101 Greatest Screenplays of the 21st Century (*so far)
Full List
Writers Guilds of America West (WGAW) and Writers Guild of America, East (WGAE) members voted to determine WGA’s 101 Greatest Screenplays of the 21st Century (*so far). Announced on December 6, 2021, the list’s noted writing credits are based on that date
List entries written by Paul Brownfield, Dylan Callaghan, Peter Hanson, and Lisa Rosen.
1 Get Out (2017)
Written by Jordan Peele
“I realized early in the writing that Get Out is so much more than simply what happens when you have a black male protagonist at the center of a horror film,” Jordan Peele told Written By. Get Out, which won the 2018 Writers Guild Award for Original Screenplay...
2 Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004)
Written by Charlie Kaufman, Story by Charlie Kaufman & Michel Gondry & Pierre Bismut
The germ of the idea came from conceptual artist Pierre Bismuth, via director Michel Gondry: What if you sent postcards to people informing them they’d been erased from someone’s memory? How would they react? Charlie Kaufman’s narrative...
3 The Social Network (2010)
Screenplay by Aaron Sorkin, Based Upon the Book The Accidental Billionaires by Ben Mezrich
We begin the story of the decline of Western civilization with a Harvard sophomore who suffers from an acute case of logorrhea returning to his dorm room after a bad date. Blowing off steam with a light bit of hacking, he soon creates a platform to rate coeds called FaceMash...
4 Parasite (2019)
Screenplay by Bong Joon Ho and Han Jin Won, Story by Bong Joon Ho
In Bong Joon Ho’s dark satire, the yuppie Park family lives in architectural splendor in the hills about Seoul. The scrappy Kims fold pizza boxes in a subterranean apartment prone to flooding. When one of the Kims begins tutoring one of the Parks...
5 No Country for Old Men (2007)
Written for the Screen by Joel Coen & Ethan Coen, Based on the Novel by Cormac McCarthy
Set on the plains of West Texas, the Coens’ screenplay, winner of the 2008 Writers Guild Award for Adapted Screenplay, is a master class in the power of the unsaid on the page. In place of words are cryptic, existential musings and brief encounters...
6 Moonlight (2016)
Screenplay by Barry Jenkins, Story by Tarell Alvin McCraney
Barry Jenkins’ 2017 Oscar- and Writers Guild Award-winning screenplay, divided into three, equally compelling coming-of-age chapters in the life of a young Black man in Miami, is an adaptation of Tarell Alvin McCraney’s unpublished play...
7 There Will Be Blood (2007)
Screenplay by Paul Thomas Anderson, Based on the Novel Oil! by Upton Sinclair
Paul Thomas Anderson’s epic, turn-of-the-century, neo-historical tale of oil baron Daniel Plainview feels as essential to understanding the DNA of California as Robert Towne’s Chinatown. Anderson told interviewer Henry Rollins that he began writing...
8 Inglourious Basterds (2009)
Written by Quentin Tarantino
Quentin Tarantino wrote the story years before revisiting it as a script, he told Filmmaker magazine. “I thought, Okay, maybe I could do it as a miniseries, but let me try to tame this, to make it into a movie.” Tarantino’s World War II characters...
9 Almost Famous (2000)
Written by Cameron Crowe
The quintessential rock ’n’ roll coming-of-age film is based on Cameron Crowe’s experiences as a 17-year-old correspondent for Rolling Stone. In reliving his home and road life, Crowe captures both the times and his heady place in it with heartfelt aplomb...
10 Memento (2000)
Screenplay by Christopher Nolan, Based on the Short Story by Jonathan Nolan
In an old YouTube video, Christopher Nolan stands at a chalkboard and diagrams the plot of his film for an interviewer. He explains where the “backward” narrative structure goes, alongside co-existing timelines told from objective and subjective points of view...
11 Adaptation (2002)
Screenplay by Charlie Kaufman and Donald Kaufman, Based on the Book The Orchid Thief by Susan Orlean
Charlie Kaufman shared screenplay credit with his imaginary identical twin brother: Have we mentioned that Adaptation is a painfully funny illustration of writer’s block? In the script, the fake Kaufman brother pitches a serial killer script, while the “real” Kaufman...
