A Star is Born (1937)
[6] Janet Gaynor and Fredric March star in a love story so good, they've made it four times now -- most recently with Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper in the roles. Gaynor plays a small-town girl with dreams of becoming…
BlacKkKlansman (2018)
[7] Spike Lee directs the stranger-than-fiction true story of a black Colorado police officer who infiltrated the Ku Klux Klan in the 1970s. John David Washington stars as Ron Stallworth, who struck up a relationship with local KKK members over…
The King’s Speech (2010)
[7] Colin Firth plays the stuttering King George VI, who never wanted to be king for fear of his speech impediment bringing shame to him and his family. The King's Speech focuses on the antagonistic relationship between the king and…
The Hurt Locker (2009)
[7] Kathryn Bigelow (Strange Days, Near Dark) won the Oscar for directing this suspense thriller about three soldiers who disarm bombs in Iraq. The movie also won Best Picture, maybe just because nothing better came out during the year (except…
Precious (2009)
[7] Precious is the kind of movie a studio exec must dread hearing a pitch about: "So, there's this girl, and she's really sad, her daddy raped her, she named her down syndrome baby Mongo, her mother violently abuses her,…
Panic in the Streets (1950)
[6] Elia Kazan makes a concerted effort to be less 'theatrical' and more 'cinematic' with Panic in the Streets, a New Orleans thriller about a policeman and a doctor searching the streets for a killer infected with pneumonic plague. Richard…
A Beautiful Mind (2001)
[7] Russell Crowe and Jennifer Connelly are at the top of their game in A Beautiful Mind, Ron Howard's Oscar-winning biopic about John Nash, the brilliant but haunted mathematician who overcame schizophrenia and received the Nobel Prize. These are the…
The Social Network (2010)
[8] A movie about corporate betrayal and litigation is normally not my idea of a good time, but The Social Network turns out to be a well-made, voyeuristic look back at the birth of a now-ubiquitous product that many users…
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969)
[7] Paul Newman and Robert Redford star in this influential, genre-bending Western about two outlaws who hole up in Bolivia to hide from a pursuing 'superposse.' William Goldman's celebrated screenplay would become the progenitor of countless buddy films for decades…
An American in Paris (1951)
[4] Near the end of both Singin' in the Rain and An American in Paris, there is a big, epic dance number that feels very out of place. It's the only thing I don't like about Singin' in the Rain,…