Best Hollywood Movies of All Time: 15 Films, 1936 to 2023

Indian filmmakers have been listening to Hollywood for a long time, and what differs is how loudly they admit it. Ram Gopal Varma opened Sarkar (2005) with an on-screen line calling it his tribute to The Godfather. A.R. Murugadoss has denied that Ghajini was adapted from Memento. And on his 54th birthday in March 2019, Aamir Khan announced that he had bought the rights to Forrest Gump from Paramount, which became Laal Singh Chaddha. Tribute, denial, licence.

Fifteen films cannot settle the argument about the best Hollywood movies of all time, so this list does not try. Treat it as a walking route instead, from a Chaplin comedy that refuses to talk, to a 2023 film shot partly on black-and-white stock that Kodak made for the production. Each stop earns its place by inventing something, proving something or changing what a studio dared to attempt: a technique, a structure, a business model, a machine. Oscars appear as evidence, not as the argument, and the table near the end shows why. Indian films appear here where the link is documented, and where a filmmaker has gone on record about it, the entry says so.

Fifteen stops also mean real absences. Vertigo, Schindler’s List and The Dark Knight are among the films that missed.

15 Best Hollywood Movies of all time Every Indian Cinephile Should Have Seen

1. Modern Times (1936), Charlie Chaplin

The Tramp almost spoke. Chaplin began preparing Modern Times in 1934 as his first talkie, wrote a dialogue script and experimented with some sound scenes, then dropped the idea and went back to a mostly silent format with sound effects and sparse speech. His reasoning was that the Little Tramp would lose his universal appeal the moment he opened his mouth. The film that reached cinemas in February 1936, years into the sound era, leans on physical comedy, and its target is what the Great Depression did to people who worked in factories.

When the Tramp finally makes a sound, it is a nonsense song, and it was the first time Chaplin’s voice was heard on film. It was also the last time he played the Tramp, and in 1989 the Library of Congress named it one of the first 25 films in the National Film Registry.

2. Citizen Kane (1941), Orson Welles

Few films have been buried under as much praise. Citizen Kane topped Sight and Sound‘s critics’ poll in 1962 and stayed there for half a century, until Vertigo replaced it in 2012, and the American Film Institute ranked it first on both its original and anniversary lists. That sounds like homework.

Ignore the ranking and look at the frame. Welles and cinematographer Gregg Toland tested new techniques, deep focus among them, which keeps the foreground and the background sharp at once and leaves the viewer to decide where to look. The newspaper tycoon at the centre drew heavily on William Randolph Hearst, and Hearst barred his newspapers from running ads for the film. It earned nine Oscar nominations and one win, for the screenplay Welles shared with Herman Mankiewicz.

3. Casablanca (1942), Michael Curtiz

The film was loosely based on an unproduced play, Murray Burnett and Joan Alison’s Everybody Comes to Rick’s, and it reached cinemas in the middle of the war it was about. It opened in New York on 26 November 1942 and went into wider release in January 1943.

The awards record is awkward about its age. The Academy treated it as a film of 1943 and honoured it at the 16th Academy Awards on 2 March 1944. It won Best Picture, Best Director for Curtiz, and Best Screenplay for Julius J. Epstein, Philip G. Epstein and Howard Koch, from eight nominations.

4. 12 Angry Men (1957), Sidney Lumet

One room, twelve men, and no exit for the viewer either. Nearly all of the film takes place in the room where the jurors deliberate. It was Lumet’s first feature, adapted from a 1954 television play by Reginald Rose. It was nominated for Best Picture, Director and Adapted Screenplay and won none, though it took the Golden Bear in Berlin.

Indian viewers get a ready-made companion. Basu Chatterjee remade it in Hindi in 1986 as Ek Ruka Hua Faisla, with Pankaj Kapur, Annu Kapoor, M.K. Raina and K.K. Raina among the cast.

