Brianland

A question prompted by repeated viewings of One Battle After Another . . .

What do  I  think are the Greatest Movies Ever Made?
[as of April 2026 . . . subject to change  🙂 ]

Robert Altman’s masterpiece The Player has movie exec Griffin Mills’ list the elements that make a successful film:
“Suspense, laughter, violence.  Hope, heart, nudity, sex.  Happy endings.  Mainly happy endings.“

Altman’s character contains multitudes.  🙂   

My qualities for a great movie  —  it has to have a brilliant script, inspired casting and engaging performances — that’s a baseline given. 

Then it needs to have humor, and it needs to have love. 

It should be great cinematic storytelling — meaning plot & motivations are told visually and not explained expositionally by characters.  Re: casting & performances, there needs to be no weak link that breaks the spell for the audience.  One weak actor who isn’t playing at the level of the others shatters the illusion.  It’s essential to any work of art that the world the artist has created remain inviolate.  We should never be reminded we’re watching a movie — we should be in the movie.

Other elements:  to be completely confessional, it wasn’t until One Battle After Another that I got hipped to the power of the score.  I’ve loved and enjoyed some scores in the past — Babylon, The Social Network, The Sting, and of course Jaws and Psycho were driven by their staccato strings — but during One Battle I really learned how the score can be as important as a lead character.  In fact, ideally, the score is a character in the movie, and has scenes with everybody.  When the score is perfectly in harmony with the symphony of other voices, that goes a long way to putting a movie  on a ‘great’ list.

Not to get too into the weeds, but production design is key to creating the visual world that the movie exists in — mainly the sets (or redecorated locations) and the props.  Great production design immerses the audience into the movie’s world.  I’m not crazy about a lot of movies’ production design prior to, say, the mid-1960s.  I know there’s exceptions, but before that there was very little thought or money put towards what was then called ‘art direction.’  There was simply an acceptance that things weren’t real and no one tried very hard to make sets look like the world we live in.  Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf in 1966 is the film I think of as the turning point.

And in a related matter, I’m very partial to location shooting for a whole bunch of reasons.  They’re real places — not sets on a studio lot.  Whether we’re talking landscapes, rooms or roads, it’s important to me that the places are real, and it adds to and helps keep the audience immersed in the world of the movie.  These are real places in the real world.

Oh, and great movies need to be edited well.  Editing is storytelling and pacing.  A well-edited movie should not have an extra second left on screen — let alone whole scenes.  The editor is essential to fulfilling a director’s vision and is why so many of the masters team up with one for life — Scorsese & Thelma Schoonmaker, Spielberg & Michael Kahn, Tarantino & Sally Menke. 

No two people on earth are going to have the same Greatest Movies list after a hundred–plus years of filmmaking.  Make your own if you want — it’s great exercise.  If this gets one person to watch one of these movies it’ll have been worth it.  💝

Here’s mine [as of April 2026] — including their summaries/reviews from my master movie page or links to stand-alone pieces I’ve written about them . . .

And one funny–surprising p.s. — to my surprise, almost every movie on this list is over 2 hours.  It seems as though, to create a great one, you need a bigger than average canvas.

 

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Three Recent Masterpieces:

One Battle After Another  (2025) – Written & directed by Paul Thomas Anderson.  Incredible score, humor, love, cinematic storytelling, casting, performances, cinematography, unpredictable story.

Here’s my review written right after seeing it opening night in September . . .

Paul Thomas Anderson’s “One Battle After Another” film review — Do Yourself A Favor

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Here’s a time-coded scene-by-scene breakdown including lots of the key dialog, things to watch for, some background on how some scenes were shot, some casting backgrounds, links to all the songs heard, and illustrated with 30+ images from the movie . . .

One Battle After Another – Scene-by-Scene Breakdown – Time-Coded, Quotes & Deets

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And here’s some cool background on the script and the incredible casting from Oscar-winners to non-actors in their first roles . . . 

One Battle After Another – How It Was Made – Script and Casting

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A Complete Unknown  (2024) – C0-written & directed by James Mangold.  Masterful directing & script, great cinematic storytelling, casting, performances, production design (recreating 1961-65).

Here’s a time-coded scene-by-scene breakdown including tons of the best dialog and background links to every person who’s portrayed in it . . .

