For a ranked Top 100 list featuring reviews for each film, click here.

With cinema, I have always placed my heart before my mind. I tend to overrate things that I enjoy and celebrate a large majority of what I watch. I'm not the best critic because I really go into a film seeking what to champion rather than what to chastise. I feel absolutely no guilt about these things, but I am trying to return to the heart of my love for film, abandoning talks of canons for a focus on favorites. At this point in my life, I am most concerned with the emotional core of a film and the way that the form and content impact upon the viewer. A "five star film" for me is one that I respond to entirely — heart, mind, body, spirit.

These are my favorites. I narrowed my previous longer list — which I called a canon and now regret — from a way-too-many 1825 films to a much more personal, IMDB-style list of 250. I'm planning to spend 2025 writing brief blurbs about what I love about each film listed here.

Below, I also included ten picks in each of the typical Oscar categories (plus a couple categories of my own) to share some more specific favorites derived primarily, but not exclusively, from this list. I hope anyone who reads this finds a new film that they love as much as I love all of these!

Best Direction
1. Marlon Riggs, Black is… Black Ain’t
2. Agnès Varda, Le Bonheur
3. David Lynch, Mulholland Drive
4. Med Hondo, West Indies
5. Shirley Clarke, The Connection
6. Les Blank, Burden of Dreams
7. Alfred Hitchcock, Rear Window
8. Edward Yang, A Brighter Summer Day
9. Kathryn Bigelow, Point Break
10. Wim Wenders, Paris, Texas

Best Cinematography
1. Vittorio Storaro, The Conformist
2. James Wong Howe, Hud
3. Yoshitaka Sakamoto, House
4. Stanley Cortez, The Night of the Hunter
5. Nina Kellgren, Looking for Langston
6. John Alcott, Barry Lyndon
7. Malik Hassan Sayeed, Belly
8. Suren Shakhbazyan, The Color of Pomegranates
9. Roger Deakins, The Man Who Wasn’t There
10. Christopher Doyle, Happy Together

Best Editing
1. Toshie Iwasa, Funeral Parade of Roses
2. George Tomasini, Psycho
3. Thelma Schoonmaker, The Age of Innocence
4. Maya Deren, Meshes of the Afternoon
5. Anne V. Coates, Out of Sight
6. Peter Bogdanovich and Polly Platt, Targets
7. Peter Greenaway, The Falls
8. Frederick Wiseman, Ballet
9. David M. Richardson, Throw Down
10. Larry Clark, ing Through

Best Adapted Screenplay
1. Djibril Diop Mambéty, Hyenas
2. Billy Wilder and I.A.L. Diamond, Some Like It Hot
3. Eleanor Perry, The Swimmer
4. Greta Gerwig, Little Women
5. Martin Scorsese and Nicholas Pileggi, Goodfellas
6. Mai Zetterling and David Hughes, The Girls
7. Robert Riskin, It Happened One Night
8. Yoshishige Yoshida and Masahiro Yamada, Eros + Massacre
9. Tadeusz Kwiatkowski, The Saragossa Manuscript
10. Amy Heckerling, Clueless

Best Original Screenplay
1. Joel and Ethan Coen, The Big Lebowski
2. Marguerite Duras, Hiroshima, Mon Amour
3. Todd Haynes, Safe
4. Glauber Rocha, Entranced Earth
5. Kasi Lemmons, Eve’s Bayou
6. John Sayles, City of Hope
7. Elio Petri and Ugo Pirro, Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion
8. Jordan Peele, Nope
9. Pedro Almodóvar, All About My Mother
10. Paul Thomas Anderson, Phantom Thread

Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role
1. Penélope Cruz, Volver
2. Pam Grier, Jackie Brown
3. Setsuko Hara, Late Spring
4. Julianne Moore, Safe
5. Sandrine Bonnaire, Vagabond
6. Anita Mui, Rouge
7. Jill Clayburgh, An Unmarried Woman
8. Olivia de Havilland, The Heiress
9. Aïssa Maïga, Bamako
10. Maggie Cheung, Irma Vep

Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role
1. Burt Lancaster, The Swimmer
2. Robert Mitchum, The Night of the Hunter
3. Denzel Washington, Malcolm X
4. Tatsuya Nakadai, The Face of Another
5. Godfrey Cambridge, The Watermelon Man
6. Harry Dean Stanton, Paris, Texas
7. Ivan Dixon, Nothing But a Man
8. Paul Newman, Hud
9. Tony Leung, Happy Together
10. Jeff Bridges, The Big Lebowski

Best Performance by an Actress in a ing Role
1. Abbey Lincoln, Nothing But a Man
2. Monica Vitti, La Notte
3. Janet Leigh, Psycho
4. Antonia San Juan, All About My Mother
5. Christina Ricci, Buffalo '66
6. Sharon Stone, Casino
7. Delphine Seyrig, Freak Orlando
8. Florence Pugh, Little Women
9. Tatum O'Neal, Paper Moon
10. Alfre Woodard, Crooklyn

