Items100The creator’s order
  1. 1Parasite (2019)Parasite (2019) 8.5/10 on IMDbReleased 30 May 2019Start with the staircase. Bong Joon-ho uses a house's levels, sightlines and hiding places to make class visible before anyone offers an explanation. The humour is inviting, but the changing balance of control gives familiar spaces a much more troubling meaning. Go in knowing as little as…0
  2. 2Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022)Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022) 7.7/10 on IMDbReleased 24 Mar 2022Wild changes of costume, genre and reality all circle back to a mother and daughter struggling to reach each other. The absurdity gives the tenderness room to land. Watch it for a modern example of ambitious popular filmmaking that makes kindness feel like an active choice rather than an easy…0
  3. 3Spirited Away (2001)Spirited Away (2001) 8.6/10 on IMDbReleased 20 Jul 2001Chihiro's journey through a spirit bathhouse is full of creatures you could happily spend an evening just looking at. Beneath the invention sits a clear emotional story about courage, work and keeping hold of yourself. It is an inviting way into animation that trusts strangeness instead of…0
  4. 4The Shawshank Redemption (1994)The Shawshank Redemption (1994) 9.3/10 on IMDbReleased 23 Sept 1994Andy and Red's friendship makes hope feel like something practised through routines and small acts of care. The passage of years gives that idea weight, earning the emotional release that its enormous reputation can otherwise make sound too easy.0
  5. 5The Matrix (1999)The Matrix (1999) 8.7/10 on IMDbReleased 31 Mar 1999The question of whether your ordinary world can be trusted arrives with propulsive action and wonderfully legible images. Even if the coats and slow-motion fights already look familiar, seeing them work inside the original story is a different pleasure. It turns a large philosophical idea into an…0
  6. 6Moonlight (2016)Moonlight (2016) 7.4/10 on IMDbReleased 21 Oct 2016Three chapters and three performers let you watch a person learn which parts of himself he feels safe showing. Colour, gesture and silence carry feelings that dialogue cannot quite release. This is essential viewing for the way it expands a coming-of-age story beyond the usual milestones and lets…0
  7. 7Mad Max: Fury Road (2015)Mad Max: Fury Road (2015) 8.1/10 on IMDbReleased 13 May 2015There is almost always a clear place for your eye to go, even when the screen is packed with vehicles, bodies and dust. That clarity makes the action exhilarating rather than merely large. It also leaves you able to notice who is controlling the supplies and who is being treated as property. The…0
  8. 8Get Out (2017)Get Out (2017) 7.8/10 on IMDbReleased 24 Feb 2017Compliments, glances and awkward hospitality do frightening work before the larger horror becomes clear. Jordan Peele turns the familiar visit to meet the parents into a pointed experience of being welcomed and objectified at the same time.0
  9. 9Arrival (2016)Arrival (2016) 7.9/10 on IMDbReleased 10 Nov 2016Trying to understand visitors from another world becomes a film about how understanding changes a life. Amy Adams gives the intellectual puzzle an emotional centre, while the images make communication feel physical and difficult. A rewarding introduction to science fiction that offers discovery…0
  10. 10The Truman Show (1998)The Truman Show (1998) 8.2/10 on IMDbReleased 4 Jun 1998Jim Carrey's warmth makes the growing wrongness of Truman's tidy seaside world genuinely painful. The premise is easy to grasp, but the film opens larger questions about consent, entertainment and the comfort of a life arranged for you. Its central conflict feels especially vivid in a culture of…0