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by Chad Aiggia, Screenmancer Staff
Screenmancer has tasked me, Chad Aiggia newest staff member with a daunting assignment. Overnight deadline to pull together a Seminal Top 100 list that aligns with our mandate as a female-run film site. So my count might be off due to the rush. Of course, not being female, this adds another layer of complexity. So my choices, might just be male-aligned?
As in, Brad Pitt is our only American Movie Star, our only Global Star left with all due respect to Billion-dollar Box Office Draw Tom Cruise. Why? Because Brad Pitt stars in not only all-balls F1, but he dominates Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, a seminal film favorite of its Director Quentin Tarantino, and me, Chad Aiggia Sr. Film Critic at Screenmancer.
Like my early trigger warning and cautionary opening statements, this list is for all Cinephiles. Not just female ones here at this female-run groundbreaking since 1997 film site. Meaning? Deep Throat is not just a p0rn0 folks, deserves to be in here because it changed human thought at the time. That’s a determining factor in my Exquisite Flicks for Cinephiles List. Did the work of filmed entertainment also change human thought at the time, or even now, you decide?
Screenmancer’s Top 100 Films: Exquisite Flicks for Cinephiles Only
Troubled Birth of Cinema (1900–1929)
When moving images discovered narrative grammar, montage, fantasy, documentary, and the power to reorganize perception.
A Trip to the Moon (1902)
Director: Georges Méliès Key Cast: Georges Méliès, Victor André, Bleuette BernonCountry: France How It Changed Human Thought: Demonstrated cinema as a laboratory for dreams and speculative worlds, expanding imagination beyond stage-bound reality. Link: YouTube search (official/best)
The Great Train Robbery (1903)
Director: Edwin S. Porter Key Cast: Broncho Billy Anderson, A.C. Abadie, George Barnes Country: United States How It Changed Human Thought: Proved parallel action and location shooting could build kinetic narrative, seeding the grammar of the action film. Link: YouTube search (official/best)
The Birth of a Nation (1915)
Director: D.W. Griffith Key Cast: Lillian Gish, Henry B. Walthall, Mae Marsh Country:United States How It Changed Human Thought: Consolidated feature-length storytelling techniques (crosscutting, close-ups) while revealing cinema’s capacity to shape ideology—demanding critical literacy – yes, fucking racist POV, warning. Link: YouTube search (official/best)
Intolerance (1916)
Director: D.W. Griffith Key Cast: Lillian Gish, Constance Talmadge, Robert Harron Country:United States How It Changed Human Thought: Intercut four epochs to argue morally across time, stretching montage into a philosophical architecture. Link: YouTube search (official/best)
The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920)
Director: Robert Wiene Key Cast: Werner Krauss, Conrad Veidt, Lil DagoverCountry: Germany How It Changed Human Thought: Expressionist sets turned psychology into landscape, showing style as meaning and the unreliable frame of perception. Link: YouTube search (official/best)
Nosferatu (1922)
Director: F.W. Murnau Key Cast: Max Schreck, Gustav von Wangenheim, Greta Schröder Country:Germany How It Changed Human Thought: Natural locations and spectral imagery merged folklore with realism, inventing a modern cinematic uncanny. Link: YouTube search (official/best)
Nanook of the North (1922)
Director: Robert J. Flaherty Key Cast: Allakariallak (Nanook), Nyla, Cunayou Country:United States/Canada How It Changed Human Thought: Shaped documentary language and ethical debates, revealing film’s power to represent—and construct—reality. Link: YouTube search (official/best)
Battleship Potemkin (1925)
Director: Sergei Eisenstein Key Cast: Aleksandr Antonov, Vladimir Barsky, Grigori Aleksandrov Country: Soviet Union How It Changed Human Thought: Dialectical montage crystallized how edits generate emotion and ideas, redefining political cinema. Link: YouTube search (official/best)
Metropolis (1927)
Director: Fritz Lang Key Cast: Brigitte Helm, Gustav Fröhlich, Alfred Abel Country: GermanyHow It Changed Human Thought: Imagined an engineered future where technology orders society, installing the template for modern dystopia. Link: YouTube search (official/best)
The Jazz Singer (1927)
Director: Alan Crosland Key Cast: Al Jolson, May McAvoy, Warner Oland Country: United States How It Changed Human Thought: Sound’s arrival reoriented performance, genre, and global distribution, turning film into a speaking world-stage. Link: YouTube search (official/best)
Studio Systems & Global Classicism (1930–1949) Classics matured across industries; genre, star systems, and national cinemas defined durable narrative forms.
