Rotten Tomatoes is proud to partner with one of cinema’s most influential video and streaming companies to create our latest guide: 100 essential Criterion Collection films.
Since 1984, Criterion has been the standard in film restoration and preservation, across physical formats like LaserDisc, DVD, Blu-ray, and 4K, along with the digital space with their in-house streaming service. These films become part of the Criterion Collection, a trademark of the highest quality and treatment that preserves the filmmakers’ vision, ensuring that each movie will be available for generations.
These 100 films represent the full breadth of experience films have to offer here and internationally, and now we’ve also joined up with our friends at Fandango at Home to have each film available for viewing. Every week for the month of May, a different set of films will go on sale, some for the first time ever, so check back often!
#1
Adjusted Score: 104534%
Critics Consensus: Inventive, thought-provoking, and funny, 8 1/2 represents the arguable peak of Federico Fellini’s many towering feats of cinema.
#2
Adjusted Score: 107185%
Critics Consensus: A seminal French New Wave film that offers an honest, sympathetic, and wholly heartbreaking observation of adolescence without trite nostalgia.
#3
Adjusted Score: 68792%
Critics Consensus: This late-career anthology by Akira Kurosawa often confirms that Dreams are more interesting to the dreamer than their audience, but the directorial master still delivers opulent visions with a generous dose of heart.
#4
Adjusted Score: 91457%
Critics Consensus: Ribald, sweet, and sentimental, Amarcord is a larger-than-life journey through a seaside village and its colorful citizens.
#5
Adjusted Score: 68371%
Critics Consensus: With affected strokes, Basquiat paints an expressionist portrait of a misfit artist, masterfully rendered by a riveting Jeffrey Wright.
#6
Adjusted Score: 88538%
Critics Consensus: Beau Travail finds director Claire Denis drawing on classic literature to construct a modern tragedy fueled by timeless desires.
#7
Adjusted Score: 80088%
Critics Consensus: No consensus yet.
#8
Adjusted Score: 110088%
Critics Consensus: An Italian neorealism exemplar, Bicycle Thieves thrives on its non-flashy performances and searing emotion.
#9
Adjusted Score: -1%
Critics Consensus: No consensus yet.
#10
Adjusted Score: 96104%
Critics Consensus: Colorful, atmospheric, and infections, Black Orpheus takes an ancient tale and makes it fresh anew, thanks in part to its bewitching bossa nova soundtrack.
#11
Adjusted Score: 104323%
Critics Consensus: Brutally violent and shockingly funny in equal measure, Blood Simple offers early evidence of the Coen brothers’ twisted sensibilities and filmmaking ingenuity.
#12
Adjusted Score: 102406%
Critics Consensus: No consensus yet.
#13
Adjusted Score: 88063%
Critics Consensus: Breaking the Waves offers a remarkable testament to writer-director Lars von Trier’s insight and filmmaking skill — and announces Emily Watson as a startling talent.
#14
Adjusted Score: 105490%
Critics Consensus: Breathless rewrote the rules of cinema — and more than 50 years after its arrival, Jean-Luc Godard’s paradigm-shifting classic remains every bit as vital.
#15
Adjusted Score: 101574%
Critics Consensus: A fantastic cinematic and artistic achievement, Edward Yang’s A Brighter Summer Day depicts youth, ideals, violence and politics in a melancholic, tender light, culminating in a complex portrait of Taiwanese identity.
#16
Adjusted Score: 93707%
Critics Consensus: No consensus yet.
#17
Adjusted Score: 103562%
Critics Consensus: Fresh and inventive yet immediately accessible, Cameraperson distills its subject’s life and career into an experience that should prove immediately absorbing even for those unfamiliar with her work.
#18
Adjusted Score: 94922%
Critics Consensus: Carnival of Souls offers delightfully chilling proof that when it comes to telling an effective horror story, less can often be much, much more.
#19
Adjusted Score: 98691%
Critics Consensus: Filled with excellent performances, Ramin Bahrani’s deft sophomore effort is a heartfelt, hopeful neorealist look at the people who live in the gritty underbelly of New York City.
#20
Adjusted Score: 92597%
Critics Consensus: Even if all it had to offer were writer-director Wong Kar-wai’s thrillingly distinctive visuals, Chungking Express would be well worth watching; happily, its thoughtfully drawn characters and naturalistic performances also pack a potent dramatic wallop.
#21
Adjusted Score: 103632%
Critics Consensus: One of the best underdog romance movies ever, with an ending that will light up any heart.
