Release Date: 2001-09-28

Overview: Clear the runway for Derek Zoolander, VH1's three-time male model of the year. His face falls when hippie-chic Hansel scooters in to steal this year's award. The evil fashion guru Mugatu seizes the opportunity to turn Derek into a killing machine. It's a well-designed conspiracy and only with the help of Hansel and a few well-chosen accessories like Matilda can Derek make the world safe for male models everywhere.

Rating: 6.211 (4624 votes)

Release Date: 2013-11-25

Overview: For this year's Movies Issue, The New York Times Magazine commissioned lines from an eclectic and talented group of screenwriters — writers responsible for some of the best scripts of 2013. We asked them each to write a single line for us — not a scene, a script or a scenario, but simply an intriguing, amusing or captivating line of dialogue. Then we gave these lines to one of the great movie artists of our time: the cinematographer Janusz Kaminski, a two-time Oscar winner. Kaminski used these lines as inspiration to create 11 original (very) short films. Each short evokes a style or genre of the cinematic past and stars an actor who gave an especially memorable performance in 2013.

Rating: 5.4 (17 votes)

Release Date: 2001-12-18

Overview: Young hobbit Frodo Baggins, after inheriting a mysterious ring from his uncle Bilbo, must leave his home in order to keep it from falling into the hands of its evil creator. Along the way, a fellowship is formed to protect the ringbearer and make sure that the ring arrives at its final destination: Mt. Doom, the only place where it can be destroyed.

Rating: 8.424 (26154 votes)

Release Date: 1996-05-22

Overview: When Ethan Hunt, the leader of a crack espionage team whose perilous operation has gone awry with no explanation, discovers that a mole has penetrated the CIA, he's surprised to learn that he's the prime suspect. To clear his name, Hunt now must ferret out the real double agent and, in the process, even the score.

Rating: 7.004 (9387 votes)

Release Date: 1984-10-26

Overview: In the post-apocalyptic future, reigning tyrannical supercomputers teleport a cyborg assassin known as the "Terminator" back to 1984 to kill Sarah Connor, whose unborn son is destined to lead insurgents against 21st century mechanical hegemony. Meanwhile, the human-resistance movement dispatches a lone warrior to safeguard Sarah. Can he stop the virtually indestructible killing machine?

Rating: 7.669 (13720 votes)

Release Date: 1968-04-02

Overview: Humanity finds a mysterious object buried beneath the lunar surface and sets off to find its origins with the help of HAL 9000, the world's most advanced super computer.

Rating: 8.065 (11927 votes)

Release Date: 1990-09-12

Overview: The true story of Henry Hill, a half-Irish, half-Sicilian Brooklyn kid who is adopted by neighbourhood gangsters at an early age and climbs the ranks of a Mafia family under the guidance of Jimmy Conway.

Rating: 8.455 (13483 votes)

Release Date: 1997-11-18

Overview: 101-year-old Rose DeWitt Bukater tells the story of her life aboard the Titanic, 84 years later. A young Rose boards the ship with her mother and fiancé. Meanwhile, Jack Dawson and Fabrizio De Rossi win third-class tickets aboard the ship. Rose tells the whole story from Titanic's departure through to its death—on its first and last voyage—on April 15, 1912.

Rating: 7.906 (26146 votes)

Release Date: 1999-09-15

Overview: Lester Burnham, a depressed suburban father in a mid-life crisis, decides to turn his hectic life around after developing an infatuation with his daughter's attractive friend.

Rating: 8.007 (12445 votes)

Release Date: 1994-09-23

Overview: Imprisoned in the 1940s for the double murder of his wife and her lover, upstanding banker Andy Dufresne begins a new life at the Shawshank prison, where he puts his accounting skills to work for an amoral warden. During his long stretch in prison, Dufresne comes to be admired by the other inmates -- including an older prisoner named Red -- for his integrity and unquenchable sense of hope.

Rating: 8.712 (28557 votes)

Release Date: 2010-07-15

Overview: Cobb, a skilled thief who commits corporate espionage by infiltrating the subconscious of his targets is offered a chance to regain his old life as payment for a task considered to be impossible: "inception", the implantation of another person's idea into a target's subconscious.

Rating: 8.369 (37678 votes)

Release Date: 2010-02-14

Overview: World War II soldier-turned-U.S. Marshal Teddy Daniels investigates the disappearance of a patient from a hospital for the criminally insane, but his efforts are compromised by troubling visions and a mysterious doctor.

Rating: 8.201 (24675 votes)

Release Date: 2014-11-05

Overview: The adventures of a group of explorers who make use of a newly discovered wormhole to surpass the limitations on human space travel and conquer the vast distances involved in an interstellar voyage.

Rating: 8.457 (37446 votes)

Release Date: 2013-08-01

Overview: In a future where a failed global-warming experiment kills off most life on the planet, a class system evolves aboard the Snowpiercer; a train that travels around the globe via a perpetual-motion engine.

Rating: 6.905 (9885 votes)

Release Date: 2001-12-14

Overview: From the heights of notoriety to the depths of depravity, John Forbes Nash Jr. experiences it all. As a brilliant but socially awkward mathematician, he made a groundbreaking discovery early in his career and stands on the brink of international acclaim. But as the handsome and arrogant Nash accepts secret work in cryptography, he becomes entangled in a mysterious conspiracy. His life takes a nightmarish turn and he soon finds himself on a painful and harrowing journey of self-discovery.

Rating: 7.854 (10532 votes)

Release Date: 1995-12-15

Overview: When siblings Judy and Peter discover an enchanted board game that opens the door to a magical world, they unwittingly invite Alan -- an adult who's been trapped inside the game for 26 years -- into their living room. Alan's only hope for freedom is to finish the game, which proves risky as all three find themselves running from giant rhinoceroses, evil monkeys and other terrifying creatures.

Rating: 7.239 (10818 votes)

Release Date: 2002-03-14

Overview: With the impending ice age almost upon them, a mismatched trio of prehistoric critters – Manny the woolly mammoth, Diego the saber-toothed tiger and Sid the giant sloth – find an orphaned infant and decide to return it to its human parents. Along the way, the unlikely allies become friends but, when enemies attack, their quest takes on far nobler aims.

Rating: 7.364 (13695 votes)

Release Date: 1977-05-25

Overview: Princess Leia is captured and held hostage by the evil Imperial forces in their effort to take over the galactic Empire. Venturesome Luke Skywalker and dashing captain Han Solo team together with the loveable robot duo R2-D2 and C-3PO to rescue the beautiful princess and restore peace and justice in the Empire.

Rating: 8.206 (21319 votes)

Release Date: 2011-06-01

Overview: Before Charles Xavier and Erik Lensherr took the names Professor X and Magneto, they were two young men discovering their powers for the first time. Before they were arch-enemies, they were closest of friends, working together with other mutants (some familiar, some new), to stop the greatest threat the world has ever known.

Rating: 7.298 (13025 votes)

Release Date: 2012-12-12

Overview: Bilbo Baggins, a hobbit enjoying his quiet life, is swept into an epic quest by Gandalf the Grey and thirteen dwarves who seek to reclaim their mountain home from Smaug, the dragon.

Rating: 7.359 (18878 votes)