Top 10 Movies: Historical
The highest-graded historical movies we have reviewed, best first.
The Passion of Joan of ArcDreyer films a heresy trial almost entirely in close-up, and Falconetti's face under interrogation is the most harrowing performance of the silent era.Read the review
HamiltonA near ideal record of a stage phenomenon, the original Broadway cast at full strength, filmed with more intelligence than most stage captures.
LincolnA procedural about counting votes turns out to be the most alive thing anyone has put on screen about Lincoln, right up until it refuses to end.
Ma Rainey's Black BottomA filmed play and unashamed of it, carried by Viola Davis's imperious Ma and Chadwick Boseman's volcanic final performance.
DownfallBruno Ganz gives the definitive screen Hitler, trembling and raging in a bunker, in a film that watches the collapse with forensic calm.
The PianistPolanski films the destruction of Warsaw through the window of a man who survives mostly by luck, and refuses to make him a hero.
RanKurosawa's King Lear becomes a war of colour-coded armies and silent slaughter, as gorgeous as it is pitiless.
AmadeusA mediocrity's confession dressed as a costume picture, and the most entertaining film ever made about envy.
The Elephant ManLynch's most conventional film is still unmistakably his: a Victorian weepie shot like an industrial nightmare, carried by John Hurt acting through a mask.
First ManChazelle films the moon landing as a claustrophobic first person account, then opens the frame for one shot that justifies the whole method.
