The 50 best movies on the Criterion Channel

There have been countless films about filmmaking over the years, but few have packed the punch of 8 1/2. Starring Marcello Mastroianni and directed by Federico Fellini, this one focuses on a director making a movie about a director making a movie. Is it movie Inception? Or is it a brilliant examination of the creative process? Why not both? 

The first film in a five-film autobiographical series, Francois Truffaut's The 400 Blows is the story of Antoine Doinel (Jean-Pierre Laud), the young boy who ditches school, steals stuff, and puffs on cigarettes. He's not exactly a role model, but he does make for an entertaining protagonist. 

Kudos to Spike Lee for making a socially conscious movie that doesn't feel like a socially conscious movie. It's easy to make a movie about race relations. It's harder to make a movie about race relations in ways that are lively and entertaining.

We're cheating by including all three films (Pather Panchali, Aparajito, The World of Apu), but really, how could we separate the installments of Satyajit Ray's coming-of-age trilogy? Short answer: we couldn't. 

Fear not: Andrei Tarkovsky's three-hour epic about an icon painter in 15th century Russia may sound like a long haul, especially since it's in black and white. But Andrei Rublev is no drag in the mud-- it's a vivid, expansive, and mesmeric work of art, every castle, stream, and battlefield framed so lyrically, it feels like you've stepped into a painting. 

Who said Criterion movies had to be serious? This one takes place in a future where New York has been turned into a prison, and everyone talks like they're in a biker gang. Plus, Kurt Russel plays a guy called Snake. 

The Player is one of the great comedies, but it's also one of the great movies about Hollywood. Tim Robbins stars as a studio executive who gets caught up in a web of paranoia and greed that can only happen in Tinseltown. Often cited for its long unbroken shot and bountiful cameos (Bruce Willis! Burt Reynolds!), The Player is at its best when it takes us behind the scenes of the scenes themselves. 

If you enjoy slapstick, spectacle, and Wes Anderson (who cites Playtime as his greatest influence), then you'll love watching Mr. Hulot stumble through houses, night clubs and maze-like office buildings. 

You could stick nearly every Powell & Pressburger film on this list; they're all streaming on The Criterion Channel. But if we had to pick one--and we do--this dazzling war-time epic is first among equals. It's the perfect expression of their style: witty, serious, and seriously British.

When The Grand Illusion came out in 1937, it was banned in Germany and declared "Cinema Enemy No. 1." Why? Well, there are no fight scenes or concentration camps. No German bad guys. It seems the only explanation is its decency, its portrait of men coming together on both sides, and the small, triumphant moments they share at dinner tables, in prisons, and on the run. 

Like so many Ozu movies, Tokyo Story is both specifically Japanese and expansively universal. There isn't a person on earth who can't relate to Tokyo Story, a movie about generational differences and how grandparents, parents, and children handle things differently. A scene where two grandparents share a quiet moment by the sea is almost too beautiful for words.  

A blind woman (Virginia Cherrill) falls for a tramp (Charlie Chaplin), who falls for her in return. It's love at first...um...well, I don't know what you'd call it. Whatever it is, it's funny and romantic, with a final scene that is so moving you'll need a box of tissues just to get through it. 

Of course, we're talking about the original. Did anyone even watch the remake? How can you improve on Walter Matthau's gumshoe detective and the dirty, foul-mouthed New Yorkers around him? Obviously, you can't. 

Wong-Kar Wai made his bones in China with his riff on action cinema Days of Being Wild. He became a known name in America with his riff on romantic cinema In the Mood for Love. Fallen Angels is basically a mix between the two, an action-packed romance that is somehow sexy and bloody. 

Not everyone is a fan of musicals, but they would be if they saw this one. With a euphoric swirl of color, some memorable songs, and a cast led by Catherine Deneuve, Francoise Dorleac, and Gene Kelly, The Young Girls of Rochefort is damn near impossible to dislike. 

If you thought Tom Cruise strapping himself to a plane was crazy, wait till you see what Jackie Chan does in Police Story. He jumps off a building, hangs off a bus, drives through an entire village (literally, through an entire village), jumps, kicks and twirls around hundreds of henchmen, and survives an explosion large enough to wipe out an entire army. Think I'm lying? Check it out for yourself. 

