The 50 best movies on BINGE

Steven Spielberg mixes voice work, motion-capture footage and digital effects to create this rip-roaring adaptation of the much-loved Hergé comic character. There are action sequences here the equal of Raiders of the Lost Ark, with Jamie Bell’s boy reporter and Andy Serkis’ salty sea captain taking on Daniel Craig’s globe-trotting villain. Great, great fun.

American Splendor (2003)

A biopic that delightfully plays with visual form and narrative structure, Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini’s independent feature gave Paul Giamatti his breakthrough role as Harvey Pekar, a curmudgeonly cultural obsessive and comic book writer who finds a measure of success after a lifetime of disdain. Every scene adds to your understanding of the man, even when the real Harvey meets Giamatti’s version.

Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy (2004)

Will Ferrell and director Adam McKay reached the peak of their American idiot phase with this truly inspired and deeply loopy comedy about a 1970s newsreader whose self-assurance and magnificent hair are shaken by the arrival of a female co-anchor (a note-perfect Christina Applegate). Truly sublime stupidity.

Back to the Future (1985)

If you’ve got a souped-up DeLorean that can travel through time the you’ve got a science-fiction film, but Robert Zemeckis gives you so much more in the one of the finest enduring examples of Hollywood filmmaking where a young man (Michael J. Fox) finds himself back in the 1950s and infringing on his parents’ tentative connection. It remains an inventive delight.

Best in Show (2000)

Christopher Guest’s mastery of the improvised ensemble comedy, which revealed itself with This is Spinal Tap, peaked again with this deliriously antic piece about the flawed dog owners bringing their charges (and personal foibles) to a storied competition. Eugene Levy, Jennifer Coolidge, and Parker Posey are masterful, but nothing can top Fred Willard as an idiotic television commentator.

Beetlejuice (1988)

Tim Burton’s macabre sensibility met the classic Hollywood screwball comedy in this madcap comedy about a ghostly young couple (Alec Baldwin and Geena Davis) who invite the titular ghoul (Michael Keaton) into their home to teach them how to scare off the dreadful new owners. The result is fierce, funny, and fearlessly exact.

The Big Lebowski (1998)

Joel and Ethan Coen reimagine the contours of L.A. noir through the eccentric lens of a doleful slacker (and ten-pin bowling enthusiast)—Jeff Bridges in his signature role of ‘The Dude’—who ambles through vexingly hilarious set-pieces that loosely link a kidnapping, German nihilists, and John Goodman at his finest.

BlackBerry (2023)

A Canadian rise and fall corporate tale told with punky directness, clash of culture humour, and, finally, bittersweet understanding, Matt Johnson’s exhumation of the titular mobile phone—a sensation in the late 1990s, forgotten now—draws career best performances from Jay Baruchel and Glenn Howerton respectively as the gifted engineer and brutal CEO who seize the moment but can’t comprehend when it’s gone.

Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992)

Francis Ford Coppola’s Gothic masterpiece gives romantic obsession, loving cinematic invention (some of the techniques used are from the dawn of the medium) and full, ripe performances (excluding a miscast Keanu Reeves) to the 19 th century tale of Gary Oldman’s undead Transylvanian Count, who pursues Winona Ryder’s Nina Harker while being hunted by Anthony Hopkins’ Professor Van Helsing.

Boyhood (2014)

A masterful coming-of-age story that unfolds like extended time-lapse photography, Richard Linklater’s episodic film shot regularly over a 12-year period starting in 2002, allowing the cast to age with their roles. Mason (Ellar Coltrane) goes from six to 18, maturing alongside his divorced parents (Ethan Hawke and a compelling Patricia Arquette). Turning points quietly accrue, and you see lives taking shape as others narrow.

Bridesmaids (2011)

Raunchy without being provocative, but never afraid to examine the dynamics between female friends, Paul Feig’s breakout hit turned the cast into comic movie stars: co-writer Kristen Wiig, Melissa McCarthy, and Rose Byrne all shone in a movie where the preparations for a wedding collapse from one mishap to the next.

Chinatown (1974)

A defining vision of Los Angeles, written by a native (Robert Towne) and directed by an outsider (Roman Polanski), this neo-noir mystery stars Jack Nicholson as a private eye caught up with Faye Dunaway’s widow as the wielding of power—over people and property—is dissected with sun-drenched menace. As a feared patriarch, John Huston gives one of the greatest supporting turns in Hollywood history.

