10. “West Side Story” (1961)
The question of whether “West Side Story” is the best musical ever made is debatable, but in the absence of “Cabaret” or “Singin’ In The Rain,” it’s certainly the best one to ever win an Oscar. The Romeo and Juliet-retelling marks a pile-up of an alarming amount of talent, including Leonard Bernstein, Stephen Sondheim, Jerome Robbins, Robert Wise, Ernest Lehman and Natalie Wood, and most are at the top of their game here—from classic songs to the dance sequences (among cinema’s best), this is magic throughout.
9. “On The Waterfront” (1954)
Director Elia Kazan’s brilliant film about dockworker corruption and unionization may have had real-life allegorical aims, but no context is needed to be blown away by it to this day. The defining slim-Brando performance, the film is sad and angry and desperate all at the same time, as a man struggles to fulfill his better nature in spite of himself. And in the business with Eva Marie Saint‘s glove, it contains one of the greatest moments of improvised screen acting of all time.
8. “One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest” (1975)
Hitting at the counter-cultural peak of the 1970s, and rightly winning out in maybe the single toughest Best Picture competition ever (“Jaws,” “Nashville,” “Dog Day Afternoon” and “Barry Lyndon” were the other nominees), Milos Forman‘s adaptation of Ken Kesey‘s novel is still a wonder. Jack Nicholson‘s best performance provides the pivot point for one of cinema’s greatest ensembles, and Forman balances a difficult meld of tones pitch-perfectly.
7. “The Apartment” (1960)
“Shut up and deal,” is one of our favorite last lines ever, but the story goes it was a placeholder until Billy Wilder and partner I.A.L. Diamond could think of something better, but they “settled” for it anyway. Which should give you a good idea of the level we’re working at here, with Jack Lemmon and Shirley MacLaine also both elevating the already-terrific material. Wilder was well known for his snappy comedies but it’s the undertow tug of other emotions, of sadness and loneliness and tentative hope, that makes “The Apartment” stand out even in his filmography.
6. “Schindler’s List” (1993)
Steven Spielberg’s Holocaust epic is an astonishingly powerful film, which, yes, focuses not on the 6 million who died but the 600 who didn’t, to paraphrase Stanley Kubrick’s reported jab, but it doesn’t shrink from placing acts of heroism against a larger backdrop of unthinkable cruelty (brilliantly personified by a breakthrough Ralph Fiennes) nor from showing the limits and the hardships of individual decency (embodied by a career-best Liam Neeson). There are missteps, like the red coat moment, and the overly “dramatically constructed” shower scene, but they are easily overlooked in what is overall a passionate, sincere and consummately well-made film about a horror so enormous it could paralyze a lesser filmmaker.