Movies don't get more realistic than this, a story of wartime Italy filmed in the bombed-out buildings of wartime Italy, starring people who lived every death, torture, and betrayal in real life. The result is monumentally moving. 

With any film from Ingmar Bergman, you expect mystery and darkness. Fanny and Alexander definitely fit that description (with its Oedipal struggle between a stepfather and his child, Alexander), but the director's swan song is also light and heartfelt, recalling his childhood memories with the fondness of a man lying on his death bed. 

Don't go looking for light in the darkness here: David Lynch's Eraserhead is arguably the darkest movie ever made. It's about a man who (checks notes) has an alien baby and lives in a Chernobyl-like city. Oh, and it takes place entirely at night. 

What if someone could just disappear? Without a trace? How would anyone find them? Sandro (Gabrielle Ferzetti) has to solve that puzzle when his wife goes missing on a yachting trip. He scours every corner of France to find her, but all he finds are rocks, islands, and alienation. 

Let's be real: how can a movie not succeed with the Beatles, 60's music, and Superman II director Richard Lester? Although some think Yellow Submarine is peak Beatles cinema, A Hard Day's Night is where it's at. 

The art-house titan Ingmar Bergman, director of over 50 films in 60 years, deserves to be discovered by a new generation. This film is arguably his sharpest and most psychologically complex--it's definitely his sexiest--so there's no reason why so few people should know about it. Let's change that, shall we? 

Shot over five years with real people recreating real events, Close-Up is a peerless artistic gamble, comparable only to Roberto Rossellini's Rome, Open City, or Jean Luc-Godard's Contempt. Still, Close-Up catches you off guard like no other movie. It's witty, poignant and soul-crushing, and ends with the keenest deconstruction of cinema ever put on film. 

When conspiracy thrillers were all the rage, Klute was at the top of the heap. Alan J. Pakula also directed The Parallax View and All the Presidents Men, but this 1971 classic is one that really gets under your skin. 

Picnic at Hanging Rock wasn't a huge hit when it debuted, but it has since developed a cult following. A lot of people consider it the standout of The Australian New Wave, a wave that also includes Mad Max, Wake in Fright, and Gallipoli. It's hard to argue when a movie is this good. 

Calling this the best movie about journalism may be too limiting: Among the many titles on the subject, Ace in the Hole is the most honest and prophetic. Billy Wilder's script about a reporter (Douglas Sirk) who keeps a man buried alive for copy predicts the CNN and FOX era, where headlines are more important than facts and truth is buried under mountains of rubble. 

To Be or Not to Be is not exactly a highbrow movie. It's directed by Ernst Lubitsch and focuses on a bunch of idiots in Poland during World War II. That being said, it's about as smart as comedy gets, boasting some of the funniest, most eye-watering gags in movie history. 

If you know the films of Kenji Mizoguchi, it's probably because you've seen Ugetsu and/or heard about him in interviews with Ari Aster, Martin Scorsese, or Alfonso Cuaron, but it's more than likely this 1954 film slid under your radar. No longer. Mizoguchi's decade-spanning period piece is a heartbreaking, life-altering experience you can't afford to miss. 

Djibril Diop Mambetry knows how to make a gorgeous movie. Although it was never going to win any awards--that would require people to see it-- Touki Bouki has been picking up steam of late. After all, Jay-Z and Beyonce just gave it a shoutout. 

John Ford invented the Western. He took a B-movie formula and expanded it into a widescreen spectacle, featuring movie stars, soundtracks, and high-speed chases, as well as serious themes on what it means to be American. Stagecoach was his first entry, and it's quite possibly his best. 

Hypnotic, bewitching, unsettling, thought-provoking, downright confounding: However you react to La Jetee, you won't forget Chris Marker's science-fiction masterpiece. Terry Gilliam tried to recapture that magic in 12 Monkeys, but what's the point? You're better off trying to remake The Godfather or The Sound of Music. 

Speaking of pointless remakes, this year's Jungle Cruise tried to recapture the magic of The African Queen, to diminishing returns. When is someone going to tell these directors that they can't outdo the original? 

The gem of Abbas Kiarostami's 30-plus film career And Life Goes On... is a lovely road movie that sees Kiarostami returning to the hills of Kroker, Iran, where he shot Where is the Friend's House? Along the way, he encounters warm villagers, sun-baked landscapes, and a community devastated by the loss but still finds ways to move forward. 

