The Apartment
Year Released: 1960 Although at one point, it was simply known as a romantic comedy and drama, The Apartment would be grouped into the “dramedy,” category these days.
The movie follows an insurance clerk played by Jack Lemmon, who lets his seniors at work use his nice apartment in the city to meet with women (that their wives obviously didn’t know about.) The Guardian has called it the sixth best romantic film of all time. It was nominated for ten awards and won five of the ten at the 33rd Academy Awards, including Best Screenplay, Best Director, and Best Picture.
In a Lonely Place
Year Released: 1950 Film star legend Humphrey Bogart stars in this film noir as an unstable screenwriter named Dixon Steele who is suspected of murder. It’s made several “best of all time” lists, including Time’s, “All-Time 100’s,” and Slant’s “100 Essential Films.”
Directed by Nicholas Ray, the movie was selected for preservation by the Library of Congress in 2007. Two years later, Roger Ebert added it to his own list of great movies.
Laura
Year Released: 1944 Laura is hailed as being one of the best film noirs of the 1940s. Full of mystery, the film follows a New York City Police Detective who investigates a woman’s murder, and as he does, winds up falling in love with her.
The film won three Oscars, including Best Cinematography for a Black-and-White Film, Best Actor in a Supporting Role and Best Director, and was nominated for two more, including Best Writing in a Screenplay.
The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers
Year Released: 2002 While many of the films on our list are a bit older, now we’re in a different area of film history now. The Lord of the Rings is one of the most popular film franchises, and the 2002 release of The Two Towers was met with $951.2 million at the box office, making it the highest grossing film of the year, and the fourth highest of all time, at least, at that point.
Often hailed as being one of the best fantasy films, the movie was nominated for six awards during the 75th Academy Awards show and wound up winning two.
Wall-E
Year Released: 2008 The first animated film on our list thus far, Wall-E came out in 2008 and delighted children and families all over the world. It grossed over $533 million across the globe against a $180 million budget. The film centers on lonely trash compactor robot who’s been left alone on an uninhabitable world and falls in love with another robot who happens to come visit him.
Wall-E made Time’s list of the “Best Movies of the Decade,” and voted 29th out of 100 “Best of the 21st Century” films by 117 international film critics. It won the 2008 Golden Globe Award for Best Animated Feature Film, and the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature, among several other accolades.