M (1931)
Director: Fritz Lang Key Cast: Peter Lorre, Otto Wernicke, Gustaf Gründgens Country: Germany How It Changed Human Thought: Mapped urban paranoia and due process, using sound motifs to visualize the unseen. Link:YouTube search (official/best)
Dracula (1931)
Director: Tod Browning Key Cast: Bela Lugosi, Helen Chandler, Dwight Frye Country: United StatesHow It Changed Human Thought: Canonized the cinematic vampire as erotically coded outsider, shaping horror’s modern iconography. Link: YouTube search (official/best)
Frankenstein (1931)
Director: James Whale Key Cast: Boris Karloff, Colin Clive, Mae Clarke Country: United StatesHow It Changed Human Thought: Gave the “created being” pathos and social critique, entwining science, ethics, and empathy in popular myth. Link: YouTube search (official/best)
Grand Hotel (1932)
Director: Edmund Goulding Key Cast: Greta Garbo, John Barrymore, Joan Crawford Country:United States How It Changed Human Thought: Popularized the multi-thread ensemble, revealing intersecting lives as a modern urban tapestry. Link: YouTube search (official/best)
It Happened One Night (1934)
Director: Frank Capra Key Cast: Clark Gable, Claudette Colbert, Walter ConnollyCountry: United States How It Changed Human Thought: Road-movie rhythms and screwball equality reshaped romance as dialogue between equals on the move. Link: YouTube search (official/best)
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937)
Director: David Hand (Walt Disney supervising) Key Cast: Adriana Caselotti, Harry Stockwell, Lucille La Verne Country: United States How It Changed Human Thought: Proved feature animation could sustain emotion, music, and myth for global audiences. Link: YouTube search (official/best)
The Wizard of Oz (1939)
Director: Victor Fleming Key Cast: Judy Garland, Ray Bolger, Margaret Hamilton Country:United States How It Changed Human Thought: Used Technicolor and musical form to reframe home, identity, and wish-fulfillment inside an American fairy tale. Link: YouTube search (official/best)
Gone with the Wind (1939)
Director: Victor Fleming Key Cast: Vivien Leigh, Clark Gable, Hattie McDaniel Country:United States How It Changed Human Thought: Mega-production scale and melodrama cemented the epic as prestige form, while prompting historical reassessment. Link: YouTube search (official/best)
Citizen Kane (1941)
Director: Orson Welles Key Cast: Orson Welles, Joseph Cotten, Dorothy Comingore Country:United States How It Changed Human Thought: Deep focus, fractured time, and authorship debate reimagined what cinematic investigation could be. Link: YouTube search (official/best)
Casablanca (1942)
Director: Michael Curtiz Key Cast: Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman, Paul Henreid Country:United States How It Changed Human Thought: Romantic fatalism met wartime ethics, fixing the idea of personal sacrifice within global stakes. Link: YouTube search (official/best)
Postwar Realism & Auteurs (1950–1959)
Neorealism and global auteurs foregrounded everyday life, moral complexity, and new narrative textures.