Best Performance by an Actor in a ing Role
1. Harry Belafonte, Buck and the Preacher
2. Philip Seymour Hoffman, The Master
3. Mansour Diouf, Hyenas
4. Robert De Niro, The Godfather: Part II
5. Robert Forster, Jackie Brown
6. Giancarlo Giannini, A Drama of Jealousy (and Other Things)
7. Samuel L. Jackson, Eve's Bayou
8. Sidney Poitier, Edge of the City
9. Don Cheadle, Devil in a Blue Dress
10. Peter Falk, Wings of Desire

Best Production Design
1. Jerzy Skarżyński, Andrzej Płocki, & Piotr Dudzinski, The Hourglass Sanatorium
2. Giuseppe Bassan, Suspiria
3. Mario Garbuglia, The Leopard
4. Toshiharu Mizutani & Katsuhiro Otomo, Akira
5. Aradanha Seth & Adam Stockhausen, The Darjeeling Limited
6. Kazuo Takenaka, Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters
7. Lyle R. Wheeler & J. Russell Spencer, Nightmare Alley
8. Claude Autant-Lara & Alberto Cavalcanti, L'inhumaine
9. Cédric Mizero & Antoine Nshimiyimana, Neptune Frost
10. William Chang Suk-Ping, Zu: Warriors from the Magic Mountain

Best Costume Design
1. Eiko Ishioka, Bram Stoker's Dracula
2. Gabriella Pescucci, The Age of Innocence
3. Edith Head, Vertigo
4. Mark Bridges, Phantom Thread
5. Ruth Carter, Do the Right Thing
6. Tina Grani, Blood and Black Lace
7. Michael Kaplan & Charles Knode, Blade Runner
8. Jorge Jara, Freak Orlando
9. Giorgio Armani, American Gigolo
10. Bill Thomas, All That Heaven Allows

Best Ensemble
1. Jurassic Park
2. The Royal Tenenbaums
3. High & Low
4. Sholay
5. Out of Sight
6. Friday Foster
7. Pink Flamingos
8. The Roaring Twenties
9. Typhoon Club
10. Freaks

Best Original Score
1. Miles Davis, Ascenseur pour l’échafaud
2. Georges Delerue, Contempt
3. Nino Rota, Amarcord
4. John Williams, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial
5. Jonny Greenwood, Phantom Thread
6. Michael Giacchino, Ratatouille
7. Duke Ellington, Anatomy of a Murder
8. Ennio Morricone, Cinema Paradiso
9. Joe Hisaishi, Princess Mononoke
10. Nicholas Britell, If Beale Street Could Talk

Best Soundtrack
1. The Harder They Come
2. Rushmore
3. Repo Man
4. Belly
5. The Girl Can't Help It
6. Once Upon a Time in Hollywood
7. Crooklyn
8. Grosse Pointe Blank
9. Boogie Nights
10. Priscilla

Best Visual Effects
1. Rob Bottin et al, The Thing
2. Marv Ystrom, Sorcerer
3. Thomas R. Homsher, Stan Winston, Kim Blanchette, & Phil Tippett, Jurassic Park
4. Richard Williams, Ken Ralston, Christopher Knott, Wes Takahashi, & Ed Jones, Who Framed Roger Rabbit?
5. Eiji Tsuburaya, Godzilla
6. Eric Brevig et al, Total Recall
7. Shinya Tsukamoto, Tetsuo: The Iron Man
8. John P. Fulton, The Invisible Man
9. Kuei Chih-Hung & Yeung Yiu-Jo, The Boxer’s Omen
10. James Basevi, History is Made at Night

Best Sound
1. Alan Splet, Eraserhead
2. Patrick Viktor Monroe, Richard Cervani, & Abdul Hafiz, Illusions
3. Per Hallberg, Anna Behlmer, Ron Bartlett, & Chris Jenkins, Heat
4. Wayne Bell, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre
5. Elliot Gruskin, Jazz on a Summer's Day
6. Małgorzata Jaworska, The Third Part of the Night
7. Ashish Manchanda, Vikram Biswas, Sanjay Chaturvedi, & Nakul Kamte, Om Shanti Om
8. Semyon Litvinov, Mirror
9. Tu Duu-chih, Leung Chi-Tat, Terry Tu, & Ronny Ching Siu-Lung, Happy Together
10. C.O. Slyfield, William E. Garity, & J.N.A. Hawkins, Fantasia

Best Stunt Choreography
1. Police Story
2. Jackass Number Two
3. The 36th Chamber of Shaolin
4. Point Break
5. Sherlock Jr.
6. To Live and Die in L.A.
7. Female Prisoner Scorpion: Jailhouse 41
8. Bloodsport
9. Wagon Master
10. Sorcerer

Best Opening Sequence
1. Hiroshima, Mon Amour
2. Scream
3. Ashes and Diamonds
4. Seven Beauties
5. Goodfellas
6. Up
7. The Hourglass Sanatorium
8. Raiders of the Lost Ark
9. Drive
10. Apocalypse Now

Best Ending Sequence
1. An Unmarried Woman
2. Close-Up
3. Beau Travail
4. It Happened One Night
5. Some Like It Hot
6. Point Break
7. The 400 Blows
8. Before Sunset
9. Roman Holiday
10. Raising Arizona