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BAFTA winners (films)

  • Aliens (film)Aliens, the 1986 science fiction-action film written and directed by James Cameron, opens with a woman who has been asleep for 57 years.
  • The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the RingThe Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring opened on the 19th of December 2001, and within its first five days in the United States and Canada it had…
  • Blade RunnerBlade Runner arrived in theaters on the 25th of June, 1982, a date producer Alan Ladd Jr. chose deliberately because the 25th of the month had been his lucky…
  • Star Wars (film)Star Wars opened on the 25th of May 1977, in just 32 theaters across the United States. The cast and crew believed it would be a failure.
  • The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the KingThe Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King crossed the one-billion-dollar mark at the worldwide box office in February 2004, only the second film in…
  • The Lord of the Rings: The Two TowersThe Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers premiered on the 5th of December 2002 at the Ziegfeld Theatre in New York City, and what audiences saw that night was…
  • Return of the JediReturn of the Jedi opened in American theaters on the 25th of May 1983. Lucas booked that date deliberately, exactly six years after the original Star Wars…
  • InceptionInception begins with a question that Christopher Nolan first put to paper around 2001: what if someone could steal your secrets while you slept?
  • The Empire Strikes BackThe Empire Strikes Back opens with a single haunting image: probe droids scattered across the galaxy, hunting. It was the 21st of May 1980, and audiences…
  • Apollo 13 (film)Apollo 13, the 1995 film directed by Ron Howard, opens on the night of the 20th of July, 1969, with astronaut Jim Lovell watching Neil Armstrong take his…
  • Taxi DriverTaxi Driver opens on a pair of eyes in a rearview mirror, catching the city through a fog of steam. The man behind those eyes is Travis Bickle, a Marine…
  • The GodfatherThe Godfather opened in five New York theaters on the 15th of March 1972, the morning after its premiere at the Loew's State Theatre, and ticket prices had…
  • Star Wars: The Force AwakensStar Wars: The Force Awakens arrived in theaters on the 18th of December 2015, carrying a weight that almost no film in history had to bear.
  • Cold Mountain (film)Cold Mountain opens with a scene it insists on getting slightly wrong on purpose. The Battle of the Crater actually began at 4:44 in the morning, with the…
  • The Name of the Rose (film)The Name of the Rose arrived in cinemas in 1986 with a puzzle at its heart: how do you turn a labyrinthine medieval novel into a film people will actually…
  • The Day After TomorrowThe Day After Tomorrow opened in American theaters on the 28th of May, 2004, and within four days had pulled in more than $85 million at the domestic box…
  • Groundhog Day (film)Groundhog Day, the 1993 film directed by Harold Ramis, opens on a man who is wrong about the weather. Phil Connors, a Pittsburgh weatherman, confidently…
  • Lincoln (film)Lincoln, Steven Spielberg's 2012 biographical drama, opens not with a battle or a speech but with a political puzzle: how does a president end slavery when…