12 Bridesmaids (2011)
Written by Annie Mumolo & Kristen Wiig
At long last, Hollywood was inclined to believe that a studio comedy fronted by female characters who were not in active pursuit of a man and not trying desperately to have a baby could work. The screenplay, presumably minus the infamous bridal dress sequence...
13 Brokeback Mountain (2005)
Screenplay by Larry McMurtry & Diana Ossana, Based on the Short Story by Annie Proulx
“They were raised on small, poor ranches in opposite corners of the state.” So begins Annie Proulx’s 1997 New Yorker short story, set in Montana, about modern-day cowboy lovers Jack Twist and Ennis del Mar. In an interview with the American Film Institute...
14 The Royal Tenenbaums (2001)
Written by Wes Anderson & Owen Wilson
Three child prodigies; a father, Royal, devoted to dissipation; and a memoirist/archeologist mother, Etheline—these are the broken pieces of the family Tenenbaum. The movie, a kind of comic novel in the visual language of film...
15 Sideways (2004)
Screenplay by Alexander Payne & Jim Taylor, Based on the Novel by Rex Pickett
The story of two friends on a road trip through wine country is also an examination of the male ego in crisis. Miles is a broken-hearted unpublished novelist and wine connoisseur, Jack is a washed-up actor, living off the fumes of a career in daytime soaps...
16 Lady Bird (2017)
Written by Greta Gerwig
“I let all of these characters talk to me, and talk to each other. I overwrite,” Greta Gerwig told Written By of the genesis of her screenplay for Lady Bird, about 17-year-old Sacramento Catholic schoolgirl Christine McPherson, aka “Lady Bird...
17 Her (2013)
Written by Spike Jonze
“There’s definitely ways that technology brings us closer and ways that it makes us further apart—and that’s not what this movie is about,” Spike Jonze told The New York Times about the film that won the 2014 Writers Guild Award for Original Screenplay...
18 Children of Men (2006)
Screenplay by Alfonso Cuarón & Timothy J. Sexton and David Arata and Mark Fergus & Hawk Ostby, Based on the Novel The Children of Men by P.D. James
Some of the most celebrated shows in the so-called “bleak TV” era (The Handmaid’s Tale, The Leftovers, The Walking Dead) seem to owe a debt to Children of Men. Co-screenwriter Timothy Sexton told Colorado Public Radio that it was the post-9/11 zeitgeist...
19 Lost in Translation (2003)
Written by Sofia Coppola
Arguably the best role ever written for Bill Murray, in terms of capturing his ineffable qualities—the goofball, the empath, the ironist. Sofia Coppola has said she based her 2004 Writers Guild Award-winning Original Screenplay on trips she took...
20 Michael Clayton (2007)
Written by Tony Gilroy
Tony Gilroy proved that great legal thrillers needn’t take place in the courtroom. The titular character is a “fixer” at the white-shoe defense firm Kenner, Bach & Ledeen—a “janitor” sweeping others’ malfeasance under the rug. Until he isn’t...
21 Little Miss Sunshine (2006)
Written by Michael Arndt
Michael Arndt’s first produced screenplay won the 2007 Writers Guild Award for Original Screenplay and an Oscar. The Hoovers, a family on the waitlist for the American dream, head out from Albuquerque in their creaky VW bus. Destination: a child beauty pageant...
22 Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (2019)
Written by Quentin Tarantino
Revisionist history doesn’t get more audacious and satisfying than the Manson family killers going to the wrong house on Cielo Drive and meeting their own spectacularly grisly fate. For all the biographical appearances, your Manson and Squeaky Fromme...
23 Promising Young Woman (2020)
Written by Emerald Fennell
On the surface, Emerald Fennell’s 2021 Writers Guild Award-winning Original Screenplay is a kind of feminist riff on the Death Wish franchise: At bars, Cassandra feigns near-blackout drunkenness to lure and then punish “nice guy” predators who are one opportunity...
24 Juno (2007)
Written by Diablo Cody
The jokes—“It’s probably just a food baby. Did you have a big lunch?”—mixed with the tender and the awkward catapulted Diablo Cody’s script to a 2008 Writers Guild Award for Original Screenplay. Christopher Orr of The Atlantic praised Juno...