“A Complete Unknown” Scene Breakdown – Time Codes, Song Titles, Quotes & Context

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Or here’s a feature story on it including tons of background on how it was made and links to the creators describing how they did it . . .

A Complete Unknown movie review

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Once Upon A Time In Hollywood  (2019) – Written & directed by Quentin Tarantino;  Leonardo DiCaprio, Brad Pitt, Margo Robbie, Margaret Qualley, Timothy Olyphant, Kurt Russell, Al Pacino, Dakota Fanning, Bruce Dern, Emile Hirsch.  Robert Richardson Oscar nominated for his cinematography.  Great storytelling, casting, soundtrack, production design (recreating 1969).  Rightly nominated for 10 Oscars — being in the top five films in every category that year.  It deservedly won two —  Production Design and Brad Pitt’s acting — but shoulda won all ten.  Every time I watch this – 6 or 7 times by now – I think, “This is a brilliant masterpiece of filmmaking in every regard.”  Here’s a great documentary on the making of it.
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The Player  (1992) – Directed by Robert Altman;  written by Michael Tolkin (novel & screenplay);  Tim Robbins, Vincent D’Onofrio, Fred Ward, Greta Scacchi, Cynthia Stevenson, Whoopi Goldberg, Dean Stockwell, Brion James, Lyle Lovett, Peter Gallagher, Sydney Pollack, Jeremy Piven, Gina Gershon, Randall Batinkoff, and a million cameos.  Gawd!  What a masterpiece!  The best movie ever made about making movies.  Has humor, love, cinematic storytelling, and a mind-blowing cast.  Altman’s most beautiful, accessible & fun film.  Brilliant filmmaking and script – and much of it was improvised and/or come up with the day-of the shooting.  Beautiful haunting mysterious dramatic score by the great Thomas Newman.  Deservedly Oscar-nominated for Best Editing by Altman 90’s compadre Geraldine Peroni (Short Cuts, Vincent & Theo, Ready To Wear).  Brilliant & beautiful cinematography by his go-to Jean Lépine (Vincent & Theo, Bob Roberts, Tanner ’88).  Plus fantastic costume design.  Tim Robbins came up with the ending about the movie pitch.
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The Sting  (1973) – Directed by George Roy Hill;  Paul Newman, Robert Redford, classic Robert Shaw, Charles Durning, Ray Walston, Eileen Brennon, Harold Gould, Jack Kehoe, Robert Earl Jones (father of James Earl Jones).  A cinematic masterpiece by every metric.  HAS love, HAS humor, and a GREAT score!  plus great casting & performances, production design, cinematic storytelling — still as captivating 50 yrs later.  Rightly won Oscars for Best Picture, Director, Screenplay (it’s taught & studied in schools), Art Direction (fantastic!), Costumes (Edith Head – won her 8th & final Oscar), Editing, and for one of the greatest scores of all time by Scott Joplin as adapted by Marvin Hamlisch.  And if there was a Best Casting Oscar back then it woulda won that, too.  I remember walking out of the theater when it was first released and saying to my friend, “I loved the music!  But you’d never hear that on the radio.”  And then of course The Entertainer as played by Hamlisch became a huge hit!
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The Wolf of Wall Street  (2013) – Produced & directed by Martin Scorsese;  based on Jordan Belfort’s memoir;  Leonardo DiCaprio (also co-producer and was developing it before Scorsese or anyone else got involved), a fantastic Jonah Hill, Margot Robbie (her first substantial role in a major movie), Matthew McConaughey, Spike Jonze, P.J. Byrne, Kyle Chandler, Rob Reiner, Jon Favreau, Jean Dujardin, Bo Dietl (as himself), Joanna Lumley (as Aunt Emma), and a fun little cameo by Fran Lebowitz.  A modern masterpiece.  HAS humor, HAS love, HAS drama, plus great cast & performances, and a great story.  Deservedly Oscar nominated for Best Picture, Director, Adapted Screenplay, and DiCaprio & Jonah Hill for Lead & Supporting.  And it also should’ve been for Thelma’s brilliant editing.  Producer DiCaprio had been developing and preparing for this role for 6 years — no wonder his performance is so over-the-top spectacular.