Clueless (1995)

While the best lines from Amy Heckerling’s knowingly sweet teen comedy live on as memes, the film itself remains a perfectly calculated pleasure, with Alicia Silverstone as the teenage sophisticate who sails through her privileged L.A. high school life while the ageless Paul Rudd waits in the wings.

Collateral (2004)

Shooting on High-Definition Cameras, so that the Los Angeles nightscape looked like a city shimmering with urgency and ghosts, Michael Mann turned a thriller about a hitman (Tom Cruise) who takes a taxi driver (Jamie Foxx) hostage to ferry him from target to target into an impressionistic meditation on violence and survival, with a stacked supporting cast that includes Mark Ruffalo and Javier Bardem.

The Dark Knight (2008)

With Heath Ledger’s Joker—a jittery, nihilistic force who feels like a city’s dread come to life—as the antagonist, Christopher Nolan took the Batman franchise to a new level, grounding the superhero epic in the streets and giving a muscular authenticity to the deeds of Christian Bale’s masked vigilante.

The Day of the Jackal (1973)

There’s already been a Bruce Willis remake of this assassin thriller, and a series with Eddie Redmayne is on the way. But it’s Fred Zinnemann’s original adaptation of Frederick Forsyth’s best-seller about a mysterious operative hired to kill the President of France that still sets the standard. It’s economical in style, visually informative, and quietly gripping as the net closes on Edward Fox’s ruthlessly precise protagonist.

Donnie Brasco (1997)

Death of a Salesman for Mafia foot soldiers, this real-life story recounts the friendship between minor mobster “Lefty” Ruggiero (Al Pacino) and young thief Donnie Brasco (Johnny Depp), who’s in fact undercover FBI agent Joseph Pistone. Mike Newell’s crucially detailed film reveals their mercantile struggle, while documenting how Joseph slowly disappears into his role.

The Dry (2021)

An outback noir thriller about culpability and regret, Robert Connolly’s box-office hit stars Eric Bana as a financial crimes police officer who returns to the hometown he fled as a teenager to investigate a horrific crime attributed to his best friend. Less interested in plot twists than allowing the drought-stricken landscape and its frayed inhabitants to take hold, it’s a masterful Australian genre piece.

Elf (2003)

Will Ferrell uses naivety and enthusiasm as his comedic weapons in this fairytale farce about a human baby raised by Santa’s elves—Ferrell’s Buddy—who’s sent to New York at Christmas to meet his real father (a curmudgeonly James Caan). Jon Favreau crafts a funny, fantastical comedy that engages both children and adults.

Elles (2011)

In Polish director Malgoska Szumowska’s Paris-set feature, Anne (Juliette Binoche) is a journalist writing a story on female university students who support themselves by working as escorts. The more Anne learns, the more she begins to question her supposedly acceptable life with her husband, Patrick (Louis-Do de Lencquesaing), and their two sons. In a film of explicit elements, nothing exceeds the uneasy candour of Binoche’s performance.

E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982)

Steven Spielberg’s paean to the loneliness of childhood begins with a spindly creature from another planet being left behind in the Californian hills, but he soon joins the children who shelter him—yes, that’s Drew Barrymore—in eating candy, watching TV, and sneaking out for Halloween. It’s science-fiction as heartfelt childhood fantasy, directed with wonderment by Spielberg and still deeply compelling.

The Firm (1993)

Legal thrillers were a Hollywood staple in the 1990s, and none are better than Tom Cruise plotting to save himself by selling out the respectable but corrupt legal
practice that had hired him in Sydney Pollack’s exemplary drama. The creeping sense of discovery is terrific, with a strong counterpoint of Jeanne Tripplehorn as a wife betrayed on multiple fronts.

Get Out (2017)

Few films have better captured the tenor of the times that comic Jordan Peele’s directorial debut, a compelling horror film about the dispossession of African-Americans that stars Daniel Kaluuya as a Black photographer invited to visit the family home of his white girlfriend. Peele memorably turns awkwardness and tolerance into menace and terror, as history threatens to repeat itself.

Gladiator (2000)

Ridley Scott’s revival of the swords-and-sandals genre remains a canny blockbuster, focusing on noble Roman general Maximus (Russell Crowe), who’s supreme in battle but betrayed by politics. Cast into slavery by a jealous new emperor (Joaquin Phoenix), he uses success as a gladiator to steer him toward revenge and a satisfactory death.