Daises is an act of defiance. It's about two girls who go around Czechoslovakia upending social norms, dancing on tables, and starting food fights. Happily, the filmmakers follow suit: montages and dream sequences defy everything they teach you in film school, while the final scene, drawing parallels between homicide and lawmakers, is a middle finger to the establishment even Woody Guthrie would be hesitant to write. 

Wim Wenders isn't for everyone, but he is for some people. He has a devoted fan base that can border on cultish, as well as a style you can't quite put your finger on. Is it indie or art-house? Comedy or tragedy? Lifelike or dreamlike? Paris, Texas is all those things and more. 

You know you've made a realistic war movie when the Pentagon studies your film for tactics. In fact, Battle of Algiers is so realistic it makes Saving Private Ryan look like a Disney movie. 

French film critic Jean Luc-Godard's directing debut was so inventive it formed a new cinematic language. To quote Roger Ebert, "there was before Breathless, and then there was after Breathless. There is no in-between. 

The perfect movie doesn't exi... Oh, it exists alright. It's called Au Hasard Balthazar, titled after a donkey, and edited with such precision and filmed with such grace it takes on a transcendental quality, washing over the viewer like a soft wind, lingering in the mind like a piano concerto. 

Made in between the silent and sound era, but using elements of both, M is a serial killer thriller etched in shadows yet bursting with sound. 

A spy. A girl. A couple of car chases, exotic locales, and sexual innuendos. Sound familiar? It's the formula for every spy movie from James Bond to Jason Bourne, and it's the formula Alfred Hitchcock invented in his 1935 breakout The 39 Steps. Throw it on after No Time to Die and you'll see what I mean. 

We're cheating again, but like the best trilogies (from Apu to Star Wars), the cumulative result is more than the sum of its parts. The finale, a boating accident on the English Channel, is myth-making stuff. 

The Coen Brothers' first movie came out in 1984. Over 25 years later, their IMDB page includes Fargo, No Country for Old Men, Raising Arizona, and Inside Llewyn Davis. Yet some still consider Blood Simple their crowning achievement--a slice of neo-noir you can watch over and over and over again. 

Francois Truffaut is back again, this time offering up a slice of escapism. Jules and Jim follows Jules, Jim and Catherine's love triangle, how they come together, as well as how they fall apart. That it can all feel so fresh and joyous is a testament to Truffaut's direction 

Robert De Niro in Raging Bull. James Dean in Rebel Without a Cause. Maria Falconetti in The Passion of Joan of Arc. Few performances have forever changed the course of acting, but Falconetti's turn as Joan of Arc is one of them. Her performance cannot be contained by cell nor consumed by fire, but rather explodes with such raw intensity that she had to quit acting once production wrapped. 

What kind of list would this be if it didn't include Seven Samurai? You can also find Akira Kurosawa's epic on our Best movies over three hours list and our Greatest male bonding movies list. Here, it's just another masterpiece in a long line of them. 

There are so many French New Wave films on this list, we could re-title it "The Best of the French New Wave...plus some other stuff." Along with works by Godard, Truffaut, and Demy, Agnes Varda's Cleo From 5-7 joins the group for its seamless blend of documentary and fiction techniques. 

Godzilla is pure blockbuster cheese. After all, a 200-foot monster crushes Japan. What some people don't realize, however, is that it's also an allegory for nuclear warfare made less than a decade after Hiroshima. Godzilla doesn't just smash buildings; he smashes lives and communities. 

Boy meets balloon. Boy loses balloon. Boy chases balloon and catches the balloon, then tries to keep balloon away from other boys. It's not your average love story, but it's probably the cutest one ever made. 

Film noir has more cliches than any other genre: flashbacks, femme fatales, shadows, cigarettes, MacGuffins. So for one to stand out, they need to have something in the cards. Out of the Past has pocket aces: Robert Mitchum in his debut role, and Jane Green in her breakout role. Not an easy hand to beat. 

We end with more Fellini. More than that: we end with my desert-island film, Amarcord, a memory-play devoted to Fellini's childhood and all the eccentric/beautiful people, places, and things in his small Tuscan village.