Bicycle Thieves (1948)
Director: Vittorio De Sica Key Cast: Lamberto Maggiorani, Enzo Staiola, Lianella CarellCountry: Italy How It Changed Human Thought: Street-level realism insisted that ordinary lives and small losses carry epic weight. Link: YouTube search (official/best)
Rashomon (1950)
Director: Akira Kurosawa Key Cast: Toshiro Mifune, Machiko Kyo, Takashi Shimura Country:Japan How It Changed Human Thought: Subjective truth and multiple viewpoints reframed memory and justice as perspectival. Link: YouTube search (official/best)
Sunset Boulevard (1950)
Director: Billy Wilder Key Cast: Gloria Swanson, William Holden, Erich von StroheimCountry: United States How It Changed Human Thought: Hollywood examined itself as a system of desire and ruin, codifying the toxic romance of fame. Link: YouTube search (official/best)
Singin’ in the Rain (1952)
Director: Gene Kelly, Stanley Donen Key Cast: Gene Kelly, Donald O’Connor, Debbie Reynolds Country: United States How It Changed Human Thought: Integrated song, dance, and film history into joyous meta-cinema about reinvention through technology. Link: YouTube search (official/best)
Tokyo Story (1953)
Director: Yasujirō Ozu Key Cast: Chishu Ryu, Setsuko Hara, Haruko Sugimura Country: JapanHow It Changed Human Thought: Stillness and domestic spaces opened a contemplative cinema of generational time and care. Link: YouTube search (official/best)
On the Waterfront (1954)
Director: Elia Kazan Key Cast: Marlon Brandon Country: United States How It Changed Human Thought: All the ways this movie ripped the dock worker blue collar class apart as a thinking man’s melieu replete with philosopher boxers and wise guys. Link: YouTube search (official/best)
Intermission – Mid-Century Modern (Not Just American) Moment
The Night of the Hunter (1955) Director: Charles Laughton Key Cast: Robert Mitchum, Shelley Winters, Lillian Gish Country: United States How It Changed Human Thought: A poetic noir, its fairy-tale framing and moral binary turned cinema into a symbol-laden dreamscape. Link: Night of the Hunter 1955 – YouTube search (official/best)
Rebel Without a Cause (1955)
Director: Nicholas Ray Key Cast: James Dean, Natalie Wood, Sal Mineo Country: United States
How It Changed Human Thought: Gave adolescent feeling mythic force, turning teenage dissonance into a universal language.
Link: Rebel Without a Cause 1955 – YouTube search (official/best)
The 400 Blows (1959)
Director: François Truffau Key Cast: Jean-Pierre Léaud, Claire Maurier, Albert Rémy Country: France How It Changed Human Thought: Personal filmmaking liberated narrative from classical structure, inviting cinema to feel lived and immediate.
Link: The 400 Blows 1959 – YouTube search (official/best)
New Waves & Modernism (1960–1969)
Filmmakers around the globe redefined style and theme—blending form and feeling in revolutionary ways.
Psycho (1960)
Director: Alfred Hitchcock Key Cast: Anthony Perkins, Janet Leigh, Vera Miles Country: United States
How It Changed Human Thought: Reshaped genre expectations; horror became psychological and audience trust was reframed as fragile.
Link: Psycho 1960 – YouTube search (official/best)
La Dolce Vita (1960)
Director: Federico Fellini Key Cast: Marcello Mastroianni, Anita Ekberg, Anouk Aimée Country: Italy How It Changed Human Thought: Merged celebrity and existential vacuum into poetic cinema, turning social spectacle inward.
Link: La Dolce Vita 1960 – YouTube search (official/best)
Lawrence of Arabia (1962)
Director: David Lean Key Cast: Peter O’Toole, Omar Sharif, Alec Guinness Country: United Kingdom How It Changed Human Thought: Elevated landscape to psychological subject, recasting epic as inward odyssey.
Link: Lawrence of Arabia 1962 – YouTube search (official/best)
8½ (1963)
Director: Federico Fellini Key Cast: Marcello Mastroianni, Anouk Aimée, Claudia Cardinale Country: Italy How It Changed Human Thought: Made self-reflexivity a cinematic mode, portraying creation as chaos and aspiration.
Link: 8½ 1963 – YouTube search (official/best)
Dr. Strangelove (1964)
Director: Stanley Kubrick Key Cast: Peter Sellers, George C. Scott, Sterling Hayden Country: UK/United States How It Changed Human Thought: Used satire to confront nuclear dread, making absurdity part of political survival.
Link: Dr. Strangelove 1964 – YouTube search (official/best)
Persona (1966)
Director: Ingmar Bergman Key Cast: Liv Ullmann, Bibi Andersson, Margaretha Krook Country: Sweden How It Changed Human Thought: Deconstructed identity using silence and image as psychoanalytic tools.