#22
Adjusted Score: 76289%
Critics Consensus: Though challengingly cryptic at times, Code Unknown still manages to resonate.
#23
Adjusted Score: 95266%
Critics Consensus: As effectively anti-war as movies can be, Come and See is a harrowing odyssey through the worst that humanity is capable of, directed with bravura intensity by Elem Klimov.
#24
Adjusted Score: 97841%
Critics Consensus: Mesmerizing and psychologically intriguing.
#25
Adjusted Score: 73429%
Critics Consensus: While decidedly not for all tastes, Dead Man marks an alluring change of pace for writer-director Jim Jarmusch that demonstrates an assured command of challenging material.
#26
Adjusted Score: 107604%
Critics Consensus: Drive My Car‘s imposing runtime holds a rich, patiently engrossing drama that reckons with self-acceptance and regret.
#27
Adjusted Score: 69032%
Critics Consensus: No consensus yet.
#28
Adjusted Score: 101639%
Critics Consensus: Louis Malle’s hypnotic debut is a noir with genuine soul, infusing its tale of best laid plans gone awry with wistful performances, swooning cinematography, and a sultry soundtrack.
#29
Adjusted Score: 95808%
Critics Consensus: David Lynch’s surreal Eraserhead uses detailed visuals and a creepy score to create a bizarre and disturbing look into a man’s fear of parenthood.
#30
Adjusted Score: 93950%
Critics Consensus: Fantastic Planet is an animated epic that is by turns surreal and lovely, fantastic and graceful.
#31
Adjusted Score: 94318%
Critics Consensus: Chen Kaing’s epic is grand in scope and presentation, and, bolstered by solid performances, the result is a film both horrifying and enthralling.
#32
Adjusted Score: 76571%
Critics Consensus: The controversial Fat Girl is an unflinchingly harsh but powerful look at female adolescence.
#33
Adjusted Score: 73997%
Critics Consensus: Violent images and blunt audience provocation make up this nihilistic experiment from one of cinema’s more difficult filmmakers.
#34
Adjusted Score: 85837%
Critics Consensus: Languid and melancholy, George Washington is a carefully observed rumination on adolescence and rural life.
#35
Adjusted Score: 88866%
Critics Consensus: An innovative blend of samurai and gangster lifestyles.
#36
Adjusted Score: 102146%
Critics Consensus: More than straight monster-movie fare, Gojira offers potent, sobering postwar commentary.
#37
Adjusted Score: 98509%
Critics Consensus: Kenneth Branagh’s sprawling, finely textured adaptation of Shakespeare’s masterpiece lives up to its source material, using strong performances and a sharp cinematic focus to create a powerfully resonant film that wastes none of its 246 minutes.
#38
Adjusted Score: 100465%
Critics Consensus: No consensus yet.
#39
Adjusted Score: 110462%
Critics Consensus: A Hard Day’s Night, despite its age, is still a delight to watch and has proven itself to be a rock-and-roll movie classic.
#40
Adjusted Score: 95664%
Critics Consensus: No consensus yet.
#41
Adjusted Score: 80508%
Critics Consensus: No consensus yet.
#42
Adjusted Score: 101076%
Critics Consensus: Distinguished by innovative technique and Emmanuelle Riva’s arresting performance, Hiroshima Mon Amour is a poignant love story as well as a thoughtful meditation on international trauma.
#43
Adjusted Score: 102019%
Critics Consensus: One of the most critically acclaimed documentaries of all time, Hoop Dreams is a rich, complex, heartbreaking, and ultimately deeply rewarding film that uses high school hoops as a jumping-off point to explore issues of race, class, and education in modern America.
#44
Adjusted Score: 95087%
Critics Consensus: House is a gleefully demented collage of grand guginol guffaws and bizarre sequences.
#45
Adjusted Score: 103817%
Critics Consensus: Visually absorbing and formally audacious, I Am Cuba (Soy Cuba) opens a long-buried time capsule that has lost none of its captivating power.
#46
Adjusted Score: 107297%
Critics Consensus: Ikiru is a well-acted and deeply moving humanist tale about a man facing his own mortality, one of legendary director Akira Kurosawa’s most intimate films.
#47
Adjusted Score: 95546%
Critics Consensus: Smart and engrossing, this is one of Hong Kong’s better cop thrillers.
#48
Adjusted Score: 76264%
Critics Consensus: Typical David Lynch fare: fans of the director will find Inland Empire seductive and deep. All others will consider the heady surrealism impenetrable and pointless.
