Curated playlist
Saturn Award–winning films
- Psycho (1960 film)Psycho, the 1960 film directed by Alfred Hitchcock, opens on a specific Friday: December the Eleventh, in Phoenix, Arizona. A real estate secretary named Marion Crane has just stolen forty thousand dollars from her employer and is driving…
- Batman (1989 film)Batman, the 1989 film directed by Tim Burton, arrived in theaters on the 22nd of June 1989 and earned $2.2 million in late-night previews alone before most of America had even sat down for breakfast. By the end of its opening weekend, it…
- Avengers: EndgameAvengers: Endgame begins with a family disintegrating on screen. In its opening scene, Clint Barton loses his wife and children to Thanos's snap. Co-director Joe Russo called it "a very tragic scene to open the movie with." He said it was…
- Avengers: Infinity WarAvengers: Infinity War ends with its villain sitting alone on a distant planet, watching a sunrise. He has just erased half of all life in the universe. That quiet final image caps a film built almost entirely toward it. Released in 2018,…
- Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937 film)Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs arrived at the Carthay Circle Theatre in Los Angeles on the 21st of December, 1937, and the audience rose to its feet before the final frame had faded. Among those in that standing ovation were Judy Garland,…
- 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…
- 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…
- 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 day for previous releases. Ridley Scott's film dropped audiences into a Los…
- 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…
- The Avengers (2012 film)The Avengers opened on the 4th of May 2012, in the United States, and within 19 days it had passed $1 billion in ticket sales, matching a record previously held by Avatar and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2. No Marvel film had…
- 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 TerminatorThe Terminator arrived in American cinemas on the 26th of October 1984, and it began with a nightmare. Director James Cameron had fallen ill in Rome during the troubled release of his first film, Piranha II: The Spawning, and in his fever…
- 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…
- RoboCopRoboCop arrived in American theaters on the 17th of July 1987, and it was not what anyone expected. The title alone put people off. Jack Mathews of the Los Angeles Times called it a "terrible title for a movie that anyone would expect an…
- Jaws (film)Jaws, the 1975 thriller directed by Steven Spielberg, begins with a simple and terrifying image: a young woman swimming alone at night, and then something pulling her under. In the morning, only part of her remains washes ashore. That…
- A Clockwork Orange (film)A Clockwork Orange is a 1971 film that opens with a young man staring directly into the camera, a glass of milk-plus raised to his lips, and the audience already unsettled before a single act of violence occurs. That young man is Alex…
- Deadpool & WolverineDeadpool & Wolverine almost went by a different name. In February 2024, a title leaked online: Deadpool & Friend. Ryan Reynolds later claimed it had been the real title at the time. Fans reacted badly, and the studio revealed the actual…
- Mad Max 2Mad Max 2 opened in Australian cinemas on the 24th of December 1981, a release date that gave holiday audiences something far removed from seasonal cheer. The film that director George Miller had constructed from twelve weeks of shooting…
- 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…
- Thor (film)Thor, the 2011 Marvel Studios superhero film, opened its world premiere at the Event Cinemas theatre on George Street in Sydney on the 17th of April 2011. A Norse god stripped of his powers, exiled to a small New Mexico town, and hunted by…
- 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…
- Star Wars: The Last JediStar Wars: The Last Jedi is dedicated to Carrie Fisher, who played General Leia Organa and died on the 27th of December 2016. Written and directed by Rian Johnson, the film is the second installment of the Star Wars sequel trilogy,…
- Spirited AwaySpirited Away opens on a ten-year-old girl named Chihiro Ogino riding in her parents' imported Audi, sulking about moving to a new neighborhood. Her father takes a wrong turn down an unexpected road, parks in front of a tunnel, and insists…
- 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…
- Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom MenaceStar Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace was still shooting in the Tunisian desert outside the city of Tozeur when disaster struck. On the night after the third day of filming there, an unexpected sandstorm tore through the Mos Espa set.…
- Rogue OneRogue One: A Star Wars Story ends with two lead characters trapped in a citadel on Scarif, unable to escape a demolition beam. Felicity Jones plays Jyn Erso, a detained renegade recruited by the Rebel Alliance to find her missing father.…
- Star Wars: The Rise of SkywalkerStar Wars: The Rise of Skywalker carried a net budget of about $490.2 million. That made it the second most expensive film ever produced. The price tag hints at how much was riding on one movie. J. J. Abrams directed the film. He was…
- Princess MononokePrincess Mononoke arrived in Japanese cinemas on the 12th of July, 1997, and within days the newspapers had a name for what was happening: the "Mononoke phenomenon." By the end of its first week, more than a million people had seen it. By…
- 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,…
- 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 already been raised from $3 to $3.50. By the end of that first week in the city,…
- 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. Thirty-two years had passed since Return of the Jedi closed out the original trilogy. A generation…
- Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the ClonesStar Wars: Episode II, Attack of the Clones premiered on Sunday, the 12th of May 2002. The screening took place at the BMCC Performing Arts Center in New York City, opening the first Tribeca Film Festival. It benefited the Children's Aid…
- Excalibur (film)Excalibur, the 1981 epic fantasy film directed by John Boorman, opens not with a hero but with a sorcerer. In the Dark Ages, Merlin retrieves a magical sword from the depths of a lake and sets in motion a story that will swallow kingdoms,…
- Everything Everywhere All at OnceEverything Everywhere All at Once was originally written for a man. The script's first version had a male lead, conceived specifically with Jackie Chan in mind. Directors Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert reconceived the protagonist as a…
- 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 tells his viewers that a blizzard will miss Western Pennsylvania. It does not. That…
- The Shawshank RedemptionThe Shawshank Redemption opened to mostly empty theaters in September 1994. On opening night, director Frank Darabont and producer Liz Glotzer visited the Cinerama Dome in Hollywood and found no one there. They ended up selling two tickets…
- Barbie (film)Barbie, Greta Gerwig's 2023 satirical fantasy comedy, drained the entire remaining global supply of a specific shade of pink paint during production. Its supplier, Rosco Laboratories, had been weakened by COVID-19 supply-chain problems and…
- Melancholia (2011 film)Melancholia, the 2011 film by Lars von Trier, begins with an ending. Before a single word of dialogue is spoken, the audience watches Earth shatter against a rogue planet in extreme slow motion. Birds fall. Horses collapse. A bride stands…
- Indiana Jones and the Dial of DestinyIndiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny reached theaters in 2023, decades after Paramount Pictures signed a deal in 1979 for five Indiana Jones films. James Mangold directed this fifth entry, working from a screenplay he wrote with David…
- Conan the Barbarian (1982 film)Conan the Barbarian arrived in North American theaters on the 14th of May 1982, opening in 1,400 theaters simultaneously. Before that day, 1,000 people had been turned away at a Houston screening because tickets sold out. In Washington,…