Link: Persona 1966 – YouTube search (official/best)
4 Horsemen of the American Counter-Culture
Bonnie and Clyde (1967) Director: Arthur Penn Key Cast: Warren Beatty, Faye Dunaway, Gene Hackman Country: United States How It Changed Human Thought: Reimagined outlaws as poetic rebels, merging violence, romance, and iconoclasm.
Link: Bonnie and Clyde 1967 – YouTube search (official/best)
The Graduate (1967)
Director: Mike Nichols Key Cast: Dustin Hoffman, Anne Bancroft, Katharine Ross Country: United States How It Changed Human Thought: Captured generational drift with wit, music, and fractured romance.
Link: The Graduate 1967 – YouTube search (official/best)
2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
Director: Stanley Kubrick Key Cast: Keir Dullea, Gary Lockwood, Douglas Rain Country: UK/United States
How It Changed Human Thought: Treated cinema as cosmic reflection, blending abstraction, time, and origin myth.
Link: 2001: A Space Odyssey 1968 – YouTube search (official/best)
Easy Rider (1969)
Director: Dennis Hopper Key Cast: Peter Fonda, Dennis Hopper, Jack Nicholson Country: United States
How It Changed Human Thought: Expressed counterculture restlessness as road narrative, signaling a break with tradition.
Link: Easy Rider 1969 – YouTube search (official/best)
New-ish Hollywood & Global Push-back (1970–1979) The mood shifted to moral disruption, bold visuals, and political reflection, reflecting changing social narratives.
A Clockwork Orange (1971)
Director: Stanley Kubrick Key Cast: Malcolm McDowell, Patrick Magee, Adrienne Corri Country: United Kingdom
How It Changed Human Thought: Formalized violence as language, turning ethical discomfort into aesthetic encounter.
Link: A Clockwork Orange 1971 – YouTube search (official/best)
Deep Throat (1972)
Director: Gerard Damiano Ket Cast: Linda Lovelace, Harry Reems, Dolly Sharp Country: United States How It Changed Human Thought: Your local p0rn star crossed over into Main Street and Mainstream America to kick open the door to test the Sexual Revolution’s practical applications for real people. Link: [MPA rating requires age confirm.]
The Godfather (1972)
Director: Francis Ford Coppola Key Cast: Marlon Brando, Al Pacino, James Caan Country: United States
How It Changed Human Thought: Transformed crime epic into family drama, giving mythic weight to moral decay.
Link: The Godfather 1972 – YouTube search (official/best)
Cabaret (1972)
Director: Bob Fosse Key Cast: Liza Minnelli, Michael York, Joel Grey Country: United States
How It Changed Human Thought: Musical as social critique, blending performance with history’s rising darkness.
Link: Cabaret 1972 – YouTube search (official/best)
The Exorcist (1973)
Director: William Friedkin Key Cast: Ellen Burstyn, Linda Blair, Max von Sydow Country: United States
How It Changed Human Thought: Realism collided with the supernatural, redefining horror as spiritual conflict.
Link: The Exorcist 1973 – YouTube search (official/best)
Chinatown (1974)
Director: Roman Polanski Key Cast: Jack Nicholson, Faye Dunaway, John Huston Country: United States
How It Changed Human Thought: Exposed civic corruption through noir form, mixing personal tragedy with power systems.
Link: Chinatown 1974 – YouTube search (official/best)
Jaws (1975)
Director: Steven Spielberg Key Cast: Roy Scheider, Robert Shaw, Richard Dreyfuss Country: United States
How It Changed Human Thought: Shaped blockbuster rhythm and spectacle, making suspense a shared cultural force.
Link: Jaws 1975 – YouTube search (official/best)
Rocky (1976)
Director: John G. Avildsen Key Cast: Sylvester Stallone, Talia Shire, Carl Weathers Country: United States
How It Changed Human Thought: Underdog narrative as redemption story reinforced belief in human grit and possibility.
Link: Rocky 1976 – YouTube search (official/best)
Star Wars (1977)
Director: George Lucas Key Cast: Mark Hamill, Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher Country: United States
How It Changed Human Thought: Myth-making through technology created a new language for speculative, serialized imagination.
