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The commercial spacecraft Nostromo diverts to investigate a distress signal and returns with an unexpected passenger. What follows is one of cinema's most sustained and perfectly executed exercises in dread as the alien creature — H.R. Giger's nightmare made flesh — picks off the crew one by one. Ridley Scott's masterwork is simultaneously a haunted house film in space a feminist thriller and a body horror classic. Sigourney Weaver's Ellen Ripley is one of cinema's greatest heroes and the alien itself remains the most terrifyingly designed creature in film history.

Fifty-seven years after the events of Alien Ellen Ripley is found drifting in space. Told that the planet where she encountered the alien has since been colonized and that contact has been lost she accompanies Colonial Marines to investigate. James Cameron transforms the intimate horror of the original into a colossal action film while somehow deepening Ripley's character and delivering one of cinema's most cathartic mother-daughter stories disguised as a spectacular science fiction action film. A rare sequel that matches its predecessor.

In a rain-soaked neon-drenched Los Angeles of 2019 burned-out ex-cop Rick Deckard is brought back to hunt four escaped replicants — bio-engineered beings virtually identical to humans who have returned to Earth with violent purpose. Ridley Scott's neo-noir science fiction masterpiece is one of cinema's most influential films — its visual design anticipated the cyberpunk aesthetic that would define decades of subsequent art and its meditation on consciousness memory and what it means to be human remains as profound as ever.

In four movements spanning millions of years: prehistoric apes discover a black monolith and learn to use tools; in 2001 a second monolith is found on the moon; astronauts Dave Bowman and Frank Poole journey toward Jupiter with the superintelligent computer HAL 9000; Dave undergoes a transformation beyond human comprehension. Stanley Kubrick's masterpiece is cinema's most ambitious philosophical statement — a film about where humanity came from where it is going and whether intelligence inevitably destroys what created it.

In a fictional Central European republic between the wars the legendary concierge M. Gustave H runs the Grand Budapest Hotel with immaculate style and his lobby boy Zero Moustafa is his closest companion. When Gustave is framed for murder and a beloved painting is stolen he and Zero embark on an adventure involving prison escapes Renaissance paintings and a network of loyal concierges across Europe. Wes Anderson's most commercially successful film is a dazzling comedy suffused with melancholy for the civilized world destroyed by the 20th century's catastrophes.

Sam Ace Rothstein is sent by the Chicago mob to run the Tangiers Casino in 1970s Las Vegas turning it into a massive money-skimming operation. His childhood friend Nicky Santoro arrives to protect him and starts carving his own violent empire. His marriage to the volatile Ginger McKenna adds a third axis of self-destruction. Scorsese's companion piece to Goodfellas is longer and more operatic and Sharon Stone's Ginger is one of cinema's great tragic figures — a woman consumed by forces she never fully understands.

In three chapters spanning childhood adolescence and adulthood we follow Chiron a Black boy growing up in a rough Miami neighborhood raised by his crack-addicted mother struggling with his sense of self and his unacknowledged sexuality. Barry Jenkins's Oscar-winning film is one of the most tender and visually beautiful American films of the 21st century — a portrayal of Black masculinity vulnerability and longing unlike anything that came before it. Mahershala Ali's brief appearance as the drug dealer Juan is one of the decade's finest supporting performances.

Professional criminal Neil McCauley lives by a code — never have anything you cannot walk away from in thirty seconds. LAPD detective Vincent Hanna has dedicated his life to catching men like McCauley at the cost of his marriages and his peace of mind. Michael Mann's epic crime film builds toward the most anticipated confrontation in cinema history — the first on-screen pairing of Al Pacino and Robert De Niro — before delivering a climax of cold tragic inevitability. The diner scene between the two remains one of cinema's great character encounters.

Solomon Northup is a free Black man in 1841 New York who is kidnapped and sold into slavery in the Deep South. Over twelve years he endures plantation life under both a relatively humane owner and the sadistic Edwin Epps while waiting for a chance to reclaim his freedom. Steve McQueen's film refuses to sanitize American chattel slavery — it is an act of moral witness that demands to be experienced and Chiwetel Ejiofor's quietly devastating performance is one of the finest of the decade.

Following a massacre aboard a ship in San Pedro harbor the only survivor is Verbal Kint a small-time con man with a club foot who tells the story of how he came to be involved in a heist arranged by the legendary criminal mastermind Keyser Söze. Bryan Singer's thriller delivers one of cinema's most celebrated plot twists and Kevin Spacey's Oscar-winning performance is its perfect delivery mechanism — a film that demands a second viewing the moment the credits roll.