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All The President’s Men  (1976) – Directed by Alan Pakula;  based on the book by Woodward & Bernstein;  brilliant cinematography by Gordon Willis;  Robert Redford, Dustin Hoffman, Hal Holbrook, Jason Robards, Jane Alexander, Jack Warden, Martin Balsam, Ned Beatty, Stephen Collins, Meredith Baxter, Robert Walden.  Holds up every time I revisit it (nearly yearly) – riveting drama – fantastic casting & performances and script.  It’s mind-blowing how the movie reflects trump taking nixon’s amoral authoritarian corruption to the stratosphere.  This is the power grab in its infancy.  Everything that Watergate and this movie foretold as an immanent danger to American democracy came to pass with the practiced evil of trump’s manipulative sociopathy.
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The Treasure of The Sierra Madre  (1948) – Directed by John Huston;  screenplay by Huston and the mysterious B. Traven screenplay;  Huston’s father, Walter Huston, won Best Supporting Actor;  plus Huston won for both directing and screenplay.  John Huston is the only person in history (and probably will be for the rest of time) to direct both a parent and a child to Oscar-winning performances — dad Walter in this, and daughter Anjelica in Prizzi’s Honor.  Fantastic story & performances, Bogart’s best, the script is like music, my once favorite movie of all time.  The arc of the Dobbs character is a classic in 2-hour cinema, and how Bogart portrays the transition from sanity and good-will into madness, greed & murder — his performance is up there with the greatest of any actor ever.  And everything’s held together by the leprechaun magic of Walter Huston.  The authenticity of the location shooting, including all the extras and bit roles; the depth, detail and polish of the script; the torn, sweat-soaked costumes; the fabulous score that mutates as the characters do — all contribute to it being an abject masterpiece.
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Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?  (1966) – Directed by Mike Nichols;  Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton, George Segal, Sandy Dennis.  Beautifully shot by a young Haskell Wexler including lots of rare early handhelds.  Fantastic editing by Sam O’Steen.  AMAZING casting, performances (Taylor’s best), script, great production design.  A brilliant mesmerizing Shakespearian heavyweight rollercoaster based on Edward Albee’s Tony Award-winning play.  All his words of the play were the script, except for two lines, after the screenwriter who was paid and credited and delivered a re-written disaster was still given writing credit.  At the insistence of the Burtons, Mike Nichols made his directorial debut.  Liz Taylor had never rehearsed for a film performance before — but Mike Nichols made all four actors work it up for three solid weeks — and Liz ended up giving the best performance of her career, including by her own assessment years later.  All four actors were nominated for Oscars.  Liz & Sandy won, plus for Best Cinematography, Art Direction & Costumes – and it was the first film since 1931 to be nominated in every category it was eligible for.  A film for adults – it drove a stake into the heart of film censorship and is kind of in a class of its own.  Or in whatever class is the top of all movies ever made.
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In The Heat of The Night  (1967) – Directed by Norman Jewison;  edited by Hal Ashby;  Sidney Pottier, Rod Steiger, Warren Oates, Lee Grant, Anthony James (creepy diner guy);  won Best Picture Oscar, as well as Best Actor for Steiger, Screenplay, Editing and Sound, plus Hal Ashby’s only Oscar win (for Best Editing).  This is such a masterpiece, but so many people don’t know it.  Quincy Jones score, incredible performances from Sidney & Steiger, and all the way down thru Lee Grant & Warren Oates to Anthony James in the diner.  Historically great film — and brilliantly executed.  I’ve watched it many times  and it always delivers – including Quincy’s music.  All the piano playing is Ray Charles, the organ is Billy Preston, and Rahsaan Roland Kirk is on sax.  Also listen for the musical diversity in styles and instrumentation.  The music got nominated for a Grammy but crazilly not an Oscar.  This could be an amazing movie for blind people.  It almost sounds as good at it looks.

