The Academy got it right.
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The Academy and the numbers agree.
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Dir. Victor Fleming · Vivien Leigh · Clark Gable · Olivia de Havilland · Leslie Howard
The spoiled daughter of a Georgia plantation owner conducts a tumultuous romance with a cynical profiteer during the American Civil War and Reconstruction Era.
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Dir. Victor Fleming · Judy Garland · Ray Bolger · Jack Haley · Bert Lahr
Young Dorothy finds herself in a magical world where she makes friends with a lion, a scarecrow and a tin man as they make their way along the yellow brick road to talk with the Wizard and ask for the things they miss most in their lives. The Wicked Witch of the West is the only thing that could stop them.
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Dir. Frank Capra · James Stewart · Jean Arthur · Claude Rains · Edward Arnold
After the death of a United States Senator, the idealistic Jefferson Smith is appointed as his replacement in Washington. The naive and earnest new senator soon finds himself battling political corruption.
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Dir. John Ford · Claire Trevor · John Wayne · George Bancroft · Andy Devine
A group of people traveling on a stagecoach find their journey complicated by the threat of Geronimo, and learn something about each other in the process.
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Dir. Jean Renoir · Jean Renoir · Marcel Dalio · Nora Gregor · Julien Carette
The Marquis de la Chesnaye and his wife host a weekend gala where a variety of complicated romantic and social entanglements between guests and servants lead to tragedy, all against the backdrop of a looming war.
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Dir. Ernst Lubitsch · Greta Garbo · Melvyn Douglas · Ina Claire · Bela Lugosi
A stern Russian woman sent to Paris on official business finds herself attracted to a man who represents everything she is supposed to detest.
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Dir. Raoul Walsh · James Cagney · Priscilla Lane · Humphrey Bogart · Gladys George
After World War I, Armistice Lloyd Hart goes back to practice law, former saloon keeper George Hally turns to bootlegging, and out-of-work Eddie Bartlett becomes a cab driver. Eddie builds a fleet of cabs through delivery of bootleg liquor and hires Lloyd as his lawyer. George becomes Eddie's partner and the rackets flourish until love and rivalry interfere.
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Dir. Sam Wood · Robert Donat · Greer Garson · Terry Kilburn · John Mills
Throughout the late 19th-century and early 20th-century, Mr Arthur Chipping rises from a shy, nervous teacher to the beloved, revered headmaster of Brookfield School, with his life and career shaped by his love for his wife and his unwavering dedication to his students.
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Dir. William Wyler · Merle Oberon · Laurence Olivier · David Niven · Flora Robson
Young orphan Heathcliff is adopted by the wealthy Earnshaw family and moves into their estate, Wuthering Heights. Soon, the new resident falls for his compassionate foster sister, Cathy. The two share a remarkable bond that seems unbreakable until Cathy, feeling the pressure of social convention, suppresses her feelings and marries Edgar Linton, a man of means who befits her stature. Heathcliff vows to win her back.
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Dir. Howard Hawks · Cary Grant · Jean Arthur · Thomas Mitchell · Richard Barthelmess
A traveling performer arrives at a remote South American port town where the head of an air freight service must risk his pilots' lives to earn a major contract.
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Dir. William Dieterle · Charles Laughton · Cedric Hardwicke · Thomas Mitchell · Maureen O'Hara
Paris, France, 1482. Frollo, Chief Justice of benevolent King Louis XI, gets infatuated by the beauty of Esmeralda, a young Romani girl. The hunchback Quasimodo, Frollo's protege and bell-ringer of Notre Dame, lives in peace among the bells in the heights of the immense cathedral until he is involved by the twisted magistrate in his malicious plans to free himself from Esmeralda's alleged spell, which he believes to be the devil's work.
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Dir. George Cukor · Norma Shearer · Joan Crawford · Rosalind Russell · Mary Boland
A happily married woman lets her catty friends talk her into divorce when her husband strays.
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Dir. George Marshall · James Stewart · Marlene Dietrich · Mischa Auer · Charles Winninger
Tom Destry, son of a legendary frontier peacekeeper, doesn’t believe in gunplay. Thus he becomes the object of widespread ridicule when he rides into the wide-open town of Bottleneck, the personal fiefdom of the crooked Kent.
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Dir. Lewis Milestone · Burgess Meredith · Lon Chaney Jr. · Betty Field · Charles Bickford
An intellectually disabled giant and his level headed guardian find work at a sadistic cowboy's ranch in depression era America.
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Dir. Sidney Lanfield · Richard Greene · Basil Rathbone · Wendy Barrie · Nigel Bruce
When a nobleman is threatened by a family curse on his newly inherited estate, detective Sherlock Holmes is hired to investigate.
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Dir. Edmund Goulding · Bette Davis · George Brent · Humphrey Bogart · Geraldine Fitzgerald
Socialite Judith Traherne lives a lavish but emotionally empty life. Riding horses is one of her few joys, and her stable master is secretly in love with her. Told she has a brain tumor by her doctor, Frederick Steele, Judith becomes distraught. After she decides to have surgery to remove the tumor, Judith realizes she is in love with Dr. Steele, but more troubling medical news may sabotage her new relationship, and her second chance at life.
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Dir. W.S. Van Dyke · William Powell · Myrna Loy · Virginia Grey · Otto Kruger
Not even the joys of parenthood can stop married sleuths Nick and Nora Charles from investigating a murder on a Long Island estate.
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Dir. Leo McCarey · Irene Dunne · Charles Boyer · Maria Ouspenskaya · Lee Bowman
A French playboy and an American former nightclub singer fall in love aboard a ship. They arrange to reunite six months later, if neither has changed their mind.
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Dir. George Stevens · Cary Grant · Victor McLaglen · Douglas Fairbanks Jr. · Sam Jaffe
British army sergeants Ballantine, Cutter and MacChesney serve in India during the 1880s, along with their native water-bearer, Gunga Din. While completing a dangerous telegraph-repair mission, they unearth evidence of the suppressed Thuggee cult. When Gunga Din tells the sergeants about a secret temple made of gold, the fortune-hunting Cutter is captured by the Thuggees, and it's up to his friends to rescue him.
How scoring works: films are ranked by a composite of a weighted (Bayesian) IMDb rating — the same method as the IMDb Top 250, so a high score from few voters can't outrank a strong score from many — blended with TMDB. Box office is a tiebreaker and a badge, never part of the score. Raw IMDb ratings and vote counts are shown on each card.