Link: Star Wars 1977 – YouTube search (official/best)
Apocalypse Now (1979)
Director: Francis Ford Coppola Key Cast: Martin Sheen, Marlon Brando, Robert Duvall Country: United States
How It Changed Human Thought: War cinema as hallucinatory odyssey, blending production myth and narrative intensity.
Link: Apocalypse Now 1979 – YouTube search (official/best)
Global Dominance, Unbridled Capitalism & Resistance (1980–1989)
Raging Bull (1980)
Director: Martin Scorsese Key Cast: Robert De Niro, Joe Pesci, Cathy Moriarty Country: United States How It Changed Human Thought: A brutal and lyrical portrait of self-destruction, showing cinema’s ability to fuse violence and grace through image and sound.
Link: Raging Bull (1980) Trailer – see Youtube
Blade Runner (1982)
Director: Ridley Scott Key Cast: Harrison Ford, Rutger Hauer, Sean Young Country: United States How It Changed Human Thought: Predicted the future of urban spaces in American, also mixed noir, streetcar philosophy, and raison d’être in a morass of human weakness and genetic ambitions.
Link: Blade Runner (1982) Trailer – see Youtube
Fanny and Alexander (1982)
Director: Ingmar Bergman Key Cast: Pernilla Allwin, Bertil Guve, Allan Edwall (Ensemble) Country: Sweden
How It Changed Human Thought: A lush, personal tapestry of childhood and spirituality that marked the summation of Bergman’s art.
Link: Fanny and Alexander (1982) Trailer – see Youtube
Come and See (1985)
Director: Elem Klimov Key Cast: Aleksei Kravchenko, Olga Mironova, Liubomiras Laucevicius Country: USSR
How It Changed Human Thought: A harrowing descent into wartime horror that shifted cinematic language toward visceral, immersive realism.
Link: Come and See (1985) Trailer – see Youtube
Wings of Desire (1987)
Director: Wim Wenders Key Cast: Bruno Ganz, Solveig Dommartin, Otto Sander Country: Germany
How It Changed Human Thought: A meditation on love and mortality told through the gaze of angels, reaffirming cinema’s poetic dimension.
Link: Wings of Desire (1987) Trailer – see Youtube
Do the Right Thing (1989)
Director: Spike Lee Key Cast: Spike Lee, Danny Aiello, Ossie Davis (Ensemble) Country: United States
How It Changed Human Thought: Exploded racial tensions and community dynamics onto the screen in urgent, kinetic style, demanding dialogue and accountability.
Link: Do the Right Thing (1989) Trailer – see Youtube
90’s Realignment & Indie Middle Finger (1990–1999)
Goodfellas (1990)
Director: Martin Scorsese Key Cast: Ray Liotta, Robert De Niro, Joe Pesci Country: United States
How It Changed Human Thought: A kinetic masterclass in editing and perspective, reshaping the crime saga into a dazzling, brutal chronicle.
Link: Goodfellas (1990) Trailer – see Youtube
The Silence of the Lambs (1991)
Director: Jonathan Demme Key Cast: Jodie Foster, Anthony Hopkins, Scott Glenn Country: United States
How It Changed Human Thought: Elevated horror to psychological art, intertwining feminism, fear, and intellectual duels with chilling intimacy.
Link: The Silence of the Lambs (1991) Trailer – see Youtube
Farewell My Concubine (1993)
Director: Chen Kaige Key Cast: Leslie Cheung, Zhang Fengyi, Gong Li Country: China
How It Changed Human Thought: A sweeping epic of art, politics, and identity, capturing the weight of history on love and performance.
Link: Farewell My Concubine (1993) Trailer – see Youtube
Pulp Fiction (1994)
Director: Quentin Tarantino Key Cast: John Travolta, Uma Thurman, Samuel L. Jackson Country: United States
How It Changed Human Thought: Rewired narrative conventions through interlocking stories, irony, and stylized violence that defined a generation of filmmakers. Link: Pulp Fiction (1994) Trailer – see Youtube
La Haine (1995)
Director: Mathieu Kassovitz Key Cast: Vincent Cassel, Hubert Koundé, Saïd Taghmaoui Country: France
How It Changed Human Thought: A searing reflection on urban unrest and alienation, shot in stark monochrome to amplify immediacy.
