- Director: Edward Yang
- Stacker score: 87.5
- Metascore: 94
- IMDb user rating: 8.1
- Run time: 173 minutes

Clocking in at just under three hours, Edward Yang's sweeping drama follows members of a middle-class Taipei family. Technical brilliance and emotional intimacy strike a perfect balance, turning every moment into a miniature work of art. The film premiered at the 2000 Cannes Film Festival, where Yang took home the prize for best director.

- Director: Hayao Miyazaki
- Stacker score: 91.0
- Metascore: 96
- IMDb user rating: 8.6
- Run time: 125 minutes

Animation wizard Hayao Miyazaki remains best known for this wondrous fantasy film, in which a young girl enters a parallel world in the Japanese countryside. Oozing with imagination, the story draws upon Shinto-Buddhist folklore. The film won the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature.

- Director: Peter Jackson
- Stacker score: 87.5
- Metascore: 87
- IMDb user rating: 8.8
- Run time: 179 minutes

This blockbuster sequel continued the adventures of Frodo and Sam in their attempt to destroy an all-powerful ring. The film also introduced audiences to a shifty creature named Gollum, who was brought to life using groundbreaking computer-generated imagery. Speaking of Gollum, The Beatles once expressed interest in creating their own adaptation of Tolkien's trilogy in the 1960s, with John Lennon matched to play the devious creature.

- Director: Peter Jackson
- Stacker score: 92.0
- Metascore: 94
- IMDb user rating: 9.0
- Run time: 201 minutes

Peter Jackson capped off his "Lord of the Rings" trilogy in spectacular style with this epic fantasy film. Frodo and Sam reach the last leg of their journey while the forces of good and evil engage in one final battle. In addition to sweeping at the Oscars and earning more than a billion dollars at the box office, the film reportedly holds the record for the highest body count in a single movie.

- Director: Richard Linklater
- Stacker score: 86.0
- Metascore: 91
- IMDb user rating: 8.1
- Run time: 80 minutes

Set nine years after Richard Linklater's "Before Sunrise," "Before Sunset" stands on its own amid the many romance movies of the early aughts. Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy reprise their roles as Jesse and Celine, whose feelings for one another rekindle as they wander the streets of Paris. Shot in just 15 days, "Before Sunset" takes place in real-time and earned an Oscar nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay.

- Director: Werner Herzog
- Stacker score: 82.5
- Metascore: 87
- IMDb user rating: 7.8
- Run time: 103 minutes

Known for its attention-grabbing subject matter as much as its style, "Grizzly Man" shares the story of activists Timothy Treadwell and Amie Huguenard, who made an ultimately fatal decision to live with grizzly bears in the Alaskan bush. Werner Herzog pieced together Treadwell's own footage from his life among the grizzlies to present a more comprehensive, somewhat humanizing image of the two conservationists. Released two years after the pair's deaths, "Grizzly Man" won the Alfred P. Sloan Feature Film Prize at the time of its Sundance premiere and remains a thought-provoking exploration of America's wild spaces.

- Director: Guillermo del Toro
- Stacker score: 90.0
- Metascore: 98
- IMDb user rating: 8.2
- Run time: 118 minutes

Guillermo del Toro mixes history and fantasy as only he can in this gripping Oscar-winner. Set in Spain during the early Francoist era, the film follows a young girl (Ivana Baquero) into a mythical universe. "Bewitchingly bonkers," is how critic Nigel Andrews described the film in his review for Financial Times.

- Director: Brad Bird, Jan Pinkava
- Stacker score: 88.5
- Metascore: 96
- IMDb user rating: 8.1
- Run time: 111 minutes

As computer-generated animation progressed in quality, moviegoers were treated to "Ratatouille," a Disney-Pixar release about a Parisian rat who dreams of becoming a chef. Besides introducing French cooking to an entire generation of American kids, "Ratatouille" earned widespread critical acclaim for its storytelling and went on to win the Oscar for Best Animated Feature.

