Each year, on the morning the Oscar nominations are announced, the internet is set ablaze as angered film fans and industry pundits cry foul about what failed to receive Academy attention. With so many people treating this awards show similarly to a sporting event, films are pitted against each other, and awards campaigns are closely tracked to see what succeeded and what came up short. Of course, the category that is most discussed and debated when the nominees are made public is the show’s top prize, Best Picture.

Not only do movie lovers become incensed when a film that landed near the top of their personal year-end rankings is omitted from the Academy’s choices because they feel like their own taste isn’t being accepted or represented, but there’s an extra level of anger due to the understanding of what a Best Picture nomination can mean for a movie. When the general public sees the list of the ten movies that the Academy has deemed worthy enough to compete for their biggest honor, they are led to believe that these are not only the ten best, but the ten most important pictures of the year. Each one is given a financial boost, with people feeling a cultural obligation to seek out all the nominees they haven’t seen. Moreover, a historical status is immediately tied to every film that earns a nomination. Forever, the words “Best Picture nominee” will be uttered alongside the title of the film whenever it is being discussed on a podcast or written about in an article.

When a critically-acclaimed, hyped, or heavily campaigned film fails to receive that important nomination, it is immediately placed in a different bucket. It is designated as a “snub,” especially by supporters of the film who were hoping to see it be given a spot among the nominees. For as much as that term is used, though, we still have not really come up with a clear definition of what a snub actually is. If a film receives critical praise but—due to its subject matter, size, or level of obscurity—never had a realistic chance of being included by the Academy, should that be considered a snub? Likewise, if a less deserving movie finds itself in awards season conversations primarily due to a massive studio campaign, is it really snubbed if that campaign ultimately fails?

For this list, we have chosen to focus on films that both deserved to receive an Oscar nomination on the basis of merit but also had a realistic chance of being included. Importantly, these films also must have been superior to at least one of the movies that did ultimately receive a nomination in their year. Each of these selections should have had their names called on the morning nominations were announced.

1. Never Rarely Sometimes Always (2020)

The 93rd Academy Awards, which celebrated the films of 2020, will always have a complicated legacy. To this day, they are remembered as the “Covid Oscars,” which honored films that most of us watched in our homes rather than in a theater. Given that the 2020 film slate was so drastically impacted by the state of the world at that time, this was the rare year that something as small as Eliza Hittman’s coming-of-age drama, Never Rarely Sometimes Always, could have become an Oscar contender. Though it was unlikely that this film would ever have received Academy attention, the fact that it did ultimately see some awards season success—especially with critic groups and the Film Independent Spirit Awards—makes it eligible to be called a snub for the purposes of this list.

Hitman’s deeply affecting film tells the story of a seventeen-year-old girl traveling with her cousin from rural Pennsylvania to New York City to get an abortion. Though a lesser film attempting to tackle this subject matter could be seen as manipulative or melodramatic, Never Rarely Sometimes Always relies on a sincere, well-observed screenplay and naturalistically brilliant performances from Sidney Flanigan and Talia Ryder to create something purely original and honest. That brutal honesty is best represented in the film’s titular scene, when Flanigan’s character is asked a series of questions and told to respond with either never, rarely, sometimes, or always. It was one of the best scenes of the year in 2020, and its presence in this film alone is enough to catapult it into Oscar consideration.

Like many other 2020 releases, Never Rarely Sometimes Always remains an unfortunately underseen film today. It is the perfect example of a deserving movie that would have benefited from a Best Picture nomination. Since it never received one, though, it will just live on in the minds of those of us who did see it as one of the best films and biggest snubs of this decade so far.

2. C’mon C’mon (2021)

A Best Original Screenplay nomination for 20th Century Women is the only Oscar nom writer/director Mike Mills has received in his career. A strong case can be made, though, that his follow-up to that film should have been the one to elevate him to higher status with the Academy. 2021’s heartfelt and tender C’mon C’mon doesn’t necessarily look and feel like a typical Best Picture nominee, but given that this was the year that the incredibly saccharine CODA took home top prize, it is fairly surprising that the Academy chose to ignore Mills’ film completely.

C’mon C’mon focuses on the relationship between a radio journalist played by Joaquin Phoenix and his clever and inquisitive young nephew, portrayed by Woody Norman. In the film, Johnny (Phoenix) agrees to help his semi-estranged sister by taking care of her son while she travels to Northern California to help find treatment for her husband struggling with mental illness. As Johnny and Jesse (Norman) spend more time with one another, they each begin to develop a new worldview, which forces the viewer to reflect upon their own lives as well.

The narrative that plays out and the tone that steadily holds throughout all feel incredibly true-to-life. Not only does the endearing messiness of this familial relationship help us tap into our own memories, it reveals deeply relatable truths about the human experience. It is a movie that, quite literally, asks a lot of questions but gives the viewer space to think on their own answers.

Despite its simple story, there is more than enough emotional complexity in C’mon C’mon to make it a worthy Oscar nominee. It is the rare film that markets itself as a “Feel Good Movie” that actually makes the audience feel good in an authentic way.

3. The Worst Person in the World (2021)

Among many Academy shortcomings is their tendency to recognize a filmmaker one movie too late. Often, it feels like a director will make their masterpiece or acclaimed breakthrough, but then have to wait until their next release before the Academy truly welcomes them into the club. This has been the case with Danish-Norwegian director Joachim Trier.

Though The Worst Person in the World did actually receive two Oscar nominations at the 94th ceremony for Best Original Screenplay and Best International Feature, that pales in comparison to the nine nominations that Trier’s follow-up, Sentimental Value, earned this year. While many fans of both films consider The Worst Person in the World to be the superior work, its inclusion on this list isn’t meant to denigrate Sentimental Value at all; it is only making the case that The Worst Person in the World was a clear and unfortunate Best Picture snub.

Centered on a young woman attempting to navigate through her love life, her career, and her 20s, The Worst Person in the World is a poignant portrait of fading youth. Frequent Trier collaborator Renate Reinsve stars as Julie, a wayward millennial who is propelled on a journey of self-discovery. In a deeply relatable fashion, this journey takes place as she is in the twilight of her 20s and onset of her 30s. This time in her life leads her to ponder what she wants from her time on this earth, and say goodbye to the things that may never be in her reach.

To paraphrase a line Julie has in the film, it is a movie that will resonate with anyone who has suddenly realized they have been acting as a spectator in their own life. The audience is so captured by Julie’s journey because we all have been with the universal questions she is forced to ask herself. Opting for a sophisticated and honest tone, though, Trier and co-screenwriter Eskil Vogt never let this story slip into the cliche or the overly sentimental.

While it is nice for fans of The Worst Person in the World to see Sentimental Value achieve such impressive awards season success, it’ll always be a little disheartening that this wasn’t Trier’s first film to receive a Best Picture nomination. Hopefully, the acclaim of Trier’s current film will lead more people to go back and watch this as well as the rest of his stellar filmography.

4. Decision to Leave (2022)

The fact that Park Chan-wook has never received a single Oscar nomination should be a point of personal shame for every single Academy member. One of the master filmmakers of the modern era, Director Park has had two films from this decade worthy of making this list that were completely ignored by the Academy. Though the snub of 2025’s No Other Choice has been discussed greatly since the nominations were announced, we decided to focus on Park’s previous release, Decision to Leave.

Much like No Other Choice, Decision to Leave is unquestionably one of the best-directed movies of the 2020s thus far. Containing hard-to-believe camera tricks and wildly impressive visual flourishes, it is a stunning movie that leaves the audience wondering how they are seeing some of the shots present on screen. It is not worthy of a Best Picture nom for its filmmaking alone, though. The movie’s story, which follows a policeman whose life is changed after he meets the wife of a potential murder victim, is an evocative and gripping tale about love, obsession, integrity, and control. Aiding the steady hand of Director Park, the narrative is guided by its two stars, Park Hae-il and Tang Wei. Wei especially turns in one of the most magnetic and mesmerizing performances of the decade in Decision to Leave.

Perhaps being released in the same year as eventual Best Picture nominees Everything Everywhere All At Once, Top Gun: Maverick, and Avatar: The Way of Water ultimately hurt Decision to Leave’s chances of earning a nom. Though it does not contain any of the sci-fi or high-octane action elements of those films, it is undeniably a genre picture. In another year, the Academy may have found room for this thriller. That said, No Other Choice’s snub may just indicate an unwillingness on the Academy’s part to engage with Park’s work.

5. Aftersun (2022)

For many cinephiles, Charlotte Wells’ Aftersun is among the most loved films of the decade. Admirers have a strong, emotionally-fueled relationship with it, which is why its lack of Academy recognition is so appalling to many. Failing to earn a Best Picture nod, Aftersun’s only nomination came in the Best Actor category for its star, Paul Mescal. Considering some of the lackluster 2022 nominees that have been somewhat lost to time, like Women Talking and Triangle of Sadness, it remains almost baffling that a film with as many devotees as Aftersun wasn’t included in Best Picture.

Guided by a melancholic tone, Aftersun tells the tale of a woman reflecting on a vacation she took as a child 20 years earlier with her father. Through this framing device, Wells takes viewers of the film on a journey that initially seems like a happy one, even though the audience can consistently feel something darker underneath. On the way to its heartwrenching conclusion, the film asks big questions about the child/parent dynamic. Among other things, the movie explores how kids process their idea that their parents might be unhappy, whether or not it is possible for a child to truly know their parent and vice versa, and the ways in which we look upon people once they are gone. This is all explored through Mescal’s character’s relationship with his daughter Sophie, played brilliantly by Frankie Corio.

More than any other movie on this list, there is a feeling that Aftersun’s snub will grow more and more inexplicable with time. In an era when the Academy has shown more of an openness towards smaller, more intimate, and more lyrical films, it makes no sense that this movie wasn’t deemed worthy enough to compete for Best Picture. Thankfully, its legacy is already proving to be defined as a beloved cinematic work, rather than an Oscar misstep.

In the last decade or so, Scandinavian filmmakers have reemerged as a serious presence in the world of international film. Joachim Trier, a Norwegian director, is one of the most prominent representatives of this new generation of Scandinavian talent. His last movie, The Worst Person in the World, really put him on the map. It was even nominated for best international picture and best original screenplay at the 94th Academy Awards.

His newest film, Sentimental Value, had a lot to live up to. Luckily, it delivers. It’s a touching, insightful dramedy with a lot of layers to it. It’s received even more accolades than The Worst Person in the World. For the upcoming 98th Academy Awards, it received both nominations its predecessor did as well as seven additional nominations, including for best director and best picture.

So, why has the movie received so much praise? Well, here are ten reasons why.

1. A Distinct Sense of Place

An important aspect of making a movie is establishing your setting. Many filmmakers do an adequate job of this, but few go out of their way to make it genuinely memorable. Joachim Trier is one of those few who puts that level of effort in creating a sense of place, in this case with the family home of Nora Borg, the protagonist.

