Best Picture by New York Film Critics Circle (NYFCC)
"The New York Film Critics Circle (NYFCC) is an American film critic organization founded in 1935. Its membership includes over 30 film critics from New York-based daily and weekly newspapers, magazines, online publications. In December of each year, the organization meets to vote on the New York Film Critics Circle Awards, given annually to honor excellence in cinema worldwide of the calendar year. The NYFCC also gives special stand-alone awards to individuals and organizations that have made significant contributions to the art of cinema, including writers, directors, producers, film critics, film restorers, historians and service organizations. The NYFCC Awards are the oldest given by film critics in the country, and one of the most prestigious."
Last updated: May 3rd, 2022
Weight: 75
Detractions
- Yearly award (-25)
Films (87)
1. Drive My Car
Directed by Ryûsuke Hamaguchi | Rated Unrated | 179 min | 2021
A renowned stage actor and director learns to cope with his wife's unexpected passing when he receives an offer to direct a production of Uncle Vanya in Hiroshima.
2. The Irishman
Directed by Martin Scorsese | Rated R | 209 min | 2019
A mob hitman recalls his friend Jimmy Hoffa.
3. First Cow
Directed by Kelly Reichardt | Rated PG-13 | 122 min | 2019
A skilled cook has traveled west and joined a group of fur trappers in Oregon, though he only finds true connection with a Chinese immigrant also seeking his fortune. Soon the two collaborate on a successful business.
4. Roma
Directed by Alfonso Cuarón | Rated R | 135 min | 2018
A year in the life of a middle-class family's maid in Mexico City in the early 1970s.
5. Lady Bird
Directed by Greta Gerwig | Rated R | 94 min | 2017
In the early 2000s, an artistically-inclined seventeen year-old comes of age in Sacramento, California.
6. La La Land
Directed by Damien Chazelle | Rated PG-13 | 128 min | 2016
A jazz pianist falls for an aspiring actress in Los Angeles.
7. Carol
Directed by Todd Haynes | Rated R | 118 min | 2015
An aspiring photographer develops an intimate relationship with an older woman in 1950s New York.
8. Boyhood
Directed by Richard Linklater | Rated R | 165 min | 2014
The life of Mason, from early childhood to his arrival at college.
9. American Hustle
Directed by David O. Russell | Rated R | 138 min | 2013
A con man, Irving Rosenfeld, along with his seductive partner Sydney Prosser, is forced to work for a wild FBI agent, Richie DiMaso, who pushes them into a world of Jersey powerbrokers and mafia.
10. Zero Dark Thirty
Directed by Kathryn Bigelow | Rated R | 157 min | 2012
A chronicle of the decade-long hunt for al-Qaeda terrorist leader Osama bin Laden after the September 2001 attacks, and his death at the hands of the Navy S.E.A.L.s Team 6 in May 2011.
11. The Artist
Directed by Michel Hazanavicius | Rated PG-13 | 100 min | 2011
A silent movie star meets a young dancer, but the arrival of talking pictures sends their careers in opposite directions.
12. The Social Network
Directed by David Fincher | Rated PG-13 | 120 min | 2010
Harvard student Mark Zuckerberg creates the social networking site that would become known as Facebook, but is later sued by two brothers who claimed he stole their idea, and the co-founder who was later squeezed out of the business.
13. Milk
Directed by Gus Van Sant | Rated R | 128 min | 2008
The story of Harvey Milk, and his struggles as an American gay activist who fought for gay rights and became California's first openly gay elected official.
14. The Hurt Locker
Directed by Kathryn Bigelow | Rated R | 131 min | 2008
During the Iraq War, a Sergeant recently assigned to an army bomb squad is put at odds with his squad mates due to his maverick way of handling his work.
15. No Country for Old Men
Directed by Ethan Coen, Joel Coen | Rated R | 122 min | 2007
Violence and mayhem ensue after a hunter stumbles upon a drug deal gone wrong and more than two million dollars in cash near the Rio Grande.
16. United 93
Directed by Paul Greengrass | Rated R | 111 min | 2006
A real-time account of the events on United Flight 93, one of the planes hijacked on September 11th, 2001 that crashed near Shanksville, Pennsylvania when passengers foiled the terrorist plot.
17. Brokeback Mountain
Directed by Ang Lee | Rated R | 134 min | 2005
The story of a forbidden and secretive relationship between two cowboys, and their lives over the years.