Goodfellas (1990)

With cocaine pans and Keith Richards riffs, this organised crime epic from Martin Scorsese was based on the (low) life and (bad) times of Henry Hill (Ray Liotta), a wiseguy from his youth sequestered with the calculating Jimmy Conway (Robert De Niro) and the violent Tommy De Vito (Joe Pesci). Magisterial filmmaking, damning anthropology.

Groundhog Day (1993)

A comedy so perfectly crafted that it appeals after countless viewings, Harold Ramis’ classic stars Bill Murray as an abrasive weatherman whose outside broadcast traps him in a day that he lives in on endless repeat. The existential conundrum is both hilarious and telling, complete with Andie MacDowell as the perfect foil.

The Holdovers (2023)

How could it have taken almost two decades for director Alexander Payne and leading man Paul Giamatti to reunite? The Sideways duo are simpatico collaborators, and make the most of this bittersweet period drama about realisations shared by a curmudgeonly teacher (Giamatti), rebellious student (Dominic Sessa), and grieving cook (Da’Vine Joy Randolph) who are marooned at a shuttered private school.

Inside Man (2006)

Spike Lee updates the bank siege dynamic of Dog Day Afternoon, with a group of thieves, led by Clive Owen’s Dalton Russell, confounding the NYPD officers led by Denzel Washington’s Keith Frazier who have them surrounded, while drawing the attention of Jodie Foster’s off the books fixer. It’s all clockwork cool plotting and vivid performances.

Jaws (1975)

Scared it would bomb, the studio put Steve Spielberg’s shark thriller into every cinema it could and went big on television marketing. It was a huge hit and the modern blockbuster was born. Roy Scheider, Richard Dreyfuss, and Robert Shaw play the trio who eventually confront the menacing great white, but the true star is John Williams’ score. Every motif has become part of cultural history.

May December (2023)

Appearances can be deceiving: Todd Haynes turns this drama about an actress (Natalie Portman) embedding herself in the family of the woman she’ll be playing in a biopic (Julianne Moore) – who was jailed for having sex with a boy and subsequently married him when grown up (Charles Melton) – into a terrifying black comedy about control, role-playing, and the past’s imprecise but cruel grip.

Moonrise Kingdom (2012)

Wed Anderson returned to form after the insular patchwork of The Darjeeling Limited, using a pair of adolescent runaways on a New England island in 1965 to craft a wry coming of age drama. As stylised as the narrative is, the emotion here is genuine—whether in the children’s hope or the gentle melancholy that circles adults played by Bill Murray, Frances McDormand, and Bruce Willis.

Mulholland Dr. (2001)

One of the best—that is deeply inexplicable and hauntingly resonant—movies of this century, David Lynch’s film noir-like journey is a mystery about identity that resides in the subconscious of the filmmaker and his characters, especially Naomi Watts’ new to Los Angeles ingénue.

Of an Age (2022)

One of the most exciting new voices in Australian cinema, Goran Stolevski announced himself with the one-two punch of his gripping folk-horror You Won’t Be Alone and this intimate queer romantic drama. Set in Melbourne’s northern suburbs, it tracks the bond discovered between Nikola (Elias Anton) and Adam (Thom Green), which unfolds with the thrill of discovery and the risk of loss.

Paddington (2014)

Where to watch

One of the best family films of this century, rich with inviting design and repellent of xenophobia, allows the gentle antics of a Peruvian bear new to London (voiced by Ben Whishaw) to save a family, bestow a purpose, and defy Nicole Kidman’s cartoonish villain. An absolute delight.

Past Lives (2023)

A near miracle of restraint, Celine Song’s debut feature turns timeless romantic queries—“who am I meant to be with?”—into allusive, deeply felt existential moments as childhood friends from South Korea meet again in New York after decades apart. Greta Lee, as the now married host, gives a remarkable performance that balances memory, culture, and physical sensation in the moment.

Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping (2016)

With shades of Spinal Tap, this mockumentary charts the rise, fall and redemption of Conner4Real (Andy Samberg), a hubristic pop star whose solo career comes unstuck (so, so unstuck). The gags in this Lonely Island joint are non-stop, punctuated by scarily catchy tunes and note perfect cameos.

Pulp Fiction (1994)

A before and after line for American filmmaking. Almost 30 years on, Quentin Tarantino’s joyous dive into the mores of L.A. crime, narrative illusion, and actual conversations between men and women still crackles with delectable energy as an ensemble cast that includes John Travolta, Samuel L Jackson, Uma Thurman, and Bruce Willis enjoy the juiciest of parts.