Right from the jump, we get exposition explaining the role the house has played through the generations for the Borg family. From its construction to the present, we see how the house has been around for huge events in the family’s history. Having Nora write as a child about what she thought the house felt about everything it experienced helps give life to the house, almost making it a character in its own right.

We also see the unique traits of the house that allow it to stand out even further. We see the huge crack running through much of it, for example, making it seem like the house is buckling under the weight of everything it has seen. We also see Nora go to a stove which allows her to hear things in another room. She fondly reminisces about how she heard a lot of grown up conversations she wasn’t meant to hear, expanding both the house’s character and her own.

All of these things come together to give the house a real personality, making a setting that you can always recall when thinking about the movie. How many other fictional homes could you really say that about?

2. The Use of Faces

Trier isn’t just interested in settings, but also the people who populate them. He especially likes using his camera to explore their faces. In this he echoes the legendary director Ingemar Bergman, a fellow Scandinavian, who once said “for me, the human face is the most important subject of the cinema.”

Trier uses a variety of close ups to give us front row seats to the characters and what they are feeling. It’s a risky move, since prolonged shots of people’s faces don’t make for high octane entertainment. They do, however, allow us to connect with the characters more directly on a human level. Through this frequent use of these actors’ faces, we get to know these characters and their feelings far better than we do those of most other movies, even really good ones.

Of course, this exposure to character faces wouldn’t give us much if the actors themselves weren’t doing everything they could to convey the inner life of their characters so skillfully. Which takes us to our next point…

3. The Performances

There are four central performances in Sentimental Value: Renata Reinsve as the aforementioned Nora Borg; Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas as Agnes, Nora’s better-adjusted younger sister; Stellan Skarsgård, their estranged filmmaker father; and Elle Fanning as Rachel Kemp, a good-natured US actress who wants to work with Gustav. Simply put, all of them nail their roles.

Reinsve plays Nora as a theater actress with anger toward her father, as well as deeper mental health issues that she seems reluctant to explore. Lilleaas as her younger sister Agnes is more grounded and has her own family. She’s much more forgiving of their father than Nora is, or at least less confrontational with him. The two play off of each other really well, genuinely feeling like sisters who have different feelings toward their childhoods but deeply love each other regardless.

Skarsgård brings his incredible talent and experience as an actor to his role as Gustav, their father. Gustav is charismatic and artistically gifted, but was not a great father to the girls growing up. Yet there is a deeper pain within him that hints his shortcomings may have been beyond his control. Skarsgård plays this role perfectly, managing to show how Gustav shirked his responsibility toward his girls while still conveying a hint of the inner demons that had a grip on the character and his emotional well-being.

Finally, Elle Fanning does a great job as the actress Rachel Kemp. It would have been easy for Trier and Fanning to portray her as a ditzy US actress who only cares about making a name for herself, or even being well-meaning but ultimately shallow-minded. Instead, she is a thoughtful person who genuinely cares about both her craft and other people. There is a great scene where she wants to take a ‘celebrity’ selfie with Agnes, who had starred in one of Gustav’s movies as a child. She plays the scene with such earnestness you can’t help but love her.

As a whole, these are some of the best performances of 2025. There’s a reason all four of them received Academy Award nominations for their acting.

4. Great Sense for When to Cut

Editing is a vital process for film. Editors take all the raw materials generated by everyone else in the process and synthesizes them into a coherent story. In choosing what to cut and what to keep, the editor is largely responsible for the length of each scene and overall pace of a movie. Trier’s longtime collaborator Olivier Bugge Coutté has worked as his editor for all six of his feature films. The two are a great team.

Simply put, the duo has really figured out exactly how much time to spend in each scene. That might seem simple at first glance, but it’s a deceptively difficult art to master. Some scenes that may seem important to the plot may not actually be that crucial in delving deeper into theme, character, or the emotional core of the story. On the other side of things, moments that seem unimportant to the plot might touch on one of these elements in a profound way, and could use extra time spent on them in order to maximize their impact on everything going on.

Trier and Coutté find the perfect balance in Sentimental Value. Moments where a lesser duo might have lingered for longer than necessary go by at a brisk pace here, whereas every important moment surrounding deeper components like character or theme are allowed to play out longer to really give them time to breath.

To look at an example of each, about partway through the movie, Nora has a stage performance where she is expecting both her sister and father to show up. Ultimately her sister shows up, but her father doesn’t. We barely spend any time in this scene, because the performance itself doesn’t matter. What matters is that her father didn’t show up.

Meanwhile, a conversation at the end (arguably the emotional climax of the movie) between Nora and her sister is allowed to play out slowly and deliberately, because it’s such an important scene. Because of this steady pace, the emotional payoff at the end completely works, and the quote “I had you” hits harder than if it the scene had been streamlined because it wasn’t big or exciting. A lesser team wouldn’t have had the patience or confidence to let this scene play out. Luckily, we had Trier and Coutté.

5. Exploring Generational Trauma

It’s all well and good to have the technical aspects of the movie work well. But if it isn’t about anything interesting or insightful, it runs the risk of being a well-crafted movie about nothing, and won’t stay with you for very long no matter how well its more formal aspects are executed. Sentimental Value doesn’t have that problem.

One doesn’t have to get too far into the story to see that Nora and Agnes are deeply affected by their father leaving their mother and neglecting their family when they were children. Especially Nora, who clearly suffers from some form of mental illness. She is prone to extreme distress, detachment, and a tendency to push people away. Agnes, meanwhile, is better adjusted, but it’s clear that she is simply letting a lot of her pain simmer beneath the surface. She avoids confrontation with their father, letting Nora be the one to clash with him.

As the movie goes on, however, it’s clear that even Gustav suffers from his own family history. While the story doesn’t seek to fully absolve him of what a lackluster father he was to his daughters, we slowly start to see that he’s carrying his own pain. Especially related to his mother, Karin, who committed suicide when he was just seven. It scarred him deeply. His battle to understand and cope with that becomes a prominent part of the story.

Of course, there is the story of his mom, another example of trauma within the family. Which takes us to how Trier…

6. Shows How Big Historical Events Have Personal Impacts

As mentioned above, Gustav’s mother Karin committed suicide. Unlike the pain the other members of the Borg family carry, hers was not just about internal mental health issues or strained relations with other family members. Hers has a bigger origin.

As most of us know, during World War 2 the Nazis invaded and occupied much of continental Europe. That included Norway. Karin decided to do something about it. She joined the resistance movement against the Nazis. Unfortunately, she was arrested and tortured for it. This actually echoes what happened in real life with Trier’s grandfather, the filmmaker Erik Løchen, who joined the resistance and was interned in Nazi work camps during the war.

The movie tells us that Karin’s time in Nazi captivity changed her, as also happened with Trier’s grandfather. We learn about what Karin went through in both flashbacks and in Agnes’s research as a historian into what her grandmother endured. It isn’t explicitly said that it’s the reason she committed suicide, but it is heavily implied. Through this, we see that the horrors of the Nazis extended even past their defeat in 1945.

Sometimes when we think about historical events, we only think about them in big picture terms. Especially World War 2, one of the biggest and most impactful historical events in all of human history. But these big events have a million ripple effects. The Nazis didn’t just try to wipe out an entire people or take over all of Europe, they also affected every life they came into contact with for the worse. Sentimental Value manages to portray that personal impact of historical events not just on Karin, but those affected by her death, whether directly (with Gustav) or indirectly (the rest of the Borg family, who live in the aftermath of what her death did to Gustav).

7. Not Leaving You with Easy Answers

We’ve discussed all the ways Sentimental Value doesn’t just do an excellent job of showing you how every character feels and acts, but why they feel and act those ways. You completely get why everyone has the problems they do. We get why Nora pushes people away and occasionally has serious mental health issues, we get why Agnes is deathly afraid of confrontation, we get why Gustav was such an inadequate father.

Yet Trier manages to walk a delicate line where he unveils and explores all of these things, yet doesn’t use them as an excuse for their behavior, either. Especially for Gustav. While we see him try to grapple with the death of his mom through his filmmaking, and in the process see how much pain it caused him, we also see how casually he brushes off the damage he did to his daughters. Like many older men who have damaged their families, he refuses to take full responsibility. Yet, at the same time, he does try to make amends.

Should Nora and Agnes forgive him? The movie doesn’t give a definitive answer. There is no great speech about the healing power of forgiveness, but neither is Gustav damned for what he did. When the family decides to come together at the end to work on Gustav’s new film, it’s not portrayed as some sort of magical cure to their problems. Healing is presented as a possibility, not an inevitability, and one can imagine that Gustav himself has some serious work to do for his daughters before things are good again.

At the end of the day, Sentimental Value is not trying to take a side in the family drama. It’s simply there to watch it unfold and try to understand it.

8. Finds Humor in the Hardest Places

Nothing about this story easily lends itself to humor. Even more so to the type of humor that fits with everything happening on screen. It’s tricky business to add jokes to a serious drama without undercutting the dramatic stakes and tension. Fortunately, Trier is able to pull it off.

He does this by finding jokes that complement the characters and what’s happening on screen. When Agnes’s son, his grandson, is having his birthday party, Gustav gives him a gift. The grandson opens it only to see it is a stack of European art house movies for adults, including The Piano Teacher and Irreversible.

The joke is initially funny because of how awful the movies are as a gift for a kid. But the joke also works because it reflects how awful Gustav is at connecting with others over anything other than cinema. In other scenes we have seen Gustav bond with his grandson through things like making movies on his phone. Here we see that he genuinely has no idea how else to relate to him, or anyone else for that matter.

It is through jokes that work in harmony with what the movie is going for that makes them land so effectively. While Sentimental Value is much more drama than comedy, the fact it still finds moments of well-fitting humor in an otherwise melancholic story gives it extra life. Like with his previous film The Worst Person in the World, Trier shows he can thread drama and comedy effortlessly and effectively.

9. Genuinely Cares About the Art of Cinema

As we’ve established, Gustav can only connect to others through the art of cinema. It’s something of a crutch for him. While that’s shown as a shortcoming of his, however, Sentimental Value never criticizes the art itself. In fact, it celebrates it.

A lot of this is expressed through Gustav and his attempts to connect with his family. For whatever his flaws as a father, he is (mostly) good at using it to connect with his grandson through things like the previously mentioned making of short videos on a smartphone. It also allows him to connect with Fanning’s Rachel Kemp, who herself very clearly has the desire to do something earnest and thoughtful for the medium in her position as a huge US movie star.

On a deeper level, while cinema was his escape from his trauma, which ultimately led to his daughters having conflicted feelings about his artistic pursuit, it still helps them begin to reconnect when all other means of communication fails. Even Nora seems to come to understand this toward the end when she agrees to work with her father.