18. Sideways
Directed by Alexander Payne | Rated R | 126 min | 2004
Two men reaching middle age with not much to show but disappointment embark on a week-long road trip through California's wine country, just as one is about to take a trip down the aisle.
19. The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King
Directed by Peter Jackson | Rated PG-13 | 201 min | 2003
Gandalf and Aragorn lead the World of Men against Sauron's army to draw his gaze from Frodo and Sam as they approach Mount Doom with the One Ring.
20. Far from Heaven
Directed by Todd Haynes | Rated PG-13 | 107 min | 2002
In 1950s Connecticut, a housewife faces a marital crisis and mounting racial tensions in the outside world.
21. Mulholland Drive
Directed by David Lynch | Rated R | 147 min | 2001
After a car wreck on the winding Mulholland Drive renders a woman amnesiac, she and a perky Hollywood-hopeful search for clues and answers across Los Angeles in a twisting venture beyond dreams and reality.
22. Traffic
Directed by Steven Soderbergh | Rated R | 147 min | 2000
A conservative judge is appointed by the President to spearhead America's escalating war against drugs, only to discover that his teenage daughter is a crack addict. Two DEA agents protect an informant. A jailed drug baron's wife attempts to carry on the family business.
23. Topsy-Turvy
Directed by Mike Leigh | Rated R | 154 min | 1999
After Gilbert and Sullivan's latest play is critically panned, the frustrated team threatens to disband until it is inspired to write the masterpiece "The Mikado".
24. Saving Private Ryan
Directed by Steven Spielberg | Rated R | 169 min | 1998
Following the Normandy Landings, a group of U.S. soldiers go behind enemy lines to retrieve a paratrooper whose brothers have been killed in action.
25. L.A. Confidential
Directed by Curtis Hanson | Rated R | 138 min | 1997
As corruption grows in 1950s LA, three policemen - one strait-laced, one brutal, and one sleazy - investigate a series of murders with their own brand of justice.
26. Fargo
Directed by Joel Coen, Ethan Coen | Rated R | 98 min | 1996
Jerry Lundegaard's inept crime falls apart due to his and his henchmen's bungling and the persistent police work of the quite pregnant Marge Gunderson.
27. Leaving Las Vegas
Directed by Mike Figgis | Rated R | 111 min | 1995
Ben Sanderson, an alcoholic Hollywood screenwriter who lost everything because of his drinking, arrives in Las Vegas to drink himself to death. There, he meets and forms an uneasy friendship and non-interference pact with prostitute Sera.
28. Quiz Show
Directed by Robert Redford | Rated PG-13 | 133 min | 1994
A young lawyer, Richard Goodwin, investigates a potentially fixed game show. Charles Van Doren, a big time show winner, is under Goodwin's investigation.
29. Schindler's List
Directed by Steven Spielberg | Rated R | 195 min | 1993
In German-occupied Poland during World War II, Oskar Schindler gradually becomes concerned for his Jewish workforce after witnessing their persecution by the Nazi Germans.
30. The Player
Directed by Robert Altman | Rated R | 124 min | 1992
A Hollywood studio executive is being sent death threats by a writer whose script he rejected - but which one?
31. The Silence of the Lambs
Directed by Jonathan Demme | Rated R | 118 min | 1991
A young F.B.I. cadet must confide in an incarcerated and manipulative killer to receive his help on catching another serial killer who skins his victims.
32. Goodfellas
Directed by Martin Scorsese | Rated R | 146 min | 1990
Henry Hill and his friends work their way up through the mob hierarchy.
33. My Left Foot
Directed by Jim Sheridan | Rated R | 103 min | 1989
Christy Brown, born with cerebral palsy, learns to paint and write with his only controllable limb - his left foot.
34. The Accidental Tourist
Directed by Lawrence Kasdan | Rated PG | 121 min | 1988
An emotionally distant writer of travel guides must carry on with his life after his son is killed and his marriage crumbles.
35. Broadcast News
Directed by James L. Brooks | Rated R | 133 min | 1987
Take two rival TV reporters: one handsome, one talented, both male. Add one producer, female. Mix well and watch the sparks fly.
36. Hannah and Her Sisters
Directed by Woody Allen | Rated PG-13 | 103 min | 1986
Between two Thanksgivings two years apart, Hannah's husband falls in love with her sister Lee, while her hypochondriac ex-husband rekindles his relationship with her sister Holly.