25 The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014)
Screenplay by Wes Anderson, Story by Wes Anderson & Hugo Guinness
The Austro-Hungarian Empire-infused Grand Budapest Hotel, winner of the 2015 Writers Guild Award for Original Screenplay, pays homage to both the interwar fiction of Stefan Zweig and the movies of the Marx Brothers. Far from needing no introduction...
26 The Dark Knight (2008)
Screenplay by Jonathan Nolan and Christopher Nolan, Story by Christopher Nolan & David S. Goyer, Based Upon Characters Appearing in Comic Books Published by DC Comics, Batman Created by Bob Kane
“Some men just want to watch the world burn.” More than summarizing the anarchic nature of the Joker, this observation by butler/confidant Alfred Pennyworth challenges the worldview of his employer, Bruce Wayne, aka Batman...
27 Arrival (2016)
Screenplay by Eric Heisserer, Based on the Story “Story of Your Life” Written by Ted Chiang
In the same way the aliens at the center of Arrival travel unimaginable distances to reach Earth, Eric Heisserer took a long journey bringing Ted Chiang’s “Story of Your Life” to the screen. First came the industry’s chilly reception to a heady narrative about linguistics...
28 Jojo Rabbit (2019)
Screenplay by Taika Waititi, Based on the Book Caging Skies by Christine Leunens
Springboarding from dramatic source material, Taika Waititi offers an irreverent take on World War II in Jojo Rabbit, audaciously presenting Hitler as a young boy’s idiotic imaginary friend. (Not since Mel Brooks has a satirist razzed the Führer so mercilessly...
29 Inside Out (2015)
Screenplay by Pete Docter, Meg LeFauve, Josh Cooley, Original Story by Pete Docter, Ronnie Del Carmen
Originating with Pete Docter’s observations about the emotional life of his preteen daughter, Inside Out attempts nothing less than mapping the psychological makeup of a human being still in the process of being formed...
30 The Departed (2006)
Screenplay by William Monahan, Based on the Motion Picture Infernal Affairs, Written by Alex Mak and Felix Chong
Journalist-turned-novelist-turned-screenwriter William Monahan won the gig to adapt a Hong Kong thriller into an American star vehicle by transposing the story to his native Boston, and the authenticity of his script’s local color—tethered, of course, to black humor...
31 Spotlight (2015)
Written by Josh Singer & Tom McCarthy
Everything about the project was daunting—grim subject, massive scope, painstaking research. But after resisting overtures for months, Tom McCarthy signed on to direct a movie detailing how the Boston Globe’s investigative team spent six months uncovering...
32 Whiplash (2014)
Written by Damien Chazelle
A blistering two-hander about the costs of pursuing greatness to the exclusion of everything else, Whiplash was drawn from Damien Chazelle’s experiences as a drummer in an elite jazz band during high school. The band’s conductor was a taskmaster...
33 Up (2009)
Screenplay by Bob Peterson, Pete Docter, Story by Pete Docter, Bob Peterson, Tom McCarthy
As a child, Pete Docter accidentally let go of a balloon that soon disappeared from view. “That feels very much like what life is,” he mused in 2009. “It’s fleeting.” Up forefronts aging and grief while telling an exhilarating story that celebrates human connection...
34 Mean Girls (2004)
Screenplay by Tina Fey, Based on the Book Queen Bees and Wannabes by Rosalind Wiseman
While working as Saturday Night Live’s head writer, Tina Fey read Rosalind Wiseman’s Queen Bees and Wannabes—a nonfiction examination of aggressive behavior among teen girls—and pitched SNL producer Lorne Michaels...
35 WALL-E (2008)
Screenplay by Andrew Stanton, Jim Reardon, Original Story by Andrew Stanton, Pete Docter
The poetic storyline of WALL-E, Pixar’s love story/cautionary tale about a lonely robot on a futuristic Earth crammed with garbage, didn’t come easily. According to Andrew Stanton, the concept emerged during a lunch with cowriter Pete Docter...
36 Pan's Labyrinth (2006)
Written by Guillermo del Toro
“Every story has already been told,” Guillermo del Toro told a crowd at Comic-Con in 2011, “so the only variations I find are the voice of the storyteller and the context in which it’s told.” Inspired by literature, mythology, symbolism, and the dark wilderness...