#49
Adjusted Score: 101556%
Critics Consensus: Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles offers a lingering, unvarnished, and ultimately mesmerizing look at one woman’s existence.
#50
Adjusted Score: 100530%
Critics Consensus: No consensus yet.
#51
Adjusted Score: 95681%
Critics Consensus: Exquisitely designed and fastidiously ornate, Masaki Kobayashi’s ambitious anthology operates less as a frightening example of horror and more as a meditative tribute to Japanese folklore.
#52
Adjusted Score: 100525%
Critics Consensus: L’Avventura marks a bewitchingly ambiguous milestone in Antonioni’s career — and European cinema in general.
#53
Adjusted Score: 97860%
Critics Consensus: While Bernardo Bertolucci’s decadent epic never quite identifies the dramatic pulse of its protagonist, stupendous visuals and John Lone’s ability to make passivity riveting give The Last Emperor a rarified grandeur.
#54
Adjusted Score: 103964%
Critics Consensus: Le Samouraï makes the most of its spare aesthetic, using stylish — and influential — direction, solid performances, and thick atmosphere to weave an absorbing story.
#55
Adjusted Score: 109105%
Critics Consensus: A landmark psychological thriller with arresting images, deep thoughts on modern society, and Peter Lorre in his finest performance.
#56
Adjusted Score: 96002%
Critics Consensus: Metropolitan gently skewers the young socialite class with a smartly written dramedy whose unique, specific setting yields rich universal truths.
#57
Adjusted Score: 102458%
Critics Consensus: No consensus yet.
#58
Adjusted Score: 98425%
Critics Consensus: Sarita Choudhury and Denzel Washington’s romantic chemistry lights up the screen in Mississippi Masala, Mira Nair’s observant and sexy tale of cultures clashing.
#59
Adjusted Score: 98141%
Critics Consensus: Jacques Tati’s most accessible film is a paean to gentle values and observing the small details of life.
#60
Adjusted Score: 102911%
Critics Consensus: No consensus yet.
#61
Adjusted Score: 105847%
Critics Consensus: George A. Romero’s debut set the template for the zombie film, and features tight editing, realistic gore, and a sly political undercurrent.
#62
Adjusted Score: 102930%
Critics Consensus: With calm confidence and a strikingly naturalistic approach, Nothing But a Man tells a quietly powerful story of Black American lives.
#63
Adjusted Score: 91970%
Critics Consensus: No consensus yet.
#64
Adjusted Score: 91470%
Critics Consensus: No consensus yet.
#65
Adjusted Score: 106056%
Critics Consensus: Open City fills in the familiar contours of its storyline with three-dimensional characters and a narrative depth that add up to a towering — and still powerfully resonant — cinematic achievement.
#66
Adjusted Score: 90139%
Critics Consensus: The Others is a spooky thriller that reminds us that a movie doesn’t need expensive special effects to be creepy.
#67
Adjusted Score: 102838%
Critics Consensus: Bitingly cynical without succumbing to bitterness, The Player is one of the all-time great Hollywood satires — and an ensemble-driven highlight of the Altman oeuvre.
#68
Adjusted Score: 107999%
Critics Consensus: A film that requires and rewards patience in equal measure, Pather Panchali finds director Satyajit Ray delivering a classic with his debut.
#69
Adjusted Score: 97149%
Critics Consensus: Visually mesmerizing, Picnic at Hanging Rock is moody, unsettling, and enigmatic — a masterpiece of Australian cinema and a major early triumph for director Peter Weir.
#70
Adjusted Score: 99179%
Critics Consensus: The Red Balloon invests the simplest of narratives with spectacular visual inventiveness, making for a singularly wondrous portrait of innocence.
#71
Adjusted Score: 106547%
Critics Consensus: Giulietta Masina and Anthony Quinn’s pitiable pair of outsiders provide a poignant contrast between gentleness and might in Federico Fellini’s unforgettable parable.
#72
Adjusted Score: 103003%
Critics Consensus: The hard edges of E.M. Foster novel maybe sanded off, but what we get with A Room with a View is an eminently entertaining comedy with an intellectual approach to love.
#73
Adjusted Score: 104520%
Critics Consensus: Its genius escaped many viewers at the time, but in retrospect, The Rules of the Game stands as one of Jean Renoir’s — and cinema’s — finest works.
#74
Adjusted Score: 100938%
Critics Consensus: No consensus yet.