It’s worth reiterating here that this doesn’t mean Gustav’s behavior is being excused. There’s a reason this movie doesn’t have a sappy forgiveness scene or a triumphant epilogue where everything is suddenly better. Rather, it’s about using art to communicate, work together, and begin to restore what was lost. Like with fellow Oscar nominee Hamnet and its wonderful ending, Sentimental Value shows that art can help heal broken families.

10. In the Director’s Own Words

“I tried to be clear. I dared to be clear. (…) I knew I had great actors; I’m very privileged. The challenge of the film for me was how do we let that clarity and honesty come through when the film talks about the opposite: our avoidance, our family’s inability to speak, the roles we give each other unconsciously. So much of the movie is about things that are unclear. So how does one tell that story in a straightforward way?”

“In this film I didn’t want to ask whether reconciliation is possible, but to show what trying to reconcile teaches us. I don’t believe we can solve everything simply by talking.”

“Out of all my films, this one has seen the most people come up to me after screenings telling me about their families, sharing personal things with me, talking about their feelings. I feel seen. Things I couldn’t say in social settings about inherited grief and the dynamics of non-communication in a family, things that are very hard to talk about, I’ve been able to express in a different language, which is making movies. So, to hear people in their own words talking to me about their own personal stuff relating to that is incredible.”

“My grandfather was in the resistance during the war; he was captured and spent time imprisoned by the Nazis across two different camps, and he was very traumatized by that. He made films after the war, and I think that was a way to survive and find a place in the world again. He was creating something and seeking meaning in it.  I think that’s at the core of the process of making this film for me.”

— Joachim Trier talking to Hollywood Reporter, Euro News, Screen Daily, and RogerEbert.com

Author Bio: David Hollingsworth is a historian of U.S. and Latin American history who teaches history at Palomar College and writing at UC San Diego. In his spare time he enjoys, among other things, watching and writing about movies. You can find him on Instagram at dave_of_reckoning.

The courtroom drama has seen something of a resurgence in recent years, with Justine Triet’s monumental Anatomy of a Fall (2023) winning the Palme d’Or at Cannes, Clint Eastwood returning to our screens with Juror #2 (2024), and Netflix backing the true life tale of The Trial of the Chicago Seven (2020) a few years back.

But it’s always been there, in the background; from the old classics like 12 Angry Men (1957) or Witness for the Prosecution (1957) right through until now, enjoying a particularly fruitful patch that coincided with the boom of the erotic thriller in the 70’s and 80’s.

Here we look back at 10 of the more underrated courtroom dramas, ones that may have slipped your notice, or were perhaps discarded unfairly at the time, all of which are worthy of a reappraisal, or at the very least, a second glance.

1. The Star Chamber (1983)

When you consider Michael Douglas’s acting career, it’s fair to say that there are many excellent films that immediately jump out. But Peter Hyams’s 1983 legal drama probably isn’t one of them. The Star Chamber might be difficult to track down, but it’s well worth doing so. Douglas plays Steven Hardin, a judge who has become so disgusted by the how the legal system works, he’s considering his life choices.

When a case of criminals getting off on yet another technicality proves one system error too far, he seeks the help of a fellow judge (Hal Halbrook) in trying to do something about it. Halbrook’s Benjamin invites Hardin into an inner ring of judges who take the law into their own hands when this sort of thing happens, creating their own court and delivering justice their own way when the time presents itself.

The idea is something we’ve seen time and again in vigilante films but presenting such a narrative through the legal system itself proves a fascinating concept, and Douglas, as you might expect, is equal to the task. He throws himself into the film and, even when it doesn’t all hang together, you believe in his character. The Star Chamber is a thoroughly engaging piece of film making, and while it might not be up there with his very best, proves that Douglas can single handedly sell you a film.

2. Jagged Edge (1985)

Glenn Close would become one of the icons of the erotic thriller solely for her display in Adrian Lyne’s Fatal Attraction (1987), but in Richard Marquand’s courtroom drama and erotic thriller she plays a lawyer who takes on Jack’s (Jeff Bridges) case, a man whose rich heiress wife has been murdered, and he’s the accused.

Written by Joe Eszterhas, the script was sold for half a million dollars (his Basic Instinct script went on to sell for $3 million), and you can see the seeds of what was to come from Eszterhas in Jagged Edge. Marquand’s film removes the titillation in favour of what ends up being a courtroom drama, and Jagged Edge is good fun, with solid performances, with the outrageousness of Basic Instinct removed, and works a whole lot better as a result. This ends up being very much a courtroom drama, despite Close’s Teddy falling in love with Jack; and although it’s flawed, it’s lead performances take this above your average legal thriller.

In the end, Jagged Edge walks a fine line between the two sub-genres and ultimately succeeds rather well. It might be discarded in favour of Eszterhas’s more famous scripts these days, but Jagged Edge holds up today and is worth another look as a legal drama, rather than purely an erotic thriller penned by Eszterhas, as many dismiss it as.

3. Presumed Innocent (1990)

Recently reimagined by Apple TV+ as a TV series, Alan J. Pakula’s brilliant 1990 legal thriller keeps you guessing until the very last shot. When a lawyer is found murdered, her boss assigns the case to a colleague, Rusty (Harrison Ford), but when the case exchanges hands, it turns out Rusty was having an affair with the victim.

It sets up an intriguing premise; How do you defend yourself against a charge of rape when you were having an affair with the dead woman, your fingerprints are on a glass in her apartment, and phone records prove you called her earlier in the evening, not to mention the fact that your semen has been found at the scene of the crime?

This is what Ford’s Rusty is dealing with, and it must be said that this is one of his finest on-screen performances, up there in terms of sheer helplessness with The Fugitive (1993). Rusty’s wife (a wonderful performance by Bonnie Bedelia) stands by him, but she’s understandably bitter because of his infidelity, and as this bitterness grows, so does the tension; making Presumed Innocent a gripping thriller from start to finish, and its courtroom sequences are enthralling. It’s also surprisingly quiet and understated, making the whole thing seem more plausible, and draws you in even further to its web of intrigue.

4. A Time to Kill (1996)

The late Joel Schumacher is often remembered for his ill-advised Batman & Robin (1997) film, although many seem to forget that he actually helmed Batman Forever (1995) before that, which was a far better film. For those cinema fans out there however, we’re aware that Schumacher was an excellent film maker, and his 1996 courtroom drama A Time to Kill is a good example of this.

The plot revolves around Carl, an African American man who kills two white men who raped his daughter as their trial is set to begin. Carl (Samuel L. Jackson) then hires a white American to defend him in his own trial, showing an unshakeable faith in the lawyer that he can get him off. Schumacher’s film is gripping and hosts an impressive cast list; Matthew McConaughey as the lawyer Jake who Carl hires, and there are roles for Sandra Bullock and Kevin Spacey along the way.

Despite Jake’s doubt about whether he can be successful in his attempts to help Carl walk free in a segregated Southern town, A Time to Kill pulls you into its grasp and despite its lengthy running time, never outstays its welcome. This is a Schumacher film that doesn’t get the credit it deserves and is a far better film than many preceive it to be.

5. The Rainmaker (1997)

Again, this is a courtroom drama made by a big-name director that falls by the wayside in comparison to his bigger films, and yet Francis Ford Coppola’s John Grisham adaptation The Rainmaker is a star-studded courtroom drama that is frequently discarded.

Starring Matt Damon as a trainee lawyer who enters a shady law practise, Rudy is given the benefit of his boss’ (Mickey Rourke) experience only on the condition that he brings his own business to the firm. The case that the film focuses on involves Rudy suing an insurance company that refuses to pay the medical bills of young boy who is critically ill. Facing Rudy is a highly experienced legal team, led by Jon Voight.

Coppola’s film is well crafted and superbly acted, providing audiences with a compelling legal drama that pulls you in with its emotion, and holds you there until the credits role. It remains one of the finest Grisham adaptations to date, and while there’s a few to choose from, the Rainmaker remains one that seemingly gets lost amongst the rest, despite its impressive direction and cast list.

The Academy Award for best international feature film was created in 1948. It’s an interesting category. It’s great that it exists, as it helps shine a spotlight on films from across the world that may not otherwise get the recognition they deserve. In the almost eighty years since, an incredible pantheon of world cinema has been created. The world of movies would be worse off without the award.

The other side to it, though, is that it pits films from every country on earth except the United States against one another each year. There are almost two hundred countries on earth, yet only five slots for the nominees. From there, they pick one movie that is supposed to represent the best of world cinema; in other words, one movie that is supposed to represent 96% of the human population.

When thought of in that way, the race for best international picture is an almost impossible choice. There are so many great movies nominated each year that deserve to win. Unfortunately, because of how deep the competition is, many worthy movies walk away empty-handed. Below are ten of the best international movies nominated for the award who didn’t get it.

1. Embrace of the Serpent (2015)

Films featuring Indigenous characters are not common. Films featuring Indigenous characters while also bringing in Indigenous voices behind the camera are even rarer. Films that work closely with Indigenous communities, directly asking their permission about where to film and collaborating closely in its production are so rare that there is only a handful of them. Ciro Guerra’s black and white Embrace of the Serpent is one of those few. It is an incredible accomplishment, especially considering it is only his third full-length film.

This film follows the travels of two Western explorers through the Amazon Jungle. The first is a German ethnographer in 1909, the second an American botanist in 1940. Both men are helped by the same Indigenous man, years apart; the German gets the younger, angrier of this man as a reluctant guide, while the American gets the older, more tranquil version. In both cases they’re look for a legendary plant, yakruna,

While the yakruna is indeed important for its sacred meaning in the local Indigenous culture, this movie is more about the journey (or, more accurately, two journeys) than the destination. The movie is reminiscent of Apocalypse Now. Both the 1909 and 1940 expeditions go through a lot and encounter many difficulties, including other inhabitants of the jungle. Along the way we see the deep, deep damage brought about by outside intrusion into local Indigenous societies. This includes not just the legacy of European colonization, but even the damage done by independent Latin American governments during the era this movie takes place.

One stark example of this horror is the reality surrounding rubber. Many of the Indigenous characters talk about “rubber” meaning death. That may sound silly at first, but then you get the context: Indigenous people were forced to work in horrifying conditions on rubber plantations and treated with incredible cruelty. We see people with missing limbs thanks to these rubber plantations, as well as mass graves for those worked to death. In a perverse twist of fate, the natural bounty of the Amazon became a curse for its inhabitants. The drive of Western capitalism to constantly consume resources at all costs led to exploitation, misery, and death for many of its inhabitants.

This isn’t only a movie about the evils of colonialism and greed, though. It’s also a compelling character study full of memorable moments that transcend a simple good Indigenous people vs bad Westerner narrative. The main characters in this movie are well-realized and driven by clear motivations, yet they are driven in ways that are sometimes surprising, which helps avoid too much predictability. This focus on character and the events that unfold from what they pursue allows the movie to pull off the tricky balancing act of respecting local cultures while still sticking to its mission of providing an intense, memorable adventure. It’s an incredible feat.