37 Inception (2010)
Written by Christopher Nolan
Few modern endings linger as powerfully as that of Inception, a sci-fi epic about thieves invading victims’ dreams. In protagonist Dom Cobb, Christopher Nolan found a fresh take on the archetype of a criminal damaged by the moral ramifications of his work...
38 Slumdog Millionaire (2008)
Screenplay by Simon Beaufoy, Based on the Novel Q&A by Vikas Swarup
Faced with adapting Vikas Swarup’s episodic novel about an Indian teenager who wins big on a TV quiz show and gets accused of cheating, Simon Beaufoy faced massive challenges—beyond imposing a filmic structure, Beaufoy wanted a different emotional hook...
39 Before Sunset (2004)
Screenplay by Richard Linklater & Julie Delpy & Ethan Hawke, Story by Richard Linklater & Kim Krizan, Based on Characters Created by Richard Linklater & Kim Krizan
Perhaps no single line perfectly distills the iridescence of Before Sunset, the second film in a trilogy chronicling a romance across decades, but there’s a lot to unpack in this remark: “Memories are wonderful things if you don’t have to deal with the past...
40 In Bruges (2008)
Written by Martin McDonagh
In Bruges opens with a murder inside a church and gets nervier with each successive scene. The tenebrous tale of two British hitmen on the lam in Belgium, In Bruges brazenly mixes farce with tragedy. The younger killer, Ray, despairs because he’s not yet numb...
41 Mulholland Dr. (2001)
Written by David Lynch
Arguably the apotheosis of David Lynch’s surreal style, Mulholland Dr. presents a seductive riddle that’s deliberately impossible to solve. Superficially, it’s the story of wannabe actress Betty trying to help sultry accident victim Rita recover her memory...
42 A Serious Man (2009)
Written by Joel Coen & Ethan Coen
In a 2009 interview, Ethan Coen described the approach that he and his brother, Joel, took while writing this darkly comic period piece about a professor who endures multiple crises. “The fun of the story for us,” Joel said, “was inventing new ways to torture...
43 Amélie (2001)
Screenplay by Guillaume Laurant and Jean-Pierre Jeunet
This offbeat confection tracks the melancholy story of Amélie Poulain, a young Parisian woman striving to find the happiness that has evaded her since childhood. (In a prologue, a man leaps off the roof of the Notre-Dame cathedral and lands on Amélie’s mother...
44 Toy Story 3 (2010)
Screenplay by Michael Arndt, Story by John Lasseter, Andrew Stanton, and Lee Unkrich
Toy Story 3 defied expectations for threequels by adding a necessary beat to a beloved ongoing story, earning more than $1 billion worldwide, and giving countless viewers serious feels. The hook, which never changed throughout the years-long development process...
45 The Favourite (2018)
Written by Deborah Davis and Tony McNamara
Twenty years before it reached the screen, The Favourite began as a first draft by aspiring screenwriter Deborah Davis, who extensively researched the story of two women who battled for position in the court of Queen Anne circa 1711. As Anne drifts into derangement...
46 Zodiac (2007)
Screenplay by James Vanderbilt, Based on the Book by Robert Graysmith
James Vanderbilt first read Robert Graysmith’s best-selling book about the Zodiac Killer when Vanderbilt was in high school, so by the time he met Graysmith in 2002, Vanderbilt had history with the material. The immersion showed in the 158-page script...
47 Gladiator (2000)
Screenplay by David Franzoni and John Logan and William Nicholson, Story by David Franzoni
Gladiator uses a huge canvas to tell a small story. “It is about a man just trying to get home,” David Franzoni said in 2020. For protagonist Maximus, however, getting home is complicated. Initially, he’s a revered soldier serving a noble emperor...
48 The Incredibles (2004)
Written by Brad Bird
Both penned by Brad Bird, The Incredibles and its 2018 sequel are, to date, the only Pixar movies with solo writing credits. Influenced by Cold War-era pop culture that Bird consumed as a child, The Incredibles blends elements that shouldn’t mesh...
