98
The Shawshank Redemption review
A banker sentenced to life finds a way to stay human inside a system built to strip that away. Darabont's adaptation is patient, unfashionably sincere…
★★★★★ 5.0/5
All film reviews
Every film we have reviewed in full, with a score out of 100 and the reasoning behind it. Use the genre hubs to read around a subject, or the ranked lists if you want our ordering rather than alphabetical. The table at the bottom is the complete index.
Highest rated first
Sorted by our score. Ties are broken alphabetically.
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98
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97
Spirited Away review
A sulky ten-year-old wanders into a world of spirits, loses her name, and has to work for a living. Miyazaki's most complete film and his most quietly…
★★★★★ 5.0/5
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97
The Godfather review
Coppola turned a pulp bestseller into an American tragedy about the price of inheritance. Fifty years on, the lighting alone still teaches cinematogra…
★★★★★ 5.0/5
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96
Goodfellas review
Thirty years inside the mob, told at a pace that never lets you catch your breath. Scorsese's most complete film and the one that made every other gan…
★★★★½ 4.9/5
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96
Parasite review
A poor family infiltrates a rich household, and the film turns into something else entirely. The staircase motif is not decoration — it is the thesis.
★★★★★ 5.0/5
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96
Seven Samurai review
A farming village hires seven wandering swordsmen to defend it from bandits. Seventy years on, it is still the most influential action film ever made.
★★★★½ 4.9/5
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96
The Dark Knight review
Nolan used a superhero budget to make a Michael Mann-style crime film about the limits of order. Ledger's Joker is the argument, not the decoration.
★★★★★ 5.0/5
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95
Mad Max: Fury Road review
A two-hour chase across a desert wasteland with almost no dialogue and an extraordinary amount of practical stunt work. The best action film of its de…
★★★★½ 4.9/5
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95
Pulp Fiction review
Three stories, shuffled, told with a confidence that independent film had not seen before. The structure is the innovation; the dialogue is the delive…
★★★★½ 4.8/5
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95
The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring review
The first and best of the trilogy, and the film that proved a sincere fantasy adaptation could be a serious piece of filmmaking rather than a novelty.
★★★★½ 4.9/5
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95
The Silence of the Lambs review
A trainee FBI agent must earn the cooperation of an imprisoned cannibal to catch an active killer. The film is about being looked at, and it never let…
★★★★½ 4.9/5
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94
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind review
A couple erases each other from their memories after a breakup, and the film follows the erasure from the inside. Kaufman's best script and Carrey's b…
★★★★½ 4.8/5
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94
Inception review
A heist film with five simultaneous timelines and an emotional core about mourning. The spectacle is the delivery system; the guilt is the payload.
★★★★½ 4.8/5
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94
The Matrix review
A hacker learns his reality is a simulation and spends two hours deciding what to do about it. The action was revolutionary; the ideas were older than…
★★★★½ 4.8/5
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94
Whiplash review
A jazz drummer and a conductor engage in a two-hour war of attrition over whether greatness justifies cruelty. The film refuses to answer, which is wh…
★★★★½ 4.8/5
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93
Get Out review
A Black photographer visits his white girlfriend's family estate and slowly realises something is very wrong. Peele's debut is a perfectly engineered …
★★★★½ 4.8/5
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93
Oppenheimer review
Three hours on the man who built the atomic bomb, structured as a legal thriller and shot largely in close-up. Nolan's most mature film.
★★★★½ 4.8/5
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93
Se7en review
Two detectives chase a killer who stages murders around the seven deadly sins, in a city where it is always raining and never gets dark enough to slee…
★★★★½ 4.8/5
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93
The Social Network review
The founding of Facebook told as a deposition drama, with a script that treats every conversation as a battle. Fincher's most perfectly controlled fil…
★★★★½ 4.8/5
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93
Toy Story review
A cowboy doll and a space ranger learn to share a boy's affection. The first fully computer-animated feature and still one of the best-written.
★★★★½ 4.8/5
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92
Blade Runner 2049 review
A replicant blade runner uncovers a secret that could collapse the distinction between human and manufactured. Patient, beautiful, and uninterested in…
★★★★½ 4.7/5
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92
Everything Everywhere All at Once review
A laundromat owner discovers she must connect with parallel versions of herself to save existence, and the film turns out to be about a mother and a d…
★★★★½ 4.7/5
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92
Interstellar review
An unusually earnest science-fiction film that treats relativity as a source of grief. When it works it is overwhelming; when it explains itself it st…
★★★★½ 4.7/5
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91
Dune review
The first half of Frank Herbert's novel, adapted with unusual fidelity and an extraordinary sense of scale. Patient, enormous, and confident.
★★★★½ 4.7/5
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91
The Grand Budapest Hotel review
A legendary concierge and his lobby boy navigate a stolen painting, a family fortune, and the collapse of Europe. Anderson's funniest and saddest film…
★★★★½ 4.7/5
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89
Fight Club review
An insomniac office worker and a soap salesman start a fight club that becomes a movement. The most misread film of its era, and deliberately so.
★★★★½ 4.6/5
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89
La La Land review
A jazz pianist and an aspiring actress fall in love in Los Angeles, and the film builds to a finale that has divided audiences since release.
★★★★½ 4.6/5
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88
Gladiator review
A Roman general is betrayed, enslaved, and fights his way back through the arena. The film that proved the sword-and-sandals epic could still work.
★★★★½ 4.6/5
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88
The Departed review
An undercover cop and a mob mole race to unmask each other inside the Massachusetts State Police. Scorsese's most propulsive late film.
★★★★½ 4.6/5
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87
Forrest Gump review
A man with a low IQ drifts through three decades of American history without understanding any of it. Warm, technically brilliant, and more troubling …
★★★★½ 4.5/5
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84
Joker review
A failed comedian in a decaying Gotham slides into violence. Phoenix is extraordinary; the film around him is derivative and uncertain about what it i…
★★★★½ 4.4/5
Complete index
All 31 reviews with year, primary genre, director, runtime and score.
How to use this page
If you are looking for a specific film, the index table above is the fastest route. If you are browsing, the genre hubs are more useful than this list: each one explains what the genre is trying to do, what we look for in it, and collects every relevant review with context.
Our ranked lists take a different approach. Rather than sorting by score, they place films against each other within a defined frame — a decade, or a genre across all time — and explain why one sits above another. Start with the best films of the 1990s or the best science fiction films.
Not sure where to begin?
Our ranking methodology explains what the numbers mean and why we weight craft over popularity.