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Rear Window  (1954) – Directed by Alfred Hitchcock;  James Stewart & Grace Kelly, Thelma Ritter, Raymond Burr — with the most beautiful woman ever on screen, in her most alluring performance, with a great story, historically incredible production design, perfect jazz score as befitting its Greenwich Village 8th/9th Street setting, and at one time my #1 movie of all time — but in later revisiting it’s not heart-pounding, and is dated in terms of cinematography, editing & the romance depiction.
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Babylon  (2022) – Written & directed by Damien Chazelle (La La Land);  Brad Pitt, Margot Robbie, newcomers Diego Calva & Li Jun Li, Jean Smart, Flea, Lukas Haas, director Damien’s wife & creative partner Olivia Hamilton as a woman director, Jeff Garlin as the studio head, Max Minghella as Irving Thalberg, Toby Maguire as the insane gangster chief (who also co-produced the movie), Spike Jonze is brilliant as the eccentric European director chasing the fading light, Eric Roberts kind-of reprises his sleazeball Star 80 role as an old man, and Olivia Wilde nails it in her one scene in the beginning.  Maybe the greatest first hour of a movie ever – but then has the whole downer 2nd half when everything falls apart.  I laughed out loud many times at unexpected funny lines.  Brilliant casting, cinematography, editing, score by Oscar-winner Justin Hurwitz, production design by Florencia Martin (who also did Blonde, Licorice Pizza and One Battle After Another), not to mention the drool-inducing old car show, and over 7,000 costumes designed for characters from poverty to royalty.  Great filmmaking in general, although some questionable dark choices.  From the 4 minute mark (the start of the opening party) until 1:01 (when the “1927” title card appears) is the best hour of new film I’ve seen in a long time — and pretty-much a must-see for any film fan.  The cable cam/Steadicam ‘oners’ in the party scene and the two tracking shots on the Kinoscope lot passing through multiple movie sets are absolute masterworks.  Eric Roberts compared Margot Robbie’s performance to Elizabeth Taylor in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Wolfe.  And he’s right.
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Boogie Nights  (1997) – Oscar-nominated Original Screenplay written & directed by Paul Thomas Anderson;  mind-blowing cast — 25-yr-old Mark Wahlberg (how did he not get a Best Actor nomination?!), although Burt Reynolds & Julianne Moore correctly did!  Plus William H. Macy, Philip Seymour Hoffman (who appears 40 mins in and is riveting as always), John C. Riley, Don Cheadle, Luis Guzman, early Heather Graham, Joanne Gleason, Robert Ridgley, Nina Hartley, Ricky Jay, Philip Baker Hall, Thomas Jane! and Jack Riley.  PTA’s brilliant stake-planting 2nd film, but like Babylon has the 2nd half when everything falls apart.  Set in the San Fernando Valley beginning in 1977.  Great filmmaking.  Smart storytelling and a script deservedly Oscar nominated.  Great interweaving story, cinematography, editing, pacing.  Mind-blowing casting.  Brilliant now-renown 4-minute opening ‘oner’ tracking shot introducing all the characters in the Hot Traxx dance club.  This tells you right away you’re in for something special, a la The Player or Touch of Evil.  Same type of opening as Babylon where you meet everyone at the club/party, then follow each character home.  Interesting smart original score and soundtrack cuts.
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Goodfellas  (1990) –  Cowritten & directed by Martin Scorsese;  original book & co-screenwriter Nicholas Pileggi;  Ray Liotta, Robert De Niro, Joe Pesci, Lorraine Bracco, Paul Sorvino, Frank Vincent, Debi Mazar.  Deservedly Oscar nominated for Best Picture, Director, Screenplay, Editing, Bracco for Best Supporting — and Pesci won for Best Supporting.  An absolute masterpiece of film, but a lack of love and lack of humor.  Incredible soundtrack.  Marty hears the songs/music before he shoots, so he’s got the riff playing in his head as he’s filming.  The DVD audio commentary by Henry Hill (played by Ray Liotta) reveals how precisely accurate Scorsese made it.
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True Romance  (1993) –  Directed by Tony Scott from Quentin Tarantino’s first written, shopped & ultimately sold screenplay;  with an mind-blowing cast — Christian Slater, Patricia Arquette, Dennis Hopper, Gary Oldman (MAN is this guy one helluvan actor!), Christopher Walken (devastating), James Gandolfini, Michael Rapaport (who I’ve loved in every role I’ve ever seen him play), Brad Pitt, Bronson Pinchot, Chris Penn, Tom Sizemore, Saul Rubinek, Samuel Jackson (for one minute), Val Kilmer (as the largely unseen “Elvis” mentor), and Jack Black for a few seconds as the movie theater usher with the dog.  Brad Pitt created the whole stoner on the couch character which was not in the script, improvising a lot of his lines.  Incredible cast & performances, but a lot of violence and portrayals of a lot of less-than-appealing people.  Fantastic score by the great Hans Zimmer.  Incredible Tarantinoesque film — the pacing, the editing, the framing including the closeup choices, the casting including giving actors’ the leeway to improvise, the character introductions, the use of music, the graphic seat-of-your-pants scenes of violence, the underbelly-of-life realism, the use of humor in a bloody psychotic murder movie, the empathetic portrayal of people who kill other people, effectively telling multiple storylines that all come together in the end . . . it’s uncanny and a glorious synergy we’re all that better for that these two filmmakers merged into one here.  Quentin said years later, “It’s the best movie ever made from one of my scripts.”  