49 Knives Out (2019)
Written by Rian Johnson
Simultaneously exemplifying and satirizing a narrative form is risky, but Rian Johnson does so with flair throughout this playful riff on whodunnits. By exploring the death of mystery writer Harlan Thrombey, a man connected to so many...
50 Ex Machina (2015)
Written by Alex Garland
“We don’t understand how our cellphones and our laptops work,” Alex Garland told NPR in 2015, “but those things seem to understand a lot about us.” Long fascinated by society’s relationship with machines generally, and artificial intelligence specifically...
51 Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) (2014)
Written by Alejandro G. Iñárritu, Nicolás Giacobone, Alexander Dinelaris Jr. & Armando Bó
Fittingly for a script that blends farce, satire, tragedy, and a host of other narrative textures, Birdman hatched from a mélange of provocative ideas. Seeking a break from the angst of straightforward melodrama, cowriter-director Alejandro G. Iñárritu imagined...
52 The Lives of Others (2007)
Written by Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck
When he was a film student, Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck read about a conversation between Lenin and Gorky. “Lenin said he didn’t want to listen to his favorite piece of music anymore, Beethoven’s ‘Appassionata,’ because, he said, ‘If I listen to that music...
53 Nightcrawler (2014)
Written by Dan Gilroy
If it bleeds, it leads, and it led Dan Gilroy to create an amoral TV news stringer whose study of the business combines with his ambition to horrific, successful ends. As Gilroy said in Film Comment, the script clicked into place when he stopped trying to...
54 12 Years a Slave (2013)
Screenplay by John Ridley, Based on the book Twelve Years a Slave by Solomon Northup
In adapting Solomon Northup’s searing memoir of enslavement, John Ridley was challenged to find and develop “the moments in those twelve years that stand in the starkest relief,” he told Filmmaker Magazine. “You don’t want a film that is all pain and suffering...
55 The Big Short (2015)
Screenplay by Charles Randolph and Adam McKay, Based on the Book by Michael Lewis
Taking a book about the elements that coalesced into the 2008 financial crisis and turning it into a wild ride as well as an informative film, Charles Randolph and Adam McKay broke the fourth wall, helping the audience understand every twist...
56 Moneyball (2011)
Screenplay by Steven Zaillian and Aaron Sorkin, Story by Stan Chervin, Based on the Book by Michael Lewis
In another great adaptation of another great Michael Lewis book, the use of statistical analysis to evaluate baseball players morphed into the compelling story of an underdog taking a swing against the system. The project endured a changing rotation...
57 Black Panther (2018)
Written by Ryan Coogler & Joe Robert Cole, Based on the Marvel Comics by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby
Ryan Coogler and Joe Robert Cole knew the significance of the universe they were creating, with a Black superhero and a futuristic African utopia, untouched by colonial rule, that entered the words “Wakanda Forever” in the lexicon...
58 You Can Count on Me (2000)
Written by Kenneth Lonergan
Terry and his sister Sammy lost their parents at a young age, and it affected them both deeply in diametrically opposed ways: Sammy became as responsible as Terry is undependable. But their love and their history bonds them nonetheless...
59 Boyhood (2014)
Written by Richard Linklater
Creating the story of a child growing up from age six to 18, Richard Linklater’s film takes on the unforced cadence of a boy’s life. “So many movies have a structure that’s built around satisfying plot, and leave no room, or very little, for these real moments...
60 Finding Nemo (2003)
Screenplay by Andrew Stanton, Bob Peterson, David Reynolds, Original Story by Andrew Stanton
For Andrew Stanton, the surprisingly moving animated tale of an overprotective clownfish searching for his missing son was rooted in his own experience as a father. Busy working on one movie after another at Pixar, Stanton felt he wasn’t seeing enough...
61 The Hurt Locker (2008)
Written by Mark Boal
This contemporary war movie centers on the members of an EOD (Explosive Ordnance Disposal) unit at work in war-torn Iraq. Screenwriter Mark Boal, formerly a journalist, embedded himself with a bomb squad to get a feel for their experience...
62 Roma (2018)
Written by Alfonso Cuarón
Alfonso Cuarón never expected a film about his childhood, from the point of view of his family housekeeper (Libo in real life, Cleo onscreen), to strike such a nerve. “I was making a very specific film, about a very specific character...