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5. The Godfather (1972), Francis Ford Coppola

Some films get remade. This one gets answered. At the 45th Academy Awards it won Best Picture, Best Actor for Marlon Brando, and Best Adapted Screenplay for Mario Puzo and Coppola, while Coppola lost the director’s prize to Bob Fosse for Cabaret. It was the highest-grossing film of 1972, and for a time the highest-grossing film ever made. It runs a crime story on the logic of a family business.

Two Indian films answered it. Varma’s Sarkar, set in modern Mumbai, opens with his own on-screen tribute. In Tamil cinema, Nayakan (1987), written and directed by Mani Ratnam, is loosely based on The Godfather and on the life of the Mumbai underworld figure Varadarajan Mudaliar.

Also Read: 15 Underrated Hindi Thriller Movies That Deserve a Much Bigger Audience

6. Jaws (1975), Steven Spielberg

The shark gets the credit. The Academy gave its Oscars to the editor, the composer and the sound team. Of four nominations, Jaws won three: Film Editing for Verna Fields, Original Score for John Williams, and Sound. Spielberg himself was not nominated for directing it. A great deal of the fear in Jaws is built in the cutting room and by the score.

It opened on 20 June 1975 and was the highest-grossing film in history until Star Wars passed it. It is widely credited with setting the template for the summer blockbuster.

7. Taxi Driver (1976), Martin Scorsese

Loneliness, written fast. Paul Schrader has said he wrote the script in under a fortnight, after a hospital visit, and that the taxi came to him as a metaphor once he realised he had not spoken to anyone in weeks. Travis Bickle drives a cab through New York at night, and the film stays close to what he sees and thinks.

It won the Palme d’Or at Cannes in 1976 and four Oscar nominations, among them Best Picture, Best Actor for Robert De Niro and Best Supporting Actress for Jodie Foster. It lost Best Picture to Rocky.

8. Star Wars (1977), George Lucas

If Jaws showed that a film could be an event, Star Wars showed how much of that event could be built with new machinery. The Academy’s visual effects Oscar went to John Stears, John Dykstra, Richard Edlund, Grant McCune and Robert Blalack.

It won six Oscars at the 50th Academy Awards, in Art Direction, Costume Design, Sound, Film Editing, Original Score and Visual Effects, while Annie Hall took Best Picture. The Academy also gave a Special Achievement Award to Ben Burtt for the film’s alien, creature and robot voices.

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9. Jurassic Park (1993), Steven Spielberg

Two Spielberg films shared the same Oscar night, and between them they won ten awards. Schindler’s List took seven, including Best Picture, and Jurassic Park took all three it was nominated for: Visual Effects, Sound and Sound Effects Editing, at the 66th Academy Awards. The visual effects Oscar went to Dennis Muren, Stan Winston, Phil Tippett and Michael Lantieri. The Library of Congress added the film to the National Film Registry in 2018.

10. Forrest Gump (1994), Robert Zemeckis

Forrest drifted through American history. Laal Singh Chaddha moved the story to India. From 13 nominations, Forrest Gump won Best Picture, Director, Actor, Film Editing, Visual Effects and Adapted Screenplay. Tom Hanks became the first performer since Spencer Tracy, in 1937 and 1938, to win Best Actor in consecutive years.

The Indian answer is the cleanest on this list, because it is official. Aamir Khan announced that he had secured the rights from Paramount.

Also Read: Rajinikanth Highest Grossing Movies, Ranked Before Jailer 2

11. Pulp Fiction (1994), Quentin Tarantino

Same year, same Oscars, opposite instincts. Pulp Fiction premiered at Cannes in May 1994, won the Palme d’Or and received seven Oscar nominations, winning Best Original Screenplay for Tarantino and Roger Avary. Best Picture went to Forrest Gump.

Its stories are told out of chronological order, which makes it a good film for testing whether you can retell it in the right order. The Library of Congress added it to the National Film Registry in 2013.

12. Titanic (1997), James Cameron

A record is only a record until someone ties it or beats it. Titanic won 11 Oscars from 14 nominations, tying Ben-Hur for wins and All About Eve for nominations. The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King later joined it at 11 wins, and Sinners passed its nomination count with 16 at the 98th Academy Awards in 2026.

