Discover the 100 best movies of all time

Director: Jordan Peele

Cast: Daniel Kaluuya, Allison Williams, Catherine Keener, Lil Rel Howery

Watch this space: Jordan Peele’s newly minted horror classic is sure to rise in the rankings. Taking cues from grand master George A. Romero and his counterculture-defining Night of the Living Dead, Peele infused white liberal guilt with a scary racial subtext; the ‘sunken place’ is precisely the kind of metaphor that only horror movies can exploit to the fullest. During its theatrical run – which stretched into a summer that also saw the white-supremacist Charlottesville rally – Get Out felt like the only movie speaking to a deepening divide.

Most iconic moment: Guided by Catherine Keener’s teacup ASMR, a tear-streaked Daniel Kaluuya descends into the Sunken Place.

Director: Arthur Penn

Cast: Warren Beatty, Faye Dunaway

Arthur Penn’s game-changing heist movie was made in the same spirit of the revisionist Westerns of the ’60s and ’70s—irreverent, fun, morally all over the place, and unafraid of blood and bullets. The movie takes us back to the 1930s during the legendary crime spree of lovers Bonnie Parker (Faye Dunaway) and Clyde Barrow (Warren Beatty), careening around Depression-era America and robbing it blind. Why did this film resonate so well at the end of its decade? With the Vietnam War, inner-city rioting and Nixon on the rise, all bets were off. Add the swoony pair of Beatty and Dunaway, and you’ve got a classic on your hands: a revolution in period dress.

Why is it one of the greatest films of all time? Widely regarded as the big bang of New Hollywood, it ushered in a new era of gritty, violent studio films steeped in moral ambiguity.

Director: Nicolas Roeg

Cast: Donald Sutherland, Julie Christie

Nicolas Roeg influenced and inspired a generation of filmmakers, from Danny Boyle to Steven Soderbergh – and here’s why. Roeg shrouds Daphne du Maurier’s short story in an icy chill, seeding the idea of supernatural forces at play in a wintry Venice through sheer filmmaking craft and the power of his editing. He finds a deep humanity in the horror, too, with Julie Christie and Donald Sutherland’s grieving parents reconnecting and drifting apart like flotsam on some invisible tide. His masterpiece, Don’t Look Now remains a primal cry of grief that shakes you to the core.

Greatest scene: Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie’s grief-stricken lovemaking session is so realistic, many assumed it was real. 

Director: Robert Altman

Cast: David Arkin, Barbara Baxley, Ned Beatty, Karen Black

This multilayered epic of country music, politics and relationships is Robert Altman’s signature achievement. With its overlapping dialogue and roving camera, Nashville created an earthy, idiosyncratic panorama of American life, featuring many of the most memorable actors of the decade. The 1970s were US cinema’s most exciting period, and Nashville – broadened by its admirable scope and freewheeling energy – is emblematic of that creativity.

Greatest scene: Folk singer Tom Frank (Keith Carradine) dedicates a performance of the ballad ‘I’m Easy’ to a ‘special someone’, which several women in the audience assume is them – before gradually realising it’s not.