2. A Man Called Ove (2016)

Hannes Holm is a writer-director who started in television in the 1980s before making the transition to film in the 1990s. He is best known for his dramadies that effectively blend both elements of the genre. A Man Called Ove, based on a 2012 novel of the same name, is the culmination of his talents.

The premise is simple. Ove is a crochety old man. He misses his deceased wife and has given up on life. He immediately recalls the similar character from Pixar’s Up, but in a more grounded way. Toward the beginning of the movie we see him try to take his own life, but he gets interrupted by his new neighbor, a Persian immigrant who just moved in with her Swedish husband and their children. They ask him for help, which he begrudgingly gives, but as they keep visiting him and showing interesting in getting to know him, it interrupts his continued plans to end his own life.

From there, you can probably guess where the movie goes: the grumpy old man gradually befriends his new neighbors and finds new purpose in life. To an extent, that’s how things unfold. But it’s not all that happens. His new neighbors help him build new relationships, but they also help revitalize his spirits enough so that he gradually goes about connecting to others, even those he had been close to before he fell out with them. This is not just a movie about befriending a single group of people, but about the need everyone has for a true sense of community. Ove’s great triumph in this movie isn’t just befriending his new neighbors, but helping sticking up for a different neighbor during his time of need.

We also see, through a series of flashbacks, that Ove has lived quite a life. During his suicide attempts, we flash back to pivotal moments in his life, like the death of his mother and his childhood under the care of his quiet but loving father. You see fragments of a full, sad but meaningful life that serves to remind you that every grumpy old person have been through battles you don’t know about. It really gives him an inner life that is harder to pick up on in the ‘present’ in which the film takes place.

If any of this is making this film sound overly serious or dramatic, it is worth reiterating that this is a dramedy and therefore part comedy. Often this comes from Ove’s grouchy nature bumping up against the lighter world and friendlier people around him. This movie can get dark in places, but overall it’s a hopeful, life-affirming movie about the need for community and purpose. Considering the era of disconnection and loneliness we live in today, this is a great movie for our time.

3. Shoplifters (2018)

Hirokazu Kore-eda is one of the great modern Japanese directors. He began his career as an assistant director for documentaries. In the early 1990s he made a few documentaries of his own before switching to fictional feature films, which began with Maborosi in 1995. To date he has directed seventeen movies, many of which have won numerous awards and accolades.

While he has made plenty of celebrated movies, many consider Shoplifters to be his greatest work. It follows a group of people living together in poverty on the outskirts of Tokyo: an elderly woman, a middle-aged married couple, a young woman, and a preteen boy. The group is not related by blood, but are something of a found family. While a couple of them make money through honest means, they also shoplift in order to get by. A difficult contradiction lies at the heart of this group: they clearly have a familial love for one another, yet there is also something unhealthy and dysfunctional about it.

The addition of a new character, a little girl, shows both sides of this dynamic perfectly. They encounter her sitting alone on her family’s balcony. She is cold, hungry, and covered in scars. The group ends up adopting (or, really, kidnapping) her. On the one hand, taking it upon yourself to ‘rescue’ a child from their parents is not something people should just decide they have the authority to do. It doesn’t help that they involve her in their shoplifting schemes. Yet, at the same time, they clearly care about her, and give her the tenderness and attention that she never received at home.

In one of the most touching scenes in the movie, the married woman of the group simply holds this little girl, tells her that if her parents really loved her they wouldn’t hit her, and hugs her while saying “this is what you do.” As she does so, she starts crying (something many viewers will also do during this scene). It’s clear that she’s talking as much to herself as she is the little girl, and that she wants to do everything she can to protect this girl from whatever she went through as a kid. The girl replies by wiping the woman’s tears away.

That scene gets at the heart of this movie. Everyone in the group means well and genuinely cares about one another. Yet this is still a dysfunctional environment. Many of their misdeeds catch up with them by the end, and secrets are revealed that show their problems go even deeper than we initially thought. Their lives simply could not continue as they were. Still, Kore-eda is not interested in judging them harshly. He recognizes they’re trying their best, as messy as the results may be. It is this balancing act that makes the film so impactful.

4. Les Misérables (2019)

“Remember this, my friends: there are no such things as bad plants or bad men. There are only bad cultivators.” -Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

Les Misérables is one of the great works of classical literature. Its heartfelt story about the horrors of poverty, the power of love, and the need to stand against injustice has led to countless adaptations, including musicals, plays, comics, and, of course, movies. It has also inspired many stories that aren’t a direct adaptation of the novel, but rather new stories that are inspired by the original.

That is where Ladj Ly’s 2019 movie comes in. Despite the title, this movie is only inspired by Hugo’s novel, rather than a direct retelling of it. It follows a French street crime police unit and the neighborhood they patrol. The area they patrol is Montfermeil, the same place the original novel takes place in. In modern France, the area is now an impoverished are predominantly populated by immigrants. Just by the setting alone, you can see the link to the original- roughly two hundreds years since Hugo’s work, the area he wrote about still has to grapple with poverty, suffering, and injustice.

This is directly personified by the police squad that the main character, who just moved to the area at the start of the film, joins. One of the officers is a black local who is well-connected to the area, but the other is an abrasive hothead who routinely abuses his authority (the fact the director has him wearing a tight-fitting Venum shirt is a subtle but inspired wardrobe choice). The movie follows the new officer as he gets to know the community he is now patrolling. Things do not go smoothly, however, and it is as much due to the tactics of the main character’s squadmates as it is the inhabitants of the area.

It’s worth pointing out that Ly himself grew up in Montfermeil. He drew on his own experiences growing up there, including witnessing a series of real riots in 2005 that help serve as inspiration for the climax of this film. What makes it great is that Ly manages to seamlessly blend his experience in an impoverished immigrant neighborhood with the themes of the original novel. When everything culminates in a big showdown at the end, you can’t help but think that while a lot has changed on the surface since Hugo wrote his legendary novel, deeper down maybe things haven’t.

5. Pain and Glory (2019)

Pedro Almodóvar is arguably the most celebrated Spanish director of all time, and definitely the most celebrated living one. He started with short films in the 1970s, then moved onto full length features in the 1980s. In the decades since, he has made some of the most well-regarded films of international cinema. This movie is, in part, a reflection and meditation on his life through those years.

The movie follows an aging director, played by Almodóvar’s long-time collaborator Antonio Banderas. The director is dealing with a number of health problems, not to mention a general aimlessness brought about by no longer actively making movies. Unable to deal with his problems, he avoids them, even turning to heroin early on in the movie. He is not well physically or mentally. As the story progresses, however, pieces of his past come back to find him and help him begin to heal through rediscovering himself.

As all of that is unfolding, we also occasionally see moments in his childhood. His mother, played by the always incredible Penélope Cruz, is a central part of his youth. She wants him to go to seminary school- not because she wants him to become a priest, but because he is bright and seminary school is one of the only chances for impoverished Spanish children to get an education. The young protagonist, however, does not want to go.

Most of Almodóvar’s movies are known for melodrama, humor, and brilliant use of color. There’s a huge energy to most of his films that make them easy even for casual moviegoers to lock into. Pain and Glory is a little different. All of those elements are still here (especially the brilliant use of color), but the melodrama and humor are much more subtle. The tone is more introspective and melancholic. It’s not depressing, but it also honest about the challenges that come with both age and losing oneself. Through it all, Banderas gives one of his most understated but memorable performances of his career.

Movies about a director reflecting on his life are nothing new, going back to Fellini’s 8½. Pain and Glory is among the best, avoiding a lot of the indulgent naval-gazing similar films can sometimes fall into. What makes this movie work is Almodóvar’s focus on his troubles and introspections, rather than a desire to paint his self-insert protagonist heroically. He is clearly not making this movie because he thinks he’s the most interesting person in the world, but rather because he’s grappling with things many people grapple with, just in his own unique way. His experiences are therefore a conduit for his thematic explorations, rather than the focus in and of itself. The care and beauty with which he conducts that exploration makes this one of his best.

Hunter S. Thompson’s adage that “When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro” stabbed at cinema’s heart in 2025. Some of the best, weirdest movies of the year premiered at major festivals, garnered awards attention (including a best picture nom here or there), and captured the discourse.

What does it even mean to be bizarre in a time when beloved cartoon icons are slasher villains, hybrid movies increasingly smash at the fourth wall, and new tech allows the quirky and experimental to bypass Hollywood entirely? As screens shrink and movies face an existential crisis, there’s more cinema than ever, and it’s weird as hell. Thus, some caveats and cop-outs. Animation isn’t included simply because the genre yielded enough weirdness it warrants its own list. Also, many of these titles had festival in 2024 but didn’t go wide until 2025.

In that vein, some 2025 premiers couldn’t be found or seen in time: Bi Gan’s Resurrection, Buffet Infinity, Alpha, Obex, and New Group. Honorable mentions: Best Wishes to All, Body Odyssey, Daniela Forever, The Legend of Ochi, The Life of Chuck, Misercordia, Sore: A Wife from the Future, The Shrouds. Finally, a special shoutout to Presence, Good Boy, and Pepe for embodying the greatest weird trend of 2025: non-human POVs. The bizarre, weird, or bonkers cinema of 2025:

15. The Actor

2025 was a fiercely competitive year for a list like this, and The Actor’s inclusion here comes at the expense of more extreme or fantastical films – particularly Baby Invasion, The Legend of Ochi, The Shrouds, The Surfer – for its commitment to the haze. Charlie Kaufman protégé Duke Johnson makes his first solo feature with The Actor, an adaptation of the novel Memory by Donald Westlake (whose work was also adapted into another 2025 movie, No Other Choice) that doubles as a return to The Twilight Zone. Fittingly for a film about lost identity, The Actor rejects it.

André Holland is Paul Cole, the titular actor whose life in 1950s New York is upended by a nasty blow to the head and amnesia. Stranded in smalltown America, the actor finds a new life that never feels quite real. A cast including Gemma Chan, Toby Jones, and Tracey Ullman play multiple characters, giving the film an additional layer of dreamy sheen. Clad in retro hues and the nostalgic glow of the past, The Actor’s weirdness sneaks up on you. It’s almost like a more staid version of Nic Cage starrer The Surfer that outweirds the competition by disappearing into its own reality and taking the audience along with it.

14. She Loved Blossoms More

Of all the truly bizarre, bonkers indies of 2025, and there were many – Ash, Chainsaws Were Singing, Dead Lover, The Dead Thing, Ebony & Ivory, Kryptic, Soul to Squeeze, Waves of Madness, Went Up the Hill, The Wheel of Heaven – She Loved Blossoms More might take the cake. Yannis Veslemes’ film shows that the Greek Weird Wave is still going strong with or without Yorgos Lanthimos with this story that’s like surreal remake of early 2000s low-budget indie Primer crossed with Annihilation.