A Quiet Place (2018)

Jim from The Office—who knew? John Krasinski launched a blockbuster horror franchise with this impeccably assembled tribute to escalating risk and insidious circumstances as alien creatures that hunt by noise pursue a family, with Emily Blunt and Krasinski as the parents, hiding out on a farm in a post-apocalyptic America. The simplest of stakes, merely staying quiet, assumes life and death risk.

Scarface (1983)

Written by Oliver Stone and directed with bloody relish by Brian De Palma, this updating of the immigrant criminal’s rise and fall makes great use of Miami and the cocaine trade in the early 1980s. The film finds every garish angle in the bloody rise of Al Pacino’s Tony Montana, suggesting violence is the obvious outcome of unfettered capitalism.

Schindler’s List (1993)

The best film to date of Steven Spielberg’s already extensive career, adapted from a novel by Australian author Thomas Kenneally, Schindler’s List was a compelling depiction of the Holocaust, told through the eyes of an unscrupulous businessman (Liam Neeson) whose exposure to both the historic crimes against humanity and his threatened Jewish employees turns him into an unlikely saviour.

Scream (1996)

Writer Kevin Williamson took the teenage VHS cassette horror experience back into the multiplex with this self-referential horror reboot, expertly crafted by veteran director Wes Craven. A slasher film that explicitly acknowledges the genre with a new masked murderer in Ghostface, it put Neve Campbell at the centre of a high school killing spree that begins with Drew Barrymore’s now iconic cameo.

Shaun of the Dead (2004)

Equally committed to pub culture and the movies of George A. Romero, Edgar Wright’s very British and very amusing zombie apocalypse comedy finds Simon Pegg and Nick Frost negotiating the shuffling return of the undead with droll technique and genre-defying bursts of comic mayhem.

Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse (2018)

Perhaps the best—and certainly the truest—comic-book adaptation, this animated addition to the world of the New York web-slinger captured both the emotional spirit of the Spider-man franchise and the wondrous visual possibilities. It is bright, exhilarating and alive to teenage hopes and fears. Plus Spider-Ham!

Star Trek Into Darkness (2013)

The second—and best—of the Star Trek franchise’s 2010s reboot, with Chris Pine as Kirk and Zachary Quinto as Spock, explores the militarisation of space and the perils of buried history. Terrorist attacks lead the Starship Enterprise to alien space and Benedict Cumberbatch’s bravura antagonist. J.J. Abrams directs, lens flare and all.

The Sting (1973)

Before Ocean’s Eleven there was this Depression-era conman thriller, which cleaned up at both the box-office and the Academy Awards, and cemented the legendary screen partnership of Paul Newman and Robert Redford. The duo play grifters out to swindle a violent crime boss (a memorable Robert Shaw), with an intricate scam orchestrated with elan by director George Roy Hill.

Sunset Boulevard (1950)

Posthumously narrated by the dead screenwriter memorably featured in the opening scene, Billy Wilder’s acidic love letter to Hollywood is more scathing than any movie the movie industry has made about itself in the many decades since. William Holden plays the struggling hack, who finds refuge with a reclusive silent movie star, Gloria Swanson’s Norma Desmond. Self-loathing, delusion, and cruel truths fight it out.

Tootsie (1982)

Star Dustin Hoffman and director Sydney Pollack reportedly argued their way through the shooting of his comedy about a testy actor who finds success on a soap opera by posing as a no-nonsense actress, but the result is a farcical romantic-comedy that matches anything Hollywood produced in the 1930s. Jessica Lange and Bill Murray are note-perfect as, respectively, the complicated love interest and deadpan comedic foil.

Unforgiven (1992)

Everything that Clint Eastwood has learnt about the western, including the comfort it takes in its many myths, was brought to bear in this elegiac end of the trail tale. The director stars as an ageing gunslinger who embraces his past sins when he takes up a contract for murder in a town run by Gene Hackman’s uncompromising sheriff. Gnarled, brutal and haunting.

Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit (2005)

The beloved Aardman Animation shorts about doughty inventor Wallace and his clever canine minder Gromit segued perfectly into this delightful stop-motion feature. Couched in English pluck, vintage horror films, and with a carrot-munching nod to Fight Club, the duo have to save their hometown of Tottington (and its Giant Vegetable Competition) when science runs amok.

Zodiac (2007)