- Director: Andrew Stanton
- Stacker score: 89.5
- Metascore: 95
- IMDb user rating: 8.4
- Run time: 98 minutes

Disney-Pixar presents viewers with a futuristic wasteland, where human consumption has rendered the planet uninhabitable. A garbage-collecting robot wades through literal mountains of trash before hopping aboard a space-bound flight. Whereas most Disney-Pixar films use anywhere from 50,000 to 75,000 storyboards, this "WALL·E" reportedly involved as many as 125,000.

- Director: Pete Docter, Bob Peterson
- Stacker score: 85.5
- Metascore: 88
- IMDb user rating: 8.3
- Run time: 96 minutes

One of the most famous opening sequences in animation history gives way to the story of an old man and his flying house. With help from a young boy and thousands of balloons, the man takes off for Paradise Falls. Some viewers might wonder: How many balloons would it actually take to lift a house in real life? Anywhere from 100,000 to 23.5 million, according to different calculations.

- Director: Lee Unkrich
- Stacker score: 87.5
- Metascore: 92
- IMDb user rating: 8.3
- Run time: 103 minutes

The first animated movie to gross more than $1 billion at the box office, "Toy Story 3" caters directly to the audiences who spent their childhoods watching "Toy Story" and "Toy Story 2." Viewers quickly fell in love with the movie's nuanced representation of growing up, and so did the Academy, with "Toy Story 3" winning Oscars for both Best Original Song and Best Animated Film.

- Director: Asghar Farhadi
- Stacker score: 89.0
- Metascore: 95
- IMDb user rating: 8.3
- Run time: 123 minutes

Director Asghar Farhadi offers a glimpse of modern Iranian culture through the disintegration of a marriage. Determined to leave the country for better opportunities, a woman files for divorce. The powerful drama was nominated for two Academy Awards, winning for best foreign language film.

- Director: Michael Haneke
- Stacker score: 87.0
- Metascore: 95
- IMDb user rating: 7.9
- Run time: 127 minutes

A couple's enduring love is put to the test in this award-winning drama from director Michael Haneke. When the wife (Emmanuelle Riva) suffers a massive stroke, her husband (Jean-Louis Trintignant) must confront some heartbreaking realities. As with much of Haneke's work, the story marches at a gradual pace toward an unforgettable finale.

- Director: Steve McQueen
- Stacker score: 88.5
- Metascore: 96
- IMDb user rating: 8.1
- Run time: 134 minutes

Based on the real-life memoir of Solomon Northup, this historical drama explores America's cruel past. Living the life of a free man up North, Northup (Chiwetel Ejiofor) is abducted by kidnappers and sold into slavery down South. This was the first film produced and directed by an African American to win the Academy Award for Best Picture.

- Director: Richard Linklater
- Stacker score: 89.5
- Metascore: 100
- IMDb user rating: 7.9
- Run time: 165 minutes

Shot over the course of 12 years, Richard Linklater's experimental drama brings a whole new meaning to the coming-of-age genre. Not so much a story as a collection of evocative scenes, the film follows Mason (Ellar Coltrane) from childhood to college-age adolescence. Patricia Arquette won an Academy Award for her supporting role as Mason's mother.

- Director: Pete Docter, Ronnie Del Carmen
- Stacker score: 87.5
- Metascore: 94
- IMDb user rating: 8.1
- Run time: 95 minutes

Leave it to Disney-Pixar to turn the inner machinations of the human mind into a computer-animated adventure. As a young girl named Riley grapples with a major life change, so too do her personified emotions. The filmmakers consulted with both a psychology professor and an emotions expert when bringing Riley's interior world to life.

- Director: Kenneth Lonergan
- Stacker score: 87.0
- Metascore: 96
- IMDb user rating: 7.8
- Run time: 137 minutes

Kenneth Lonergan's somber drama tells the story of Lee Chandler (Casey Affleck), a young man who's been hollowed out by a personal tragedy. Suddenly tasked with guardianship over his nephew, Chandler struggles to leave the past behind. The film won two Academy Awards for Best Actor and Best Original Screenplay, respectively.

- Director: Christopher Nolan
- Stacker score: 86.0
- Metascore: 94
- IMDb user rating: 7.8
- Run time: 106 minutes

While World War II allied soldiers attempt to flee Germany, the enemy is closing in. Christopher Nolan's war film moves at a breakneck pace and often to the beat of a ticking clock. As it turns out, that very tick-tock effect was sourced from Nolan's own stopwatch.