Link: La Haine (1995) Trailer – see Youtube
Class of Its Own – MATRIX Franchise
The Matrix (1999)
Director: The Wachowskis Key Cast: Keanu Reeves, Laurence Fishburne, Carrie-Anne Moss Country: United States
How It Changed Human Thought: Blew the doors off our brains, killed junk philosophy, lionized martial arts, and rolled cyberpunk into a new myth of Western Culture that really fucks with us on visions of identity, conspiracy, piracy, blue pills, red pills, rabbit holes, Anon, Anonymous, Trolls, crypto, to this day. Link: The Matrix (1999) Trailer – see Youtube
Digital Flux and Hybrid Tales (2000–2009)
Amores Perros (2000)
Director: Alejandro González Iñárritu Key Cast: Gael García Bernal, Emilio Echevarría, Goya Toledo Country: Mexico
How It Changed Human Thought: Unveiled the raw interconnections of fate and violence, marking Latin American cinema’s global resurgence.
Link: Amores Perros (2000) Trailer – see Youtube
City of God (2002)
Director: Fernando Meirelles, Kátia Lund Key Cast: Alexandre Rodrigues, Leandro Firmino, Phellipe Haagensen (Ensemble)
Country: Brazil How It Changed Human Thought: A feverish chronicle of favela life, blending kinetic storytelling with urgent social critique.
Link: City of God (2002) Trailer – see Youtube
Spirited Away (2001)
Director: Hayao Miyazaki Key Cast: Rumi Hiiragi, Miyu Irino, Mari Natsuki Country: Japan
How It Changed Human Thought: Redefined animation as high art with its dreamlike mythmaking and ecological-spiritual resonance.
Link: Spirited Away (2001) Trailer – see Youtube
Oldboy (2003)
Director: Park Chan-wook Key Cast: Choi Min-sik, Yoo Ji-tae, Kang Hye-jung Country: South Korea
How It Changed Human Thought: Shocked audiences with operatic violence and moral ambiguity, propelling Korean cinema onto the global stage.
Link: Oldboy (2003) Trailer – see Youtube
The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001)
Director: Peter Jackson Key Cast: Elijah Wood, Ian McKellen, Viggo Mortensen (Ensemble) Country: New Zealand / United States How It Changed Human Thought: Proved epic fantasy could achieve mythic seriousness and technological innovation on a global scale.
Link: LOTR Fellowship (2001) Trailer – see Youtube
The Lives of Others (2006)
Director: Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck Key Cast: Ulrich Mühe, Martina Gedeck, Sebastian Koch Country: Germany
How It Changed Human Thought: A tense, humane exploration of surveillance and conscience during East German repression.
Link: The Lives of Others (2006) Trailer – see Youtube
There Will Be Blood (2007)
Director: Paul Thomas Anderson Key Cast: Daniel Day-Lewis, Paul Dano, Kevin J. O’Connor Country: United States
How It Changed Human Thought: An operatic study of greed and isolation, elevating the American frontier myth into existential tragedy.
Link: There Will Be Blood (2007) Trailer – see Youtube
Streaming Era and Non-American Visions (2010–2025)
Inception (2010)
Director: Christopher Nolan Key Cast: Leonardo DiCaprio, Marion Cotillard, Joseph Gordon-Levitt Country: United States / UK How It Changed Human Thought: Merged blockbuster spectacle with cerebral puzzles, proving mass audiences could embrace complex narrative architectures.
Link: Inception (2010) Trailer – see Youtube
The Tree of Life (2011)
Director: Terrence Malick Key Cast: Brad Pitt, Jessica Chastain, Sean Penn Country: United States
How It Changed Human Thought: Interwove cosmic and personal time, daring cinema to rival poetry and theology in scope.
Link: The Tree of Life (2011) Trailer – see Youtube
Parasite (2019)
Director: Bong Joon-ho Key Cast: Song Kang-ho, Lee Sun-kyun, Cho Yeo-jeong Country: South Korea
How It Changed Human Thought: Pierced global class divides with razor-sharp satire, becoming the first non-English Best Picture winner.