In She Loved Blossoms More, three brothers build a sort of time machine in the hopes of reviving their mother. Every moment inside their makeshift wardrobe time hopper is also a trip through space and matter. The brothers and an unlucky houseguest commune with plants, inhale psychotropic pollen and sap, are split asunder by time differences, enveloped in flora, and more. Reality blurs but the monstrous remains. She Loved Blossoms More is creepy, unsettling, and deeply weird; experimental almost to a fault, it’s not as strong or successful as some of the other movies on this list, but it’s among the weirdest and probably the grossest.

13. Bugonia

Even with an Oscar-friendly remake of a Korean hit, Yorgos Lanthimos still manages to keep it bizarre. Perhaps no modern director has done more to ingratiate the absurd into mainstream cinema than the Greek Weird Wave auteur, and his latest collaboration with Emma Stone might be a step more conventional than Kinds of Kindness, but kudos to it for still bringing the bizarre.

Stone plays a pharmaceutical executive kidnapped by conspiracy theorists Jesse Plemons and Aidan Delbis who are convinced that she’s an alien sent to destroy the planet. A remake of 2003’s Save the Green Planet, Lanthimos and screenwriter Will Tracy infect the premise with additional dysfunction as they deftly navigate audience expectations. There’s a stilted, unspoken tension simmering underneath the torture scenes and a set-up that trampolines from horror to comedy to social commentary before doubling back and jumping over the wall. It’s topped off by fantastic performances from both leads and the supporting cast.

12. Bring Her Back

Thanks to horror, 2025 had a handful of truly weird, off-putting movies that had wide releases and box office hauls. Bring Her Back was one of them, and it’s impressive how weird and dour it gets. For a horror movie plot without anything too out of the box – grief, trauma, cheating death, rain-soaked set pieces – it finds its bizarrity in the bone-crunching, color-drained details. Bring Her Back is a film so assured in what it is that it’s not afraid to do things differently.

It’s a heavy premise: half-siblings – one of them partially blind, one of them reeling from their dead father’s abuse – end up in foster care with former therapist Laura and fellow foster Oliver, a pale, bald, mute child who immediately encapsulates the film’s bizarre scares and scampers through the film accordingly. In a year where Amy Madigan’s turn in Weapons garnered awards attention, it’s a shame there wasn’t also room for Sally Hawkins, who gives one of the year’s best performances as grieving mother Laura. She anchors a film that’s both familiar and odd, that begins with conventions and then upends them. It’s a fitting ride through a hellscape that doesn’t let on until it’s about to let you off.

11. Mr. K

Even in a year with Kafka biopic Franz, this Norwegian-Belgian-Dutch co-production might be the most Kafkaesque movie of 2025. Written and directed by Tallulah H. Schwab, Mr. K is surreal, labyrinthine and steeped in quasi-nightmarish early 1900s Europe feels. Just as The Royal Tenenbaums was a J.D. Salinger adaptation in vibes, Schwab and Crispin Glover make a swirling fantasia that drips with the Czech author’s sensibilities.

Glover plays the titular mister, a traveling magician in a non-disclosed time period that feels a lot like interwar Europe, who checks into a hotel the night before a big performance. He wakes up late and cannot find an exit. His quest to leave takes him through the organs and annals of the hotel, its staff, guests, and the class divisions between them. He makes friends, lovers, enemies, and acquaintances. His reality is tilted off-center as everyone around him insists that everything is completely normal. Like the best bizarre cinema, there’s the haze of the gaslight here, a dreamlike logic that puts key items just out of sight. This would make a great odd double bill with Japanese horror Best Wishes to All, another film that’s logic is as gaslighting as the one here Schwab and Glover put on.

10. Friendship

Like most of Tim Robinson’s cringe comedy, Friendship is the bizarre packaged in the banal. Robinson and frequent collaborators Andrew DeYoung and Zach Kanin, the same team behind TV series I Think You Should Leave Now and The Chair Company, create their most cohesive offering yet which still includes hallucinogenic toads, underground tunnels, and an uncannily off-putting tone.

Robinson plays a character familiar to his repertoire, a chipper but insecure suburbanite whose desperate attempts to befriend his new neighbor played by Paul Rudd spiral into uncomfortable situations and ugly truths. In a time when so much weird cinema is the product of wild premises, literal trips through consciousness, or winking kitsch, there’s something distinctly bizarre about the nested normalcy in Robinson and co.’s work. When events do careen into the surreal, they expose raw emotions and underlying sadness. This is actually a low-intensity monster movie where the ego is the monster.

9. The Secret Agent

Like another Cannes competitor on this list, O Agente Secreto or The Secret Agent, is low-key bizarre. As with his earlier feature Bacurau, Kleber Mendonça Filho offers up another genre- and tone-mashing film that’s more dramatic but equally bizarre. He might’ve traded flying saucers for vengeful decapitated legs, but the weirdness simmers under this film’s unassuming nature. It is, indeed, a time of great mischief.

The Secret Agent might seem like an odd, staid choice for a survey of bizarre cinema, but in a year like this, tone and choices set it apart. The film splices time, perspective, nightmare logic, and strange imagery – much of it induced by Carnival – into a deeply relevant, contemporary meditation on power. Wagner Maura plays a man of mystery, ostensibly on the run. Filho games audience expectations unfurling his story between interludes that capture a time, place, and mood. This is an aloof movie, informed by the gaps in its characters’ souls and hearts, and while other movies have weirder premises and wilder executions, here’s a movie that uses bizarre imagery and interludes to point us towards tragedies that some would otherwise have us forget.

The crime thriller is something that almost everyone who loves cinema will have their own personal affiliation with. With the enormous explosion in true crime over the recent decades, mainly down to streaming platform like Netflix, the crime thriller has offered us something slightly different that keeps people glued to their television screens rather than their local cinema screens.

Crime thrillers in the more traditional sense of the phrase, however, have been around since the inception of cinema itself, and we’re well versed in the Hollywood style suspense, moral ambiguity and fast paced storytelling that comes as standard with such a feature. There are plenty of terrific crime thrillers on offer outside of Hollywood, of course, and in this list, we pick out ten international crime thrillers that might have passed you by over the years. Some of these have also been unavailable in terms of distribution until recently; all of them are worth tracking down.

1. Back to the Wall (1958)

Edouard Molinaro’s tight and brilliantly crafted noir feature is one of the finest crime thrillers of the fifties. Gerard Oury is superb as wealthy industrialist Jacques Decrey, who discovers his wife Gloria (Jeanne Moreau) is having an affair, and decides to exact revenge by blackmailing her under an assumed identity.

Stylish, intriguing, and thoroughly engrossing from start to finish, Back to the Wall is an exercise in narrative tension, filled with fully rounded characters and a beautifully crafted story. Jacques manipulates the situation to his own control with his blackmail notes and having lost the thrust of his own existence with the revelation of the affair, regains some purpose as he watches his wife squirm under the demands of blackmail.

Molinaro’s film plays out as a cold psychological noir rather than a melodramatic thriller, but that doesn’t stop it being invigorating from start to finish, and for those that haven’t seen it, this is a gem.

2. Death Occurred Last Night (1970)

When the mentally disabled daughter of a lonely widower goes missing in Milan, a police captain and his partner investigate her disappearance. They uncover a brutal underworld of pimps and prostitution, and when her body is found, they race to find the killers before her grieving father takes justice into his own hands.

Duccio Tessari’s film might sound familiar to those that have seen Paul Schrader’s Hardcore (1979), yet Tessari’s film was released nearly a decade before. Clearly an influence on Schrader’s film, Death Occurred Last Night is a scuzzy, distressing, yet deeply impressive piece of poliziottechi film making. You could also very much imagine this in the hands of someone like Abel Ferrara. But that possibly does a disservice to Tessari, because he has crafted a compelling investigative down and dirty thriller that offers you a fully subversive and atmospheric crime world.

It’s violent, it’s bleak, it’s disturbing, but it also feels nastily authentic, and reminds you of the horrors of real-life underworld activity, without ever having to be overly explicit. Schrader’s Hardcore isn’t an easy watch, but some would argue Tessari’s film is even tougher, and that’s very much to its credit.

3. Shoot First, Die Later (1974)

Fernando Di Leo’s corrupt cop thriller is one of those films whose poster stands out and grabs your attention. I won’t describe it here but suffice to say it would look great on your wall. Thankfully the film equals its poster in terms of quality, with Luc Merenda on great form as a Milan police lieutenant who appears to be a great crime fighter, but secretly takes bribes from the local mob.

This all comes to a head when a routine issue forces him to ask his honest lower-ranked father (also a police officer) for help with a report the gang wants hidden, and things swiftly spiral out of control. This is one of the finest examples from the Italian poliziottesco sub-genre of film making; and, just like Death Occurred Last Night, it nails its genre tropes of gritty, violent and tightly paced storytelling.

Shoot First, Die Later (it’s also a great film title, let’s be honest) nods its head to the noir films of earlier years, and maintains an engrossing narrative through car chases, shootouts and a pulpy feel which never veers into pastiche.

4. Savage Three (1975)

This is another film that falls into the category of poliziotteschi thrillers, and yet Vittorio Salerno’s film is a nastier, more violent piece than anything on this list thus far. It tells the story of three aimless young men in Milan, who spend their days drinking, picking up women, and drifting between petty crime and boredom. What initially begins as petty crime quickly escalates into something far more vicious and pointless; there’s no end game or big payout; they’re simply doing it for the thrills.

Salerno’s film is grounded in gritty realism, and it’s genuinely an uncomfortable watch, but that’s the whole point. There are no heroic cops or suave criminals that anchor the film, or indeed anyone to particularly root for, but that’s what gives Savage Three its eerie authenticity. Savage Three also came ahead of its time, because even though audiences might not have wanted to see such anarchy on screen, the idea of violence as boredom-relief rather than ambition now feels disturbingly modern, and despite the fact Salerno’s film came a few years after Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange, no-one really mentions Savage Three in terms of thematic similarity.

5. Man on the Roof (1976)

Glancing through the synopsis for Bo Widerberg’s Man on the Roof, you’d be forgiven for thinking you’d seen it all before. A Stockholm police officer is brutally murdered in hospital, and as the investigation unfolds, the police realise the killing may be connected to past misconduct that was ignored within the force.

The film slowly turns into a manhunt, but where Widerberg’s film then wildly changes tune is that the suspect comes out into the open voluntarily, but only to hole up on a rooftop overlooking central Stockholm and begins shooting at police officers below. Man on the Roof is a thrilling ride, a superb police procedural that flawlessly morphs into a siege movie for its final quarter and it’s enthralling from start to finish. For the first two thirds of the film it also offers a well paced and thoroughly authentic portrayal of police procedures, reminding you of David Simon’s The Wire (2002-2008).