37. Prizzi's Honor
Directed by John Huston | Rated R | 130 min | 1985
A professional hit man and hit woman fall in love.
38. A Passage to India
Directed by David Lean | Rated PG | 164 min | 1984
Cultural mistrust and false accusations doom a friendship in British colonial India between an Indian doctor, an Englishwoman engaged to marry a city magistrate, and an English educator.
39. Terms of Endearment
Directed by James L. Brooks | Rated PG | 132 min | 1983
Follows hard-to-please Aurora looking for love and her daughter's family problems.
40. Gandhi
Directed by Richard Attenborough | Rated PG | 191 min | 1982
Gandhi's character is fully explained as a man of nonviolence. Through his patience, he is able to drive the British out of the subcontinent. And the stubborn nature of Jinnah and his commitment towards Pakistan is portrayed.
41. Reds
Directed by Warren Beatty | Rated PG | 195 min | 1981
A radical American journalist becomes involved with the Communist revolution in Russia and hopes to bring its spirit and idealism to the United States.
42. Ordinary People
Directed by Robert Redford | Rated R | 124 min | 1980
The accidental death of the older son of an affluent family deeply strains the relationships among the bitter mother, the good-natured father, and the guilt-ridden younger son.
43. Kramer vs. Kramer
Directed by Robert Benton | Rated PG | 105 min | 1979
Ted Kramer's wife leaves her husband, allowing for a lost bond to be rediscovered between Ted and his son, Billy. But a heated custody battle ensues over the divorced couple's son, deepening the wounds left by the separation.
44. The Deer Hunter
Directed by Michael Cimino | Rated R | 183 min | 1978
An in-depth examination of the ways in which the U.S. Vietnam War impacts and disrupts the lives of people in a small industrial town in Pennsylvania.
45. Annie Hall
Directed by Woody Allen | Rated PG | 93 min | 1977
Neurotic New York comedian Alvy Singer falls in love with the ditzy Annie Hall.
46. All the President's Men
Directed by Alan J. Pakula | Rated PG | 138 min | 1976
"The Washington Post" reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein uncover the details of the Watergate scandal that leads to President Richard Nixon's resignation.
47. Nashville
Directed by Robert Altman | Rated R | 159 min | 1975
Over the course of a few hectic days, numerous interrelated people prepare for a political convention as secrets and lies are surfaced and revealed.
48. Day for Night
Directed by François Truffaut | Rated PG | 115 min | 1973
A committed film director struggles to complete his movie while coping with a myriad of crises, personal and professional, among the cast and crew.
49. Amarcord
Directed by Federico Fellini | Rated R | 123 min | 1973
A series of comedic and nostalgic vignettes set in a 1930s Italian coastal town.
50. Cries & Whispers
Directed by Ingmar Bergman | Rated R | 91 min | 1972
When a woman dying of cancer in early twentieth-century Sweden is visited by her two sisters, long-repressed feelings between the siblings rise to the surface.
51. A Clockwork Orange
Directed by Stanley Kubrick | Rated X | 136 min | 1971
In future Britain, charismatic delinquent Alex DeLarge is jailed and volunteers for an experimental aversion therapy developed by the government in an effort to solve society's crime problem - but not all goes according to plan.
52. Five Easy Pieces
Directed by Bob Rafelson | Rated R | 98 min | 1970
A drop-out from upper-class America picks up work along the way on oil-rigs when his life isn't spent in a squalid succession of bars, motels, and other points of interest.
53. Z
Directed by Costa-Gavras | Rated M | 127 min | 1969
Following the murder of a prominent leftist, an investigator tries to uncover the truth while government officials attempt to cover up their roles.
54. The Lion in Winter
Directed by Anthony Harvey | Rated PG | 134 min | 1968
1183 AD: King Henry II's three sons all want to inherit the throne, but he won't commit to a choice. They and his wife variously plot to force him.
55. In the Heat of the Night
Directed by Norman Jewison | 109 min | 1967
An African American police detective is asked to investigate a murder in a racially hostile southern town.
56. A Man for All Seasons
Directed by Fred Zinnemann | 120 min | 1966
The story of Thomas More, who stood up to King Henry VIII when the King rejected the Roman Catholic Church to obtain a divorce and remarriage.