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The Social Network  (2010) – David Fincher;  a masterpiece of film – from the Aaron Sorkin script to the casting and performances to one of the greatest original scores of all time (by Trent Reznor & Atticus Ross) 

Death of a Salesman  (1985) – Arthur Miller’s supervised adaptation from the Broadway production which he also supervised is a masterpiece – the script, the casting, the performances, the direction, the production design . . .  And in a gift to the universe you can watch it here —

Woodstock  (1970) – Michael Wadleigh;  historic, ground-breaking editing, great cinematic storytelling, great capture of a beautiful moment in time, and of course great music

Knives Out  (2019) – written & directed by Rian Johnson;  has humor, a brilliant script, incredible cast & performances, and production design to-die-for

‘Round Midnight  (1986) – Bertrand Tavernier;  authentic artist portrayal (jazz) starring real jazz giant Dexter Gordon, with Herbie Hancock as the movie’s music supervisor & bandleader

Forrest Gump  (1994) – Robert Zemeckis;  has humor and love in a epic tale with cutting edge technology

Erin Brockovich  (2000) – Steven Soderbergh;  mother–child love story meets a David & Goliath tale — based on a true story

A Few Good Men  (1992) – Rob Reiner;  has humor, GREAT drama from Aaron Sorkin’s first script — great cinema

State & Main  (2000) – written & directed by David Mamet;  has humor, a love story, amazing script, cast & performances

Best In Show  (2000) – Christopher Guest;  funny as hell, great casting & performances, Guest’s most successful improv project, the one pure comedy in this Top 25

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By Director: 

John Huston – The Treasure of The Sierra Madre

Alfred Hitchcock – Rear Window

Mike Nichols – Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

Norman Jewison – In The Heat of The Night

Michael Wadleigh – Woodstock

George Roy Hill – The Sting

Alan Pakula – All The President’s Men

Martin Scorsese – Goodfellas

……………………………  The Wolf of Wall Street

Robert Altman – The Player

Rob Reiner – A Few Good Men

Tony Scott – True Romance

Paul Thomas Anderson – Boogie Nights

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Robert Zemeckis – Forrest Gump

Steven Soderbergh – Erin Brockovich

David Mamet – State & Main

David Fincher – The Social Network

Christopher Guest – Best In Show

Tarantino – Once Upon A Time In Hollywood

Rian Johnson – Knives Out

Damien Chazelle – Babylon

James Mangold – A Complete Unknown

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Here’s my main movie page with over 900 films sorted by comedies, dramas, documentaries, biopics, music movies, etc., and here’s the link cueing you to the Auteurs section with 80 different filmmakers profiled . . .

Brian’s “Hot 300” movie list

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Here’s one of the most popular pieces in the nearly 20-year history of my website — the scene-by-scene breakdown of Peter Jackson’s revelatory The Beatles: Get Back . . .

The Beatles: Get Back — Time-Coded and Annotated

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And here’s a piece from the beginning of my movie deep-dive during the Covid lockdown about the subjectivity and collaborative nature of the art form of film . . .

An Autodidact Meets A Collaborative Form

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by Brian Hassett

karmacoupon@gmail.com   —  BrianHassett.com

Or here’s my Facebook page if you wanna join in there —

https://www.facebook.com/Brian.Hassett.Canada