It also laid something of a marker down for future Nordic noir features, and its influence can be seen all the whole to the present day, and you can absolutely see its fingerprints in something like David Fincher’s Zodiac (2007).

On February 9, 2020, the audience at Los Angeles’ Dolby Theater jumped to their feet and erupted with cheer when Jane Fonda announced that Parasite had won Best Picture. It was a watershed moment for the industry, marking the first time a non-English language film had taken home the top prize in the 92-year history of the Oscars. In the week following this historic win, Bong Joon Ho’s thriller received a 234% increase in ticket sales at the domestic box office, bringing in $8.8 million. In real time, the post-Oscar popularity surge of Parasite proved that—despite declining telecast ratings and the ceremony’s diminishing cultural relevance—a Best Picture win still matters.

There are plenty of both non-cinephiles and film lovers who consider the Oscars to be nothing more than a silly, meaningless award show where rich and famous celebrities get together to hand each other gold statues and deliver self-indulgent speeches. These people argue that the awards don’t matter because the academy tends to ignore certain genres or choose the wrong winners. While there is some truth to that sentiment, it is undeniable that winning Best Picture is an impactful and significant moment for both a film and the people who made it.

Though film fans know the Academy gets it wrong far more often than they get it right, that doesn’t change the fact that a film’s name is etched in history the second it wins Best Picture. Even today, when the Oscars are no longer the dominant cultural force they once were, casual moviegoers and film-agnostic entertainment consumers have an awareness of what is crowned Best Picture, and feel a sense of cultural obligation to seek that film out after it wins. Moreover, that film immediately gets assigned a certain historical value. It is given a spot in an exclusive club. When future generations go back to study a certain year or decade in film, the names of Best Picture winners will be among the first things they see, for better and worse.

All of this is why film fans get so frustrated by the Academy’s choices every year. We want the film crowned at the end of the ceremony to be one that actually feels representative of the moment. We want to feel like the film being rewarded is one that will genuinely stand the test of time because we know that is what a Best Picture winner should do. Unfortunately, as this list will show, that is often not the case. The 25 films that have triumphed at the Oscars this century range from all-time great to forgetful to downright bad. Yet, still, their names will always appear next to each other for the rest of time. That is the power of a Best Picture win.

Without further ado, here is a ranking of the 25 Best Picture winners of the 21st century.

25. Crash (2005)

In the modern history of the Oscars, Paul Haggis’ Crash has become the posterfilm for the Academy’s poor decision-making. A widely-ridiculed, deeply regressive racial tension drama that has aged about as poorly as any film can, Crash is only remembered today through mockery and derision. Whatever observations the film’s screenplay was trying to make about a post 9/11 America felt tone-deaf in the moment and are simply embarrassing now.

Though the Academy has made similarly cringey missteps both before and after Crash’s win—by rewarding films like Driving Miss Daisy and Green Book—it remains a true mystery how a film like this ever achieved Hollywood’s highest honor. And, with the egregiousness of a Best Picture victory being measured not just by what won, but also by what lost, this win is made even more upsetting considering that a genuinely beautiful, forward-thinking, and timeless film like Brokeback Mountain was nominated this year as well.

24. The Artist (2011)

Among the 21st century Best Picture winners, Michael Hazanavicius’ The Artist has the distinct honor of being the “Film that Exists the Least Today.” If the idea of choosing a Best Picture winner is about trying to select the film that will create an omnipresent legacy and continuously be passed down to future cinephiles, then The Artist was a laughably bad choice.

While this film is a perfectly nice homage to a bygone era in cinema history, it was never deserving of a Best Picture win. It remains a testament to the Academy’s unfortunate and often misguided bias towards films that celebrate the majesty of moviemaking. While The Artist clearly captured the hearts of a lot of people who work in the industry, though, it has largely been forgotten by the general public since it triumphed at the 84th Academy Awards. No Best Picture winner should be this irrelevant just 14 years after its victory.

23. Green Book (2018)

The legacy of Green Book’s controversial Best Picture win can be used to understand a recurring truth about awards season discourse. Oftentimes, films came around that, had they not been positioned as Oscar hopefuls, would simply fade into obscurity after being written off as somewhat flawed or just okay. When these movies enter into the take machine that is award season prognostication, though, they are met with much harsher criticism because critics and film lovers start to reckon with the idea that a movie like Green Book could actually be chosen as the representative for an entire year in film.

Is Green Book a good movie? Of course not. But is it a wholly irredeemable and outright bad one? Probably not. It does contain a genuinely great Mahershala Ali performance after all. The problem is this movie should have been a small hit with out-of-touch older audiences who found its clumsy, contrived messaging to be more moving than it actually was, and then gone away quietly. Instead, some of those out-of-touch older viewers were in a position to vote for it to win Best Picture, which is why it is now remembered the way it is.

22. CODA (2021)

It’s important to remember that Academy voters are people who, like the rest of us, sometimes just want to feel good. That is how an overtly sweet but ultimately somewhat hollow feel-good dramedy like Sian Heder’s CODA manages to ride an easy-to-root-for narrative all the way to a Best Picture win. Heder’s film isn’t a bad one, but it’s easy to see CODA going the way of some of the least remembered Best Picture winners over the next decade or so.

Benefitting from a slightly weaker crop of nominees, with the industry still actively recovering from the effects of the pandemic, CODA charmed audiences and Academy voters alike due to its heartwarming vibes, strong performances, and genuinely historic on-screen representation for hearing-impaired actors and characters. But, when looking back on it today, it is difficult to justify the decision to call this film the absolute best that a year had to offer. There is not a lot here that you couldn’t find in a melodramatic Hallmark movie.

21. The King’s Speech (2010)

No film on this list illustrates the idea that a Best Picture winner’s legacy is defined greatly by which films it beats more than Tom Hooper’s The King’s Speech. While Hooper’s biopic is largely remembered as a perfectly fine piece of Oscar bait that film fans don’t have a strong connection to, one of the films it triumphed over, The Social Network, has grown more relevant by the day. David Fincher’s movie about the creation of Facebook is widely considered a masterpiece, with many calling it the best film of its decade.

On the other hand, Hooper’s Best Picture winner is a mostly forgotten work that never found much staying power in the culture following its Oscar victory. A victory, by the way, that has aged even worse considering Harvey Weinstein’s hands were all over it. Ultimately, The King’s Speech’s win just feels like a relic of a bygone Hollywood era, one that we should all be grateful has ended.

20. A Beautiful Mind (2001)

As the history of Best Picture and all four acting categories shows, there is not a lot that the Academy loves more than an overly sentimental, manipulative biopic designed to have audience members wiping away tears as they exit the theater. Ron Howard’s story about the life and mental illness struggles of Nobel prizewinning mathematician John Nash remains a testament to this fact. 25 years removed from its Best Picture win, A Beautiful Mind is viewed today as a cliché-fueled, reductive work of uninspired filmmaking that almost feels like it was designed in a lab to nab a gold statue.

It is not the worst film to ever win this award, but the outdated, formulaic nature of its based-on-a-true-story narrative is ultimately what makes it one of the most disappointing winners of this century, even if it does contain a brilliant Jennifer Connelly performance. Considering 2001 gave us a litany of influential masterpieces from acclaimed auteurs like Mulholland Drive, Memento, The Royal Tenenbaums, In the Mood for Love, and others, it is hard to accept something as unremarkable as A Beautiful Mind being chosen as the winner.

19. Chicago (2002)

For many, Rob Marshall’s Chicago will mark the point where this list switches from true Oscar tragedies to flawed, but much more palatable winners. While this cinematic recreation of Bob Fosse’s wildly successful Broadway show certainly isn’t the most talked-about Best Picture winner of all time, it was a genuine hit with audiences upon release in 2002, grossing over $300 million at the worldwide box office.

Today, it is probably best remembered for its Old-Hollywood style musical numbers and set production, as well as the performances given by Renée Zellweger and Catherine Zeta-Jones. When looking back on the somewhat mediocre list of fellow 2002 Best Picture nominees, it is hard to be overly angry with Chicago’s win. It may not be one of the great Hollywood musicals of all time, but it is a fairly acceptable Best Picture winner, given its initial popularity and the year it was released.

18. Million Dollar Baby (2004)

Clint Eastwood’s Million Dollar Baby is a somewhat controversial Best Picture winner due to its distinct lack of rewatchability. While it may be hard to revisit this emotionally moving tale about a female boxer and the grizzled trainer who takes her under his wing, though, there’s no denying Eastwood made one of the great sports films of the 21st century with Million Dollar Baby.

Since it had been decades since films like Chariots of Fire and Rocky took home top prize at the Oscars, this win felt like a bit of throwback in 2004. Ultimately earning four Oscars, including Best Director and Best Actress, Million Dollar Baby remains one of the most rewarded sports films the ceremony has ever seen. Surely, Eastwood’s presence at the helm of this film allowed the Academy to see it as more than just a genre picture.

17. Argo (2012)

It’s not surprise that the Academy rallied behind a film about the role Hollywood played in an international crisis. When you couple that satisfying pat on the back voting members they no doubt enjoyed giving themselves with the groundswelling of support Ben Affleck received after he failed to earn a Best Director nomination, you see how Argo was able to pull of a Best Picture win.

By no means a bad film, Affleck’s 2012 project has not aged spectacularly well. Primarily, the film’s interest in painting showbiz in an extremely generous light and proclivity to oversimplify key facts or alter history has resulted in a lot of people to see Argo as a fairly outdated ode to rah-rah American patriotism. With Affleck’s talents behind the camera, the movie shines most through its filmmaking and the way it builds tension as a political thriller. When compared to the truly great Best Picture winners near the top of this list, though, it feels like a somewhat underwhelming inclusion.

16. Slumdog Millionaire (2008)

Despite the impressive $378 million Slumdog Millionaire earned at the worldwide box office upon release, its Best Picture win was ultimately a quiet one, given it coincided with Heath Ledger’s posthumous win and the outcry that resulted over films like The Dark Knight and WALL-E missing the cut for Best Picture, which led the Academy to expand the field of nominees to ten.

Today, it’s easy to forget how much of a sensation Danny Boyle’s film about a teenager’s triumph on the Indian version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire actually was. Since it has not held up to some of the criticism levied at it over the years—particularly accusations of cultural tourism and the belief that the film presented a skewed portrayal of lower-class Indian society—the thing it is probably remembered for best is the career-launching performance of Dev Patel. Much like Argo, Million Dollar Baby, and Chicago, it is a winner that people don’t spend a great deal of time getting mad about today, but still one that doesn’t feel totally correct.