63 The Wolf of Wall Street (2013)
Screenplay by Terence Winter, Based on the Book by Jordan Belfort
In discussing the riotously unreliable narrator at the center of the film about Wall Street shenanigans, Terence Winter told David Erlich at MTV News, “Part of the fun and the charm of the book is in hearing Jordan’s voice, in hearing his take on things...
64 Hell or High Water (2016)
Written by Taylor Sheridan
“I like to wrap a socially aware film in a genre,” Taylor Sheridan told Written By, as he did with this story of two brothers who rob banks in order to save the family farm from, well, the bank, and the two Texas Rangers out to stop them. “I love playing with the idea...
65 Manchester by the Sea (2016)
Written by Kenneth Lonergan
In another entry from Kenneth Lonergan, his protagonist suffers after making a mistake from which he can never recover, but must somehow come to accept. But the film isn’t simply bleak; as in real life, there is lightness and humor mixed in with the sorrow...
66 A Separation (2011)
Written by Asghar Farhadi
This tense, riveting, morally complex film looks at two disparate and troubled Iranian families, the choices that decent people make out of fear, and the part that culture plays in it all. Writer Asghar Farhadi offers no easy solutions...
67 Spirited Away (2001)
Written by Hayao Miyazaki
The animated Japanese fantasy drops ten-year-old protagonist Chihiro in a surreal spirit world, where she must survive and try to save her parents and return to the world of the living. As Hayao Miyazaki said in Midnight Eye, “It was through observing...
68 Mad Max: Fury Road (2015)
Written by George Miller, Brendan McCarthy, Nico Lathouris
Some films have great chase sequences. This long-awaited entry to the Mad Max franchise IS a great chase sequence, one that was blocked out on over 3,500 storyboard panels. Co-writer George Miller said in the Hollywood Reporter, “The approach to this film...
69 Booksmart (2019)
Written by Emily Halpern & Sarah Haskins and Susanna Fogel and Katie Silberman
Two teenage overachievers realize they’ve wasted their youth on schoolwork, and decide to have one epic night before graduation, in classic buddy-movie tradition. And this time, in a delightful update to the genre, the buddies are girls...
70 City of God (2002)
Screenplay by Bráulio Mantovani, Based on the Novel by Paulo Lins
The favelas (slums) of Rio are lightyears away from the glittering city they overlook. Areas like Cidade de Deus (City of God) have been abandoned to criminal gangs and corrupt officials, and life is lawless and brutal—but also filled with music and exuberant joy...
71 Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018)
Screenplay by Phil Lord and Rodney Rothman, Story by Phil Lord, Based on the Marvel Comics
Superheroes take many forms, and endure many reboots, but this was one of the most inventive, as Spider-Man comes back into animated life—in parallel universes—with young Miles Morales at the helm. It didn’t come easily. As co-writer Phil Lord shared...
72 Inside Llewyn Davis (2013)
Written by Joel Coen & Ethan Coen
Llewyn Davis is a sad sack of a folk musician, working his way down the ladder of success in the ‘60s. “It’s more interesting for me as an audience member to see a movie about a loser,” co-writer Ethan Coen told the Guardian. “Who wants to make a movie about Elvis...
73 The King's Speech (2010)
Screenplay by David Seidler
Prince Albert was horrified to find greatness thrust upon him when his brother, King Edward, abdicated the throne. A gentle man with a profound stutter, he was unprepared for the role of King, but he had no choice in the matter...
74 Django Unchained (2012)
Written by Quentin Tarantino
The Western, Southern, revenge fantasy follows an enslaved man as he frees himself and his family, wreaking fiery havoc on all oppressors. “I wanted to tell the story as a genre movie, as an exciting adventure,” writer Quentin Tarantino told Terry Gross...
75 Ocean's Eleven (2001)
Screenplay by Ted Griffin, Based on a Screenplay by Harry Brown and Charles Lederer and a Story by George Clayton Johnson & Jack Golden Russell
Writer Ted Griffin made a startling admission to Free Film University: “I don’t like the original Ocean’s Eleven. It may be iconic but it’s not good, as fascinating as the Rat Pack is to watch. But I liked those types of movies growing up—groups on a mission...