57. Darling
Directed by John Schlesinger | Rated TV-MA | 128 min | 1965
A beautiful but amoral model sleeps her way to the top of the London fashion scene at the height of the Swinging Sixties.
58. My Fair Lady
Directed by George Cukor | 170 min | 1964
A misogynistic and snobbish phonetics professor agrees to a wager that he can take a flower girl and make her presentable in high society.
59. Tom Jones
Directed by Tony Richardson | 128 min | 1963
In eighteenth century England, "first cousins" Tom Jones and Master Blifil grew up together in privilege in the western countryside, but could not be more different in nature. Tom, the ...
60. West Side Story
Directed by Jerome Robbins, Robert Wise | 152 min | 1961
Two youngsters from rival New York City gangs fall in love, but tensions between their respective friends build toward tragedy.
61. Sons and Lovers
Directed by Jack Cardiff | Rated N/A | 103 min | 1960
Jack Cardiff received a 1960 Oscar Nomination as Best Director for this lush, engaging film starring Trevor Howard, Dean Stockwell and Donald Pleasence, which was adapted from D.H. ...
62. The Apartment
Directed by Billy Wilder | 125 min | 1960
A man tries to rise in his company by letting its executives use his apartment for trysts, but complications and a romance of his own ensue.
63. Ben-Hur
Directed by William Wyler | Rated G | 212 min | 1959
When a Jewish prince is betrayed and sent into slavery by a Roman friend, he regains his freedom and comes back for revenge.
64. The Defiant Ones
Directed by Stanley Kramer | 96 min | 1958
Two escaped convicts chained together, white and black, must learn to get along in order to elude capture.
65. The Bridge on the River Kwai
Directed by David Lean | Rated PG | 161 min | 1957
After settling his differences with a Japanese PoW camp commander, a British colonel co-operates to oversee his men's construction of a railway bridge for their captors - while oblivious to a plan by the Allies to destroy it.
66. Around the World in Eighty Days
Directed by Michael Anderson, John Farrow | Rated G | 175 min | 1956
A Victorian Englishman bets that with the new steamships and railways he can do what the title says.
67. Marty
Directed by Delbert Mann | 90 min | 1955
A middle-aged butcher and a school teacher who have given up on the idea of love meet at a dance and fall for each other.
68. On the Waterfront
Directed by Elia Kazan | 108 min | 1954
An ex-prize fighter turned longshoreman struggles to stand up to his corrupt union bosses.
69. From Here to Eternity
Directed by Fred Zinnemann | 118 min | 1953
In Hawaii in 1941, a private is cruelly punished for not boxing on his unit's team, while his captain's wife and second-in-command are falling in love.
70. High Noon
Directed by Fred Zinnemann | Rated PG | 85 min | 1952
A marshall, personally compelled to face a returning deadly enemy, finds that his own town refuses to help him.
71. A Streetcar Named Desire
Directed by Elia Kazan | Rated PG | 122 min | 1951
Disturbed Blanche DuBois moves in with her sister in New Orleans and is tormented by her brutish brother-in-law while her reality crumbles around her.
72. All About Eve
Directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz | 138 min | 1950
An ingenue insinuates herself into the company of an established but aging stage actress and her circle of theater friends.
73. All the King's Men
Directed by Robert Rossen | 110 min | 1949
The rise and fall of a corrupt politician, who makes his friends richer and retains power by dint of a populist appeal.
74. The Treasure of the Sierra Madre
Directed by John Huston | 126 min | 1948
Fred Dobbs and Bob Curtin, two Americans searching for work in Mexico, convince an old prospector to help them mine for gold in the Sierra Madre Mountains.
75. Gentleman's Agreement
Directed by Elia Kazan | 118 min | 1947
A reporter pretends to be Jewish in order to cover a story on anti-Semitism, and personally discovers the true depths of bigotry and hatred.
76. The Best Years of Our Lives
Directed by William Wyler | 172 min | 1946
Three World War II veterans return home to small-town America to discover that they and their families have been irreparably changed.
77. The Lost Weekend
Directed by Billy Wilder | 101 min | 1945
The desperate life of a chronic alcoholic is followed through a four day drinking bout.
78. Going My Way
Directed by Leo McCarey | 126 min | 1944
Youthful Father Chuck O'Malley led a colorful life of sports, song