Curated playlist
Films that won the Best Visual Effects Academy Award
- 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. Ellen Ripley, played by Sigourney Weaver, drifts through deep space in a tiny escape shuttle until a…
- Alien (film)Alien is a 1979 science fiction horror film that begins with a single, deceptively quiet transmission. A commercial starship called the Nostromo is hauling twenty million tons of ore back to Earth when its computer, called Mother, picks up…
- First Man (film)First Man, the 2018 biographical drama directed by Damien Chazelle, opens not with the Moon but with a moment of quiet terror. Neil Armstrong, played by Ryan Gosling, is piloting the X-15 rocket plane when it unexpectedly bounces off the…
- 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 earned more than seventy-five million dollars. That number alone might suggest a…
- 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 film went $3 million over budget. George Lucas was so absorbed in work on opening day that he…
- 2001: A Space Odyssey2001: A Space Odyssey premiered on the 2nd of April 1968 at the Uptown Theater in Washington, D.C., before an audience that included critics who were, in many cases, baffled. During the New York premiere the following day, 250 people…
- 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 history to reach that threshold. At the 76th Academy Awards, it swept every single one…
- 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 something cinema had not quite done before. A digital creature called Gollum spoke…
- Ben-Hur (1959 film)Ben-Hur, the 1959 epic directed by William Wyler, arrived at a moment when Hollywood was fighting for its life. Television had eaten into ticket sales, and the consent decree of 1948 had forced studios to sell off their theater chains. MGM…
- 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 had premiered in 1977. Richard Marquand directed it from a screenplay by Lawrence…
- Mary Poppins (film)Mary Poppins, the 1964 film directed by Robert Stevenson and produced by Walt Disney, had its premiere on the 27th of August 1964 at Grauman's Chinese Theatre in Los Angeles. It earned thirteen Academy Award nominations, a record for any…
- 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 film that emerged from that question took nearly a decade to reach the screen, cost $160…
- 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 packing into just 126 theaters across North America had little idea that the film…
- Titanic (1997 film)Titanic, the 1997 film written and directed by James Cameron, began not on a Hollywood lot but at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean. On the 1st of September 1995, Cameron and his crew descended to the actual wreck of the RMS Titanic,…
- Ex Machina (film)Ex Machina is a 2014 science fiction film that opens with an office prize nobody expects: a solitary week at the isolated home of a tech CEO. Written and directed by Alex Garland in his debut behind the camera, the film stars Domhnall…