15. Birdman (or the Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) (2014)

Like a lot of films that owe some of their initial hype to what could be referred to as a gimmick, Birdman has not aged incredibly well. Much like its director, Alejandro González Iñárritu, it is a divisive film among movie lovers. Though the performances in this story of a washed-up movie star making his comeback on Broadway are still worthy of some praise, the one-take filmmaking style has lost pretty much all the luster it had when Bridman was released in 2014.

It is certainly not as bad as some of the worst winners of the century, but it still feels like a prime example of the Academy getting caught up in a moment and missing the mark completely. While nominated films from this year like Boyhood, The Grand Budapest Hotel, and Whiplash have only become more admired in the minds of most cinephiles, Birdman has failed to stand the test of time.

14. Everything Everywhere All At Once (2022)

By 2022, Oscar viewers had already seen indicators that the Academy’s larger, more diverse voting body, which rightfully resulted from controversies like #OscarsSoWhite, was willing to award films that never would have won in the past. The triumphs of films like Moonlight and Parasite were clear examples of that. Still, it remains somewhat hard to fathom that an organization like the Academy awarded Best Picture to a film like Everything Everywhere All At Once.

While it is hard to call this choice a correct one—given that much superior films like Tár and The Fabelmans were among the 10 nominees this year—it is definitely an interesting one that is not without its merits. Moreso than any other win before it, Everything Everywhere All At Once received Best Picture showed that this new Academy was open to different kinds of films competing. After all, if a meme-culture inspired film, which features a butt plug fight, and is directed by two guys who got their start on YouTube, can win Best Picture, then theoretically anything can.

Trying to pin down the most moving films of all time is a tricky business. Not least because every film is subjective, and every individual person will have a different reaction to every film. There are films that upset people, bringing up deeply traumatic events, there are those that depict real life events that may be heartwarming or harrowing, and there are those that simply tell tales of humanity that reduce people to tears, whether those may be positive or negative.

Since the inception of cinema, films have been making us laugh, cry, get angry, calm down, there are movies for literally every different type of human emotion. But it takes a very special film to truly move someone, right down to their core.

Here, we try to identify ten of the most moving films of all time, not just because the critics think so, but because they all struck a chord with audiences on release, but perhaps more importantly, continue to do so today.

1. Grand Illusion (1937)

Jean Renoir’s Grand Illusion isn’t one of those films that floors you with one fell swoop, it takes its time, slowly working its way through you before you realise it has hit you. Set in a POW camp during the First World War, you might initially think this is going to be a classic prisoner escape film, but it ends up being so much more.

Instead, it becomes something stranger and richer: a study of class, connection, and the slowly dissolving rules of a dying aristocracy. Its most moving moments come not from violence or victory but from gestures of decency across enemy lines—from the sadness of shared civility between officers who know their world is ending; sure, it’s one of the most shared memories of front-line combat in the First World War, but it’s no less affecting.

The fact that it was released as the world was on the cusp of yet more horrific bloodshed and yet didn’t fully comprehend the fact makes Grand Illusion even more prescient as we view it today.

2. Rome, Open City (1945)

Shot in the ruins of a city still reeling from Nazi occupation, Roberto Rossellini’s Rome, Open City has the raw and horrible reality of a time and place. It’s one of the most important works of Italian neorealism, but beyond its place in film history, it’s a staggering emotional document. There’s an almost unbearable weight to the way it shows people trying to hold onto hope and humanity in the face of horror, as we’re forced to spend time in the smouldering wreckage of a civilisation.

Rossellini’s film still resonates today, not just because the man is a genius of film making, we know that of course, but the way he manages to depict a city at the time of its rock bottom but concomitantly a time of a new beginning, however far off a utopian future looked. As we see the wreck of a once great city, and one that would be great again, this is a picture of a time and place where people didn’t know where or how to turn, both on the brink of despair, yet at the same time, hope.

Rome, Open City is one of the finest depictions of a war-torn city ever put to screen, and the fact that this was made right at the time of Italy’s horrors supposedly ending makes it all the more moving. It’s really quite astonishing.

3. It’s a Wonderful Life (1946)

We’ve all been there on Christmas Day, bawling our eyes out at Frank Capra’s bone fide Christmas masterpiece. Well, unless you’ve got a heart of stone of course. It’s a Wonderful Life has become so embedded in Christmas culture one worries that it’s actually taken for granted these days. But watching it at different times in your life proves status as one of the best, and most moving, films of all time.

The image of George Bailey staring into the snowy void of his own despair remains one of cinema’s most haunting portraits of a man unraveled. How this film received the age certificate it did still raises eyebrows. For all its warm glow and small-town charm, the film dares to investigate the dark heart of hopelessness before turning toward redemption, and what makes it so moving isn’t just the sentimental payoff—it’s the pain and self-sacrifice that precedes it.

Capra tells us that a life filled with responsibility, frustration, and missed chances can still be one of great human value. It’s not just a Christmas film—it’s a film about how much we all unknowingly matter to each other. Just be sure to never watch the colourised version, one that somehow manages to whip away a huge amount of charm and realism despite being the same film. It remains, and one would think always will, one of the greatest films ever made.

4. Grave of the Fireflies (1988)

Isao Takahata’s animated tragedy about two orphaned siblings in wartime Japan is one of the most distressing depictions of war ever put to screen. The fact that many still dismiss it as a children’s film, clearly without having seen it, proves the ultimate reason to perhaps not judge a book by its cover.

It helps that the film is superb, of course. The simplicity of the plot, two orphaned siblings desperately trying to survive the horrors around them during the final months of the Pacific War only adds to the film’s distressing nature. There’s nowhere to turn, no way to look away, this is what’s happening, and it’s horrible. But the fact that it’s so raw, and in animated form, makes the whole thing even more dazzling.

Watching the pair of them try to survive the wreckage around them is almost unbearable at times, and yet you can’t tear your eyes away. This is a film that understands the full human cost of war—not in terms of strategy or borders, but in the young, and especially the ones that lost their lives.

5. A Matter of Life and Death (1946)

Powell and Pressburger’s wartime behemoth is a film, essentially, about dying. Yet the film is so clearly full of life that it almost forces its own hand towards the end, I’ll stop there for fear of giving anything away to those few people who might not yet have seen it.

It begins with a bomber pilot, Peter (David Niven on top form, naturally) falling from the sky and talking to a woman he’s never met. The conversation will forever change both their lives, but it’s how we get to that that makes this one of the finest films Powell and Pressburger ever made together, and there’s plenty to choose from.

Choosing to blend fantasy, philosophy and romance, and switching between black and white to depict the afterlife and infusing the scenes on Earth in glorious colour, A Matter of Life and Death might well be the ultimate cinematic depiction of life and death. The clue’s in the name, you might think.

Few films have so beautifully reminded us so tenderly that love itself might be reason enough to carry on, and somehow provides us with a superb courtroom drama at the same time.

Since Netflix took over the cinematic streaming world, their output in terms of self-produced films is hugely impressive, but the quality of the products has varied enormously. There’s certainly an argument to be made about how their algorithms and interface work, pushing films that might be more popular amongst the public but are often sub-par products, and all the while there’s some really interesting stuff hidden in the depths of the app.

Netflix has backed big name directors such as Kathryn Bigelow (A House of Dynamite), Jane Campion (The Power of Dog) and the Safdie Brothers (Uncut Gems), offering them the chance to get their vision on screen on their own terms, and for that we can be very grateful that Netflix exists. And now, with Frankenstein and Train Dreams released by the streaming giant and being nominated for Best Picture at the Oscars, it means twelve Netflix-produced features have now been nominated in that category.

In this list, we rank all twelve of those films, with none of them, as of yet, walking off with the big prize.

12. Emilia Perez (2024)

Despite breaking records for the most Oscar nominations for a foreign language film, there were many who couldn’t understand why Emilia Perez had gotten any at all. The film created a wide disparity between industry figures, voters, critics, and audiences and tackled themes which sparked controversy from all different sides of the political spectrum.

Jacques Audiard’s film stars Zoe Saldana and Karla Sofia Gascon, the latter who is a former cartel leader who enlists Saldana’s lawyer to help fake her own death, and then undergoes a gender transition and tries to rebuild her life. So, the setup itself is rather intriguing, but it’s in the execution that Emilia Perez fails. It attempts to blend drama, thriller and musical elements but ends up being all over the place, with some scenes and songs almost laughably bad.

There’s no doubting the film’s ambition, and Saldana’s performance is particularly impressive, but the tone and genre mashups don’t work at all. Ultimately even if you remove the controversial (to some) elements of the film, Emelia Perez simply isn’t a very good one.

11. Don’t Look Up (2021)

Adam McKay has been a regular at the Oscars, with his films bagging plenty of films over the last decade, not bad for someone who used to produce films like Anchorman (2004) and Step Brothers (2008). Don’t Look Up, his most recent feature film, tells the story of two low level astronomers, Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Lawrence, who discover that there’s a ‘planet killer’ sized comet that will hit and destroy Earth in six months. They attempt to explain the situation during a meeting with the president (Meryl Streep, with Jonah Hill as her chief of staff) but with an election imminent, the president is unwilling to announce the bad news to the world.

Streep’s president is obviously based on Trump, ignoring reality in favour of good press, but the Trump satire felt like it had already run its cinematic course back in 2021, and although Streep is as good as always, it’s not as amusing as it should be. Don’t Look Up’s main issue is that the people it’s satirising will have no idea that they’re being lampooned, which is arguably why Netflix chose to produce it. Put this sort of cast together, call it a comedy, release it on streaming platforms, and the majority will think it’s hilarious, but instead of thinking “Wow do I really look at social media that much?” it will be “Hey they’re all tweeting and Instagraming like me, that’s really funny! Let me tweet about that!” Which, in the end, makes Don’t Look Up a success as far as viewing figures are concerned.

And Adam McKay is a terrific filmmaker; Don’t Look Up is far from a bad film, it’s well written and McKay gets some very good points across. The performances are great throughout, including Mark Rylance chewing the scenery as a tech billionaire, proving that greed and money are much more important in this day and age than the small issue of human life. So, it’s not bad, but if you don’t realise you’re being mocked then you’ll probably enjoy it a whole lot more. If you’ve appreciated McKay in the past, this passes the time, but you know he’s capable of better.

10. Mank (2020)

David Fincher’s gorgeous looking Mank focuses on the story of Herman J. Mankiewicz, the man hired by Orson Welles to write the screenplay for Citizen Kane (1941). Told partially through flashbacks whilst he works on the script, Mank focuses on one particular possible true story of the writing of Citizen Kane (there are a few).

Oldman is superb in the title role as you might expect, and there are some terrific supporting performances; but by the end you aren’t wondering whether this take on the tale might be true or not, you just don’t really care. It’s very good film making there’s no doubting that, but it’s not close to being up there with Fincher’s best.