76 The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001)
Screenplay by Fran Walsh & Philippa Boyens & Peter Jackson, Based on the Book The Fellowship of the Ring by J.R.R. Tolkien
In discussion with Looking Closer, co-writer Peter Jackson was as interested in Tolkien’s inspiration as his writing, when it came to recreating that fantastic world onscreen. “He was just a guy who was profoundly irritated by things and annoyed...
77 Shaun of the Dead (2004)
Written by Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright
This shaggy zombie comedy doesn’t shy away from the horror it creates, and the combination is irresistible. Writers Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright were obsessed with George Romero’s Dawn of the Dead. As Wright said in the Guardian, “One evening...
78 Erin Brockovich (2000)
Written by Susannah Grant
The moment screenwriter Susannah Grant first learned about Erin Brockovich, she knew she wanted to tell her story. It wasn’t just true, it was good: a twice-divorced single mother exposed and helped bring to justice Pacific Gas...
79 Call Me by Your Name (2017)
Screenplay by James Ivory, Based on the Novel by André Aciman
In a list crowded with scripting elites, James Ivory stands alone—the only one of the lot to become half the namesake for an entire new genre of indie period dramas (along with longtime partner Ismail Merchant...
80 Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (2017)
Written by Martin McDonagh
Whisky, cursing, and the truth are central to British playwright Martin McDonagh’s stage and screen work. Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, has them all in spades. He wrote the script for his ideal muse, Francis McDormand...
81 The Lobster (2015)
Written by Yorgos Lanthimos and Efthymis Filippou
If you ever imagined what would happen if Paddy Chayefsky’s 1955 classic Marty was reimagined by George Orwell and punched up by Judd Apatow, The Lobster would get you pretty damn close to the answer...
82 The Prestige (2006)
Screenplay by Jonathan Nolan and Christopher Nolan, Based on the Novel by Christopher Priest
In this dexterous Nolan brothers’ screenplay, two magicians in Edwardian London are driven into a dark rivalry over their shared obsession with creating the ultimate illusion. Adding to the pleasures of this script, the Nolans included Nikola Tesla...
83 Midnight in Paris (2011)
Written by Woody Allen
Woody Allen racked up his sixth Writers Guild Award and third Original Screenplay Oscar—more than anyone in history—in an entirely Woody Allen way; with a story that would be many screenwriters’ fantasy...
84 The Master (2012)
Written by Paul Thomas Anderson
No modern writer-director has an oeuvre as pointedly divergent, eclectic, and successful as Paul Thomas Anderson, who seems, at each new turn, to be making the point that, no matter the trappings, the same themes of human existence reign...
85 Argo (2012)
Screenplay by Chris Terrio, Based on a selection from The Master of Disguise by Antonio J. Mendez and the Wired Magazine Article “The Great Escape” by Joshuah Bearman
Its Oscar win for Best Picture might have overshadowed the strength of this script, which took home both the 2013 Writers Guild Award and Oscar for Adapted Screenplay. Chris Terrio’s script is a marvel of narrative construction...
86 Y tu mamá también (2001)
Written by Carlos Cuarón & Alfonso Cuarón
Part road trip, teen movie, erotica, and art film, Y tu mamá también changed everything for Alfonso Cuarón, his brother Carlos, and Mexican cinema, which it helped reemerge after decades in the shadows. The logline may be simple...
87 Phantom Thread (2017)
Written by Paul Thomas Anderson
Paul Thomas Anderson knows his way around a taut, slow narrative burn, but none are more retrained and razor sharp than Phantom Thread, which stars Daniel Day-Lewis as fastidiously controlling dressmaker par excellence, Reynolds Woodcock...
88 Superbad (2007)
Written by Seth Rogen & Evan Goldberg
Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg started writing Superbad when they were still living it—as 13-year-old 12th graders at Pointy Grey Secondary School in Vancouver, Canada in the ‘90s. Years later, under the tutelage of comedy...
89 Little Women (2019)
Screenplay by Greta Gerwig, Based on the Novel by Louisa May Alcott
Louisa May Alcott’s iconic novel Little Women is so beloved it’s been adapted no less than seven times. The seventh go fell, with great results, to actress, writer, and director, Greta Gerwig. She did an ingenious thing no one else had before...