#75
Adjusted Score: 111950%
Critics Consensus: Arguably Akira Kurosawa’s masterpiece, The Seven Samurai is an epic adventure classic with an engrossing story, memorable characters, and stunning action sequences that make it one of the most influential films ever made.
#76
Adjusted Score: 103388%
Critics Consensus: Narratively bold and visually striking, The Seventh Seal brought Ingmar Bergman to the world stage — and remains every bit as compelling today.
#77
Adjusted Score: 102855%
Critics Consensus: No consensus yet.
#78
Adjusted Score: 88134%
Critics Consensus: Boasting stellar performances by Michael Fassbender and Carey Mulligan, Shame is a powerful plunge into the mania of addiction affliction.
#79
Adjusted Score: 96294%
Critics Consensus: Elevated by Laura Dern’s haunting performance, Smooth Talk is far more than your average coming-of-age drama.
#80
Adjusted Score: 102371%
Critics Consensus: Solaris is a haunting, meditative film that uses sci-fi to raise complex questions about humanity and existence.
#81
Adjusted Score: 103965%
Critics Consensus: Stalker is a complex, oblique parable that draws unforgettable images and philosophical musings from its sci-fi/thriller setting.
#82
Adjusted Score: 75912%
Critics Consensus: No consensus yet.
#83
Adjusted Score: 96962%
Critics Consensus: No consensus yet.
#84
Adjusted Score: 105054%
Critics Consensus: Thanks to director Juzo Itami’s offbeat humor and sharp satirical edge, Tampopo is a funny, sexy, affectionate celebration of food and its broad influence on Japanese culture.
#85
Adjusted Score: 99422%
Critics Consensus: An exquisitely shot showcase for Maggie Cheung and Tony Leung that marks a somber evolution of Wong Kar-wai’s chic style, In the Mood for Love is a tantric tease that’s liable to break your heart.
#86
Adjusted Score: 85248%
Critics Consensus: The stylish Thirst packs plenty of bloody thrills to satisfy fans of both vampire films and director Chan Wook Park.
#87
Adjusted Score: 95866%
Critics Consensus: Time Bandits is a remarkable time-travel fantasy from Terry Gilliam, who utilizes fantastic set design and homemade special effects to create a vivid, original universe.
#88
Adjusted Score: 106581%
Critics Consensus: Tokyo Story is a Yasujiro Ozu masterpiece whose rewarding complexity has lost none of its power more than half a century on.
#89
Adjusted Score: 89295%
Critics Consensus: Orson Welles may take big liberties in his adaptation of The Trial, but the auteur constructs an absurd nightmare that is unmistakably Kafkaesque — grounded by an excellent Anthony Perkins as the befuddled Josef K.
#90
Adjusted Score: 69943%
Critics Consensus: For better or worse, Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me is every bit as strange and twisted as you’d expect from David Lynch.
#91
Adjusted Score: 89779%
Critics Consensus: No consensus yet.
#92
Adjusted Score: 100131%
Critics Consensus: A clinical, maddening descent into the mind of a serial killer and a slowly unraveling hero, culminating with one of the scariest endings of all time.
#93
Adjusted Score: 90238%
Critics Consensus: The Virgin Spring marks one of Ingmar Bergman’s most controversial dramas, although its uncomfortable exploration of divine justice — or lack thereof — is undeniably thought-provoking.
#94
Adjusted Score: 106438%
Critics Consensus: An existential suspense classic, The Wages of Fear blends nonstop suspense with biting satire; its influence is still being felt on today’s thrillers.
#95
Adjusted Score: 90476%
Critics Consensus: With its harrowingly beautiful depiction of the Australian Outback and spare narrative of culture clash, Walkabout is a peculiar survival epic.
#96
Adjusted Score: 101714%
Critics Consensus: No consensus yet.
#97
Adjusted Score: 96142%
Critics Consensus: An auspicious debut for writer-director Cheryl Dunye, The Watermelon Woman tells a fresh story in wittily irreverent style.
#98
Adjusted Score: 92466%
Critics Consensus: Electrified by searing performances from Gena Rowlands and Peter Falk, A Woman Under the Influence finds pioneering independent filmmaker John Cassavetes working at his artistic peak.
#99
Adjusted Score: 100008%
Critics Consensus: In its depiction of one family, Yi Yi accurately and expertly captures the themes and details, as well as the beauty, of everyday life.
#100
Adjusted Score: 102878%
Critics Consensus: The Young Girls of Rochefort pays colorful homage to classic Hollywood musicals while earning its own emotionally affecting place of honor in the genre.