Critically Mank split opinion, and the whole time you’re watching it there’s a nagging feeling that all the elements are in place for something truly special, but it’s just not all hanging together. In fact, dare I suggest it, there are stretches of Mank that are downright dull. The intent is there, and all the right people are in play, but for some reason it simply doesn’t keep you glued to the screen like Fincher so often succeeds in doing.

9. The Trial of the Chicago 7 (2020)

Aaron Sorkin’s follow up to his debut directorial film feature, Molly’s Game (2017) was garnered with awards buzz, and was tipped by many early on for a Best Picture nomination. Molly’s Game was a thoroughly solid debut in the chair for Sorkin and is, sadly for his second feature, a better film than The Trial Of The Chicago 7.

The ensemble cast is impressive, and the film is good natured, but it feels like a missed opportunity to nail the subject matter to a more serious attempt to put it on screen. Sorkin’s screenplays are frequently full of comedy, and he writes it well, but it’s an approach that doesn’t fully grasp the severity of the story here, certainly in terms of historical significance.

The performances are good, but there’s an element of too many cooks, and there are times when you yearn for the court room of an Oliver Stone film, or even something as basic but effective as Runaway Jury (2003). It’s an interesting story and it’s good fun, but it’s a bit too staged, and you’re left feeling maybe you need to check out a documentary on the event. Its Best Picture nomination still feels somewhat unwarranted.

8. Frankenstein (2025)

Guillermo del Toro’s lavish adaptation of Mary Shelley’s novel reimagined the classic tale through the prism of del Toro’s vision, with good effect. We all know the tale, and Oscar Isaac, Jacob Elordi and Mia Goth especially are all on excellent form, bringing to life del Toro’s very personal take on the monster and his creator.

This is something that cinephiles would have loved to have seen on the big screen, and it’s a real shame that it received such a minimal cinematic release; but of course by the same token if Netflix pay del Toro big money to allow him full artistic freedom, you can’t really deny them. Frankenstein might not be the ultimate depiction of the tale on screen but it’s not far off, del Toro’s visuals are every bit as sumptuous as you might expect, and the emotional and philosophical themes are ones that he tackles with respect.

Ultimately it’s far from his best work, but there’s enough in here for every film fan to enjoy. Whether it’s quite good enough for a Best Picture nod is another debate.

7. Maestro (2024)

Bradley Cooper took to the director’s chair for the second time with this biopic of American conductor Leonard Bernstein, which is driven by the relationship between himself and his wife Felicia. Cooper also stars, wonderfully so, as Bernstein himself with the help of some remarkable prosthetics that unsurprisingly garnered the attention of the Academy, as far as Carey Mulligan’s display as Felicia goes, it remains one of her finest to date. She’s astonishing.

Whilst the opening half is arguably forgettable, Maestro really hits its stride around the halfway mark as the couple’s marriage approaches breaking point. This ramps up and truly explodes in a row that is followed shortly after by an astonishing cathedral sequence, and from then on in we’re party to some fairly predictable but nonetheless effective emotional upheaval that tugs at our heartstrings. That’s not necessarily a criticism of the film or Cooper; he is after all telling a true story and the final third is what it is in terms of historical accuracy.

Credit must be awarded for Cooper’s direction as well, his debut in the chair was the excellent A Star Is Born in 2018, and while Maestro doesn’t perhaps have the rawness of his debut feature, he aims high and certainly delivers some bold film making.

Brcue Lee was larger than life in martial arts cinema. A zealous student of martial arts and an innovator in mixed styles, Bruce’s intense charisma, bilingual acting, and mastery of the art of the fight made him an international movie star with the release of Lo Wei’s The Big Boss (1971). Between 1971 and his untimely death in 1973, at the age of 32, he cemented his legend in 4 more films, most famously, Robert Clouse’s 1973 Enter The Dragon, each of them subsequently considered classics.

But his death left a hole in a massively popularizing genre, and opened a whole new market for Bruce Lee imitators, for unofficial spinoffs and posthumous sequels. Enter Bruceploitation: Arguably the Lee & Clouse directed Game of Death, (1978) became a Bruceploitation work, saving Lee’s classic “Pagoda sequence” from obscurity, but feeling incomplete, holes patched over with Bruce Lee stand-ins obscured by a motorcycle helmet.

But beyond that, a whole ecosystem of martial arts performers styling themselves after the looks and moves of Bruce Lee, with an often blurry line between tribute and exploitation, and movies ranging from borderline con jobs, to run-of-the-mill beat ‘em ups and tongue in cheek riffs, to works trying to push the genre forward that ultimately transcend their imitative roots.

These are 10 genre-defining classics from the diverse world of Bruceploitation:

1. The Dragon Lives Again (1977)

The Dragon Lives Again from Hong Kong director Law Kei, starring Leung Choi-Sang (or Bruce Leung) is about as silly as Bruceploitation ever got. The plot is simple: Bruce Lee wakes up in the low-budget fantasy landscape of the underworld, and must win a tournament-like series of fights against crossover pop-culture figures to escape, and return to life on Earth. In his quest, Lee fights caricatures of many of Western pop culture’s heroes, as minions of the devil: James Bond, Clint Eastwood’s ‘Man With No Name’, Count Dracula, and The Godfather. To his aid come versions of Jimmy Wang Yu’s One Armed Swordsman, (not played by Jimmy) Caine, from the American TV series Kung Fu, and – who else? – but Popeye the Sailor Man.

The fights are cheap and silly, and mostly take place in an identical rock quarry. But the giddy ridiculousness, and kind of crass novelty of it all is undeniable. There is just nothing else on earth like fake Bruce Lee kicking Count Dracula in the face, or flying suddenly up, as a puppet on a wire, into the heavens.

Law Kei, who never worked in Bruceploitation before or again, but rather in straight faced martial-arts movies (The Crippled Masters, 1979) was able to take a tongue in cheek outsider’s approach to the material that’s made it one of the most memorable the Bruceploitation era ever produced.

2. Enter Three Dragons (1978)

More closely resembling a Shaw Brothers period piece than the kind of urban crime drama Bruce Lee made his name in, Enter Three Dragons makes the move of intermixing three Bruceploitation mainstays (Bruce Lai, Dragon Lee, and Philip Ko) who are all differently costumed as Bruce Lee, though this goes more or less without comment.

The plot concerns gangster (Samuel Walls, a black American martial artist who also worked regularly in HK Bruceploitation) and his mission to recover his gang boss’ stolen diamonds, enlisting the talents of two of the three Bruces to try and get them back. The plot becomes muddled as the story goes on, and more or less devolves into a series of one-on-one grass field and rooftop fights, deliriously strung together by sudden twists of narrative. The fights aren’t breaking any ground, but they’re entertaining, varied, full of Bruce Lee style mugging, and don’t let up beginning to end.

The title ‘Dragons’ aside, a less on-the-nose homage to Bruce, and more earnestly straightforward beat ‘em up than most Bruceploitation I’ve seen. HK-based director Joseph Kong worked extensively in Bruceploitation, and was responsible for some of the genre’s most notable titles. (Like Clones of Bruce Lee (1980), further down this list.)

3. Exit the Dragon, Enter the Tiger (1976)

Another of the more straight-faced Bruceploitation ventures, not to say un-exploitative, Exit the Dragon, Enter the Tiger opens with a Bruce Lee imitator as Bruce Lee, telling the film’s star (the Taiwan-born Bruce Li, one of the genre’s most prolific stars, with more than dozen Bruceploitation films, and one of the genre’s greater claims to stunt and fighting expertise) he must carry on his Jeet Kune Do tradition, should anything happen to him. Hard cut to the next day’s paper, and Bruce Lee has died. Playing off confusions around the real Bruce Lee’s sudden death (the cause of aspirin? of a fruit-juice heavy diet, and excessive fluids in his system?) the movie posits a conspiracy. And like Golden Harvest’s Game of Death, this movie makes use of actual archival footage of Bruce Lee’s public funeral to tell its story.

Solid fights from the masterful Bruce Li are peppered throughout the next hour’s urban crime & conspiracy procedural, told with a decent, TV-movie like production. The film culminates with a dramatic, Wuxia-like final showdown, with the two final fighters meeting on a stretch of rocky coast like a natural arena, waves crashing dramatically behind them.

Director Tso Nam lee worked only twice in Bruceploitation, besides this directing the posthumous sequel Fist of Fury 2 (1977), also with Bruce Li.

4. Soul Brothers of Kung Fu (1977)

Another Bruce Li vehicle, Soul Brothers of Kung Fu from Shanghai-born director Shan Hua (director of InfraMan, 1975 and Kung Fu Zombie, 1981) brings a grounded, New Hollywood kind of grit to this story of 3 friends (Bruce Li, Shaw Brothers regular Ku Feng, and African-American martial artist Carl Scott) and working-class immigrants trying to make it in a Triad-run Hong Kong. Their friendship ultimately torn apart by the different paths and allegiances they take in the struggle to survive. The fights are strong, the widescreen cinematography looks great, and the gory, Sonny Chiba-like finale will stick with you. Famously screened with two different endings, Soul Brothers of Kung Fu has one ‘happy’ ending, and one tragic, so whichever you get a hold of, it’s worth checking out the alternative.

As much an engaging drama as a display of martial arts action, Soul Brothers of Kung Fu is a cut above most of what’s called Bruceploitation, and one of those movies that feels far more like a continuation of the martial arts-crime genre Bruce Lee’s films innovated than any kind of simple cash in. The starring inclusion of Carl Scott speaks to the popularity martial arts movies had with black American audiences in the 70s, and marks a tradition of black representation in these movies, even in the knock-offs.

5. Challenge of the Tiger (1980)

Co-directed by stars Bruce Le (Huang-Kin Lung) and American b-movie actor Richard Harrison, (featured in numerous Godfrey Ho ninja movies) as well as Luigi Batzella, (a director of cheapo spaghetti westerns) Challenge of the Tiger takes on the East meets West of Bruce Lee’s classic Enter The Dragon, with a note from the James Bond franchise’s camp espionage, and the flagrant nudity and innuendos of a sexploitation movie.

The film follows Le and Harrison’s duo of playboy intelligence agents on a globetrotting path from Hong Kong to Spain, to a remote jungle hideout where an evil Vietnamese mastermind keeps a stolen sterility formula, and plans to use it as a weapon mass destruction, leaving he and his followers the only virile men left on the planet. It’s almost Austin Powers, but from the opening slow-motion all-girl topless tennis match, this movie’s not joking around. Besides Harrison’s series of sleazy sexual encounters, the film offers some solid grindhouse action, campy genre fun, and setpieces like Bruce Le playing matador in an actual Spanish bull ring.

Besides Bruce Li, the Myanmar-born Bruce Le (Wong Kin-lung) remains the most well remembered Bruceploitation star, and arguably the one who kept most devoted to the genre, working this mode into the 90s, still billing himself as Bruce Le in even directorial efforts unrelated to the genre through the 2000s.