90 BlacKkKlansman (2018)
Written by Charlie Wachtel & David Rabinowitz and Kevin Willmott & Spike Lee, Based on the Book by Ron Stallworth
Charlie Wachtel and David Rabinowitz were next to nowhere as screenwriters when they stumbled across a copy of memoir titled Black Klansman by Ron Stallworth, via Police and Fire Publishing. Stallworth was the first Black detective...
91 The Farewell (2019)
Written by Lulu Wang
Though Lulu Wang had already written and directed her first feature, Posthumous in 2014, it was NPR’s This American Life that proved her big break when, in 2016, she wrote and narrated the autobiographical story...
92 La La Land (2016)
Written by Damien Chazelle
Damien Chazelle’s debut feature Whiplash put him on the map, but La La Land was the film he first wrote and dreamed of making. After meeting rejection everywhere, he wrote Whiplash as an easier film to sell on an indie budget. When it was a hit...
93 Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan (2006)
Screenplay by Sacha Baron Cohen & Anthony Hines & Peter Baynham & Dan Mazer, Story by Sacha Baron Cohen & Peter Baynham & Anthony Hines & Todd Phillips, Based on a Character Created by Sacha Baron Cohen
Some eyebrows, and possibly a few bushy mustaches, might have been raised when the WGA nominated this first-of-its-kind reality-meets-mockumentary for Adapted Screenplay back in 2006. But time has been a friend to Borat...
94 The 40-Year-Old Virgin (2005)
Written by Judd Apatow & Steve Carell
While there are scores of movies that have plumbed the seemingly boundless comedic depths of the eternal drive to lose one’s virginity (from Porky’s to American Pie, examples run into the dozens), this Judd Apatow/Steve Carell classic...
95 Ratatouille (2007)
Screenwriter: Brad Bird, Original Story by Jan Pinkava, Jim Capobianco, Brad Bird, Additional Story Material by Emily Cook & Kathy Greenberg, Bob Peterson
It’s hard to overstate how, well, incredible it is to follow up a hit as massive as The Incredibles with another giant, commercial, critical smash as different and special as Ratatouille. That’s back-to-back Oscars for Best Animated Feature...
96 Lars and the Real Girl (2007)
Written by Nancy Oliver
This film stars Ryan Gosling as Lars Lindstrom, a shy, lonely 27-year-old who takes up a mail order sex doll as a girlfriend. It’s a great example of a movie that is everything its logline is not—while the plot description might lead one to expect a prurient...
97 Nomadland (2020)
Written for the Screen by Chloé Zhao, Based on the Book by Jessica Bruder
Nomadland strikes like a jagged line of lightning on the Western plains, illuminating dark, painful, and beautiful complexities of modern American life—from low-paying jobs, to unaffordable housing, poor eldercare and overconsumption...
98 Winter's Bone (2010)
Screenplay by Debra Granik & Anne Rosellini, Based on the Novel by Daniel Woodrell
Optioned just before its publication, Daniel Woodrell’s novel is a taut, highly detailed saga that unfolds deep in the Missouri Ozarks. Seventeen-year-old Ree is a protector for her destitute family—two younger siblings and a mentally ill mother...
99 O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000)
Written by Ethan Coen & Joel Coen, Based Upon the Odyssey by Homer
There’s a compelling argument to be made that O Brother is the most “Coen brothers” of Coen brothers movies, not necessarily the best—just the most “Coen brothers.” Aside from all the usual elements—crime, a vivid ensemble, heaps of comedy...
100 Legally Blonde (2001)
Screenplay by Karen McCullah Lutz & Kirsten Smith, Based on the Book by Amanda Brown
Amanda Brown didn’t just write the book upon which Legally Blonde was based, she lived it, attending Stanford Law school while, indeed, being blonde. On the heels (designer, no doubt) of their breakout, eve-of-the-millennium hit...
101 Silver Linings Playbook (2012)
Screenplay by David O. Russell, Based on the Novel by Matthew Quick
With Playbook, David O. Russell was able to do an exceedingly difficult thing, grappling with serious mental illness while making a winning, even uplifting rom-com. Pat Solitano is living with his parents and hoping to reconcile with his ex-wife...