- Director: Alfonso Cuarón
- Stacker score: 86.5
- Metascore: 96
- IMDb user rating: 7.7
- Run time: 135 minutes

Mexican director Alfonso Cuarón revisits his early childhood in this semi-autobiographical drama. Presented in black-and-white, the film follows an upper middle class family and their maid (Yalitza Aparicio) in 1970s Mexico City. The film won three Academy Awards, including Best Foreign Language Film and Best Director.

- Director: Bong Joon-ho
- Stacker score: 91.0
- Metascore: 97
- IMDb user rating: 8.5
- Run time: 132 minutes

Audiences are still waxing rhapsodic about this Best Picture winner from South Korea's Bong Joon-ho. When members of a poor family con their way into an upper-class household, their scheme leads to devastating consequences. Socioeconomic themes make for a consistent foundation atop which one unpredictable plot point gives way to another.

- Director: Jasmila Zbanic
- Stacker score: 88.5
- Metascore: 97
- IMDb user rating: 8.0
- Run time: 101 minutes

Set during the 1995 Srebrenica massacre of thousands of Bosnian Muslims, "Quo Vadis, Aida?" paints a singular, heart-wrenching portrait of an often-overlooked atrocity. Though banned in Serbia, the nation that perpetrated the ethnic cleansing, "Quo Vadis, Aida?" screened around the world to critical acclaim and garnered an Oscar nomination for Best International Feature Film.

- Director: Questlove
- Stacker score: 88.0
- Metascore: 96
- IMDb user rating: 8.0
- Run time: 118 minutes

Directed by The Roots drummer Questlove, "Summer of Soul" documents the 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival, a six-concert series that celebrated Black pride and unity at a major turning point in American history. The creative team behind the movie restored footage to bring performances from Nina Simone, Gladys Knight and the Pips, B.B. King, and more back to life. The documentary won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature as well as a Grammy for Best Music Film.

- Director: Charlotte Wells
- Stacker score: 85.5
- Metascore: 95
- IMDb user rating: 7.6
- Run time: 102 minutes

Starring "Normal People" breakout Paul Mescal, "Aftersun" is a bittersweet, coming-of-age drama following 11-year-old Sophie (Frankie Corio) and her father (Mescal) on a holiday trip to a Turkish resort. Haunting and heartfelt, this semi-autobiographical film from Charlotte Wells has been praised for its moving depictions of parenthood and intergenerational mental health struggles.

- Director: Christopher Nolan
- Stacker score: 86.5
- Metascore: 90
- IMDb user rating: 8.3
- Run time: 180 minutes

Christopher Nolan's "Oppenheimer" takes viewers back to the days of World War II, when physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer (Cillian Murphy) and a team of scientists developed the groundwork for the first atomic bomb. Though this sprawling film isn't without its critics, "Oppenheimer" co-dominated the summer box office in 2023 and won seven Oscars, including the coveted Best Picture Award.

- Director: Brady Corbet
- Stacker score: 86.0
- Metascore: 91
- IMDb user rating: 8.1
- Run time: 215 minutes

Adrien Brody stars in this sprawling, three-and-a-half-hour epic as László Tóth, a Hungarian Holocaust survivor and architect. After premiering at the Venice International Film Festival in September 2024, "The Brutalist" earned rave reviews from critics like Rolling Stone's David Fear, who described the film as "a bold, visionary, sweeping work of art." Audiences and members of the Hollywood elite seem to agree. "The Brutalist" has an 88% score on Rotten Tomatoes and scored three Golden Globe Awards in January 2025. At the March 2025 Academy Awards, the film picked up three Oscars, including a second Best Actor trophy for Adrien Brody. Holding his award, he broke the record for longest-ever acceptance speech, perhaps in tribute to the staggering length of "The Brutalist."

Additional writing by Cu Fleshman. Data reporting by Rob Powell. Story editing by Cynthia Rebolledo. Copy editing by Meg Shields.