the cusp of shedding its humanity.—Joshua Rothkopf, Set in (eek!) But kudos also belongs to Betty Comden and Adolph Green, whose effervescent screenplay provides the beat for the spectacle to move to, and Jessica Hagen, whose often-overlooked turn as croaky silent star Lina Lamont is the movie’s funny-sad counterpoint. It may not sound like your average love story, but that’s exactly what Buster Keaton’s deadpan and death-defying silent comedy is: a majestic demonstration of trick photography, balletic courage and comic timing, all underpinned by genuine heart. It reimagined the Western genre and became a part of the zeitgeist.—Tomris Laffly, Biting political satires don't have to be long and complicated: This 68-minute masterpiece is perfectly pithy, exposing the absurdities of international politics with swift wit and spot-on slapstick. Via darkest comedy (the only way into the subject) and an unhinged Peter Sellers playing three separate parts, Kubrick made his point.—Joshua Rothkopf, One of those epochal films—there’s only a handful—that sits on the divide between silent cinema and the sound era but taps into the virtues of both, Fritz Lang’s serial-killer thriller burns with deep-etched visual darkness while perking ears with its whistled “In the Hall of the Mountain King” (performed by a purse-lipped Lang himself; his star, Peter Lorre, couldn’t whistle). Giger’s strangely elegant double-jawed creature, a nightmarish vision of hostility—and one of cinema’s most unforgettable pieces of pure craft.—Tomris Laffly, Simply spun, Yasujiro Ozu’s domestic drama is small but perfectly formed. The movies on this list are ranked according to their success (awards & nominations), their popularity, and their cinematic greatness from a directing/writing perspective. But Battleship Potemkin is full of powerful images and heady ideas, and director Sergei Eisenstein is rightly considered one of the pioneers of early film language, with his influence felt through the decades.—Dave Calhoun, The only Charlie Chaplin movie to see the Little Tramp go on a massive cocaine binge, this relentlessly inventive silent classic hardly needs the added kick. By turning his more somber preoccupations with male insecurity into comedy, Scorsese punctured through to a new register: one of coked-up social commentary on a distinctly American rise and fall. Despite becoming somehow synonymous with “difficult art-house statement,” it’s not all weighty themes, plague-strewn landscapes and chess games with the Grim Reaper. So, what are the best movies of all time? — Rolling Stone, What critics said: "A film like 'Hoop Dreams' is what the movies are for. Flashbacks have never been so thrillingly deployed; nearly 70 years after its release, filmmakers are still trying to catch up to its achievements.—Abbey Bender, Jean Renoir cemented his virtuosity with this pitch-perfect study of social-strata eruptions among the ditzy, idle rich, about to be blown sideways by WWII. The combination of screwball dynamics and the garishness of the 1980s is perfectly calibrated and fun.—Abbey Bender, Shot over 12 years with a cast of actors that ages before our eyes, Richard Linklater’s modern-day coming-of-age classic is a peerless artistic gamble, comparable only to Michael Apted’s Up series and Francois Truffaut’s Antoine Doinel films. Since replayed in the Wild West (The Magnificent Seven), in space (Battle Beyond the Stars) and even with animated insects (A Bug’s Life), the original still reigns supreme.—Ian Freer, Can a film really be an instant classic? Biopics were connect-the-dots affairs until Lean welded psychological nuance into the image, projecting his subject’s inner life onto a landscape of epic, tragic grandeur.—Stephen Garrett, Fun fact: Psycho is the first film to ever depict a toilet flushing. Plus, it’s the perfect primer to get kids into subtitled movies.—Ian Freer, Popcorn pictures hit hyperdrive after George Lucas unveiled his intergalactic Western, an intoxicating gee-whiz space opera with dollops of Joseph Campbell–style mythologizing that obliterated the moral complexities of 1970s Hollywood. Ironically, the movie’s portrayal of this milieu as vapid and soul-corrodingly hedonistic appears to have passed many viewers by. Thanks for subscribing! Subscriber The film also sports a perfect cast, with a top-of-his-game Jack Nicholson as a cynical private eye, an impossibly alluring Faye Dunaway as the femme fatale with a past so dark her final revelation still shocks, and the legendary John Huston as the monstrous millionaire at the heart of it all.—Bilge Ebiri, Not just any film gets homaged by Bill and Ted. What are the greatest movies in cinema history? Put on the gloves and LaMotta is in his element; take them off and he’s an insecure sociopath consumed by sexual jealousy. Still, it’s shocking to remember that The Shining—so redolent of the director’s pet themes of mazelike obsession and the banality of evil—was once considered a minor work. It also made Marcello Mastroianni a star; here, he plays a gossip journalist caught up in the frenzied, freewheeling world of Roman nightlife. Using her celebrity in a radical way, Scarlett Johansson is perfectly cast as an alien in human form who roams Glasgow trying to pick up men in her van. This quintessential New York movie turned countless viewers on to the joys of verbose dialogue (and experimentation in menswear for women), and has long been lauded for both its accessibility and its poignancy, a balance that few movies have since achieved so memorably.—Abbey Bender, A joy from start to finish, Billy Wilder’s Prohibition-era–set comedy has heart, humor, cross-dressing, Marilyn Monroe and the finest closing line in the history of cinema.

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