The eleven wins took in Best Picture, Director, Art Direction, Cinematography, Costume Design, Film Editing, Original Dramatic Score, Original Song, Sound, Sound Effects Editing and Visual Effects. The acting nominations for Kate Winslet and Gloria Stuart were the first time two performers were nominated for playing the same character in one film.

13. Memento (2000), Christopher Nolan

Memento is built to hand its viewer the hero’s problem. Colour scenes run in reverse chronological order, while the black-and-white scenes move forward. It premiered at the Venice Film Festival on 5 September 2000 and opened in the United States in March 2001, and the Academy counted it among the films of 2001. Nolan developed the screenplay from an idea by his brother Jonathan, whose short story ‘Memento Mori’ ran in Esquire in March 2001. It was nominated for Original Screenplay and Film Editing, and lost the screenplay prize to Gosford Park.

The Indian counterpart has a contested paper trail. Murugadoss made Ghajini in Tamil in 2005 and remade it in Hindi in 2008 with Aamir Khan in the lead. Its hero has lost his short-term memory, which invited the comparison. Murugadoss has denied that it is a Memento remake.

14. Life of Pi (2012), Ang Lee

A tiger, a lifeboat, and a Tamil lullaby that opens the film. ‘Pi’s Lullaby’ is sung in Tamil by Bombay Jayashri, and it earned her an Original Song nomination alongside composer Mychael Danna. The song lost to ‘Skyfall’.

Life of Pi earned 11 Oscar nominations and won four: Director for Ang Lee, Cinematography, Original Score and Visual Effects. Argo won Best Picture that night. It was Lee’s second Best Director Oscar. It is a Hollywood production with an Indian centre of gravity: Irrfan Khan plays the adult Pi, Tabu and Adil Hussain play his parents, and the family lives in Pondicherry.

15. Oppenheimer (2023), Christopher Nolan

Fission in colour, fusion in black and white. The film labels its two strands on screen as ‘Fission’ and ‘Fusion’. Colour carries Oppenheimer’s point of view, and black-and-white carries that of his rival Strauss, played by Robert Downey Jr. Kodak describes it as the first time sections of black-and-white 65mm were shot in IMAX, on a 65mm version of Eastman Double-X manufactured for the production.

It won seven of its 13 nominations at the 96th Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director. Nolan, Cillian Murphy and Robert Downey Jr. each won their first Oscars that night. Nolan appears twice on this list, 23 years apart, and his first Oscar nomination was for the Memento screenplay.

The Oscars record, decade by decade

Only five of the fifteen won Best Picture: Casablanca, The Godfather, Forrest Gump, Titanic and Oppenheimer. Seven more were nominated and lost: Citizen Kane, 12 Angry Men, Jaws, Taxi Driver, Star Wars, Pulp Fiction and Life of Pi. Modern Times, Jurassic Park and Memento were not nominated for it at all. Oscar-winning films and Oscar losers sit side by side here, and the Oscar column is useful but it is not the filter.

Where this list stops and the Hindi and regional lists begin

A Hollywood list covers only one industry’s answers to questions that Indian cinema asks in its own way. The Indian films above show it was never a one-way conversation. Hindi cinema answered with Ek Ruka Hua Faisla, Sarkar and Laal Singh Chaddha. Tamil cinema answered with Nayakan and Ghajini. A Telugu film’s song, ‘Naatu Naatu’ from RRR, became the first song from an Indian film to win an Oscar, at the 95th Academy Awards in March 2023. Malayalam, Kannada, Bengali and Marathi cinema each have their own histories and their own canons, and none of them is a footnote to the list above. The next lists in this series start from Hindi cinema and from each regional industry on its own terms.

Indian remakes of Hollywood films, official or not, make good double bills. Three pairings are worth watching back to back: 12 Angry Men with Ek Ruka Hua Faisla, The Godfather with Sarkar, and Forrest Gump with Laal Singh Chaddha.

Fifteen was never going to hold the best Hollywood movies of all time, and the omissions are where the arguing starts. The watching can start with those pairings.