Link: Parasite (2019) Trailer – see Youtube
Once Upon a Time in Hollywood
Director: Quentin Tarantino Key Cast: Brad Pitt, Margaret Qualley, Leonardo DiCaprio (Ensemble) Country: United States How It Changed Human Thought: Blew the doors off the Sharon Tate murders as reimagined in a love letter to Hollywood and the Counter Culture as if the saving of Sharon Tate would have saved Counter-culture Hollywood to create a better future for non-corporate take-overs, and better outcomes for America in general. Link: here. (Used their poster too, as this film is the key to everything that today’s Hollywood in 2025 knew about yesterday’s Hollywood but wouldn’t tell.)
Roma (2018)
Director: Alfonso Cuarón Key Cast: Yalitza Aparicio, Marina de Tavira, Marco Graf Country: Mexico
How It Changed Human Thought: Blended intimate memory with political undercurrents, showing streaming could host auteurist cinema.
Link: Roma (2018) Trailer – see Youtube
Drive My Car (2021)
Director: Ryusuke Hamaguchi Key Cast: Hidetoshi Nishijima, Tōko Miura, Reika Kirishima Country: Japan
How It Changed Human Thought: A contemplative journey into grief and communication, affirming slow cinema’s global reach.
Link: Drive My Car (2021) Trailer – see Youtube
Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022)
Director: Daniel Kwan, Daniel Scheinert Key Cast: Michelle Yeoh, Ke Huy Quan, Stephanie Hsu Country: United States How It Changed Human Thought: Exploded the multiverse into absurdist, tender spectacle, blending immigrant narrative with philosophical inquiry. Link: Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022) Trailer – see Youtube
Current Milestones To Be Determined? (2023–2025)
Killers of the Flower Moon (2023)
Director: Martin Scorsese Key Cast: Leonardo DiCaprio, Lily Gladstone, Robert De Niro Country: United States
How It Changed Human Thought: Forced global confrontation with America’s hidden histories of violence and Indigenous erasure, carried by a fusion of epic storytelling and intimate sorrow. Link: Killers of the Flower Moon (2023) – Official Trailer – see Youtube
Poor Things (2023)
Director: Yorgos Lanthimos Key Cast: Emma Stone, Mark Ruffalo, Willem Dafoe Country: Ireland/UK/ United States How It Changed Human Thought: Introduced the Mangenue, a real new kind of leading male that follows, even in this Post-Feminist world, searing satire.
Link: Poor Things (2023) – Official Trailer – see Youtube
The Zone of Interest (2023)
Director: Jonathan Glazer Key Cast: Sandra Hüller, Christian Friedel, Ralph Herforth Country: UK/Poland
How It Changed Human Thought: Exposed the banality of evil by juxtaposing domestic normalcy with the horrors of Auschwitz, reshaping Holocaust cinema. Link: The Zone of Interest (2023) – Official Trailer – see Youtube
Anatomy of a Fall (2023)
Director: Justine Triet Key Cast: Sandra Hüller, Swann Arlaud, Milo Machado Graner Country: France How It Changed Human Thought: Blurred lines between truth, fiction, and perception in the courtroom drama, while interrogating gender, marriage, and credibility. Link: Anatomy of a Fall (2023) – Official Trailer – see Youtube
Barbie (2023)
Director: Greta Gerwig Key Cast: Margot Robbie, Ryan Gosling, America Ferrera Country: United States How It Changed Human Thought: Repurposed pop cult’s femme spectacle with humor to poke patriarchy, identity, and identity politics. Link: Barbie (2023) – Official Trailer – see Youtube
Past Lives (2023)
Director: Celine Song Key Cast: Greta Lee, Teo Yoo, John Magaro Country: USA/South Korea
How It Changed Human Thought: Contemplated fate, longing, and the immigrant condition through delicate personal storytelling that transcended borders.
Link: Past Lives (2023) – Official Trailer – see Youtube
2024 & 2025 to be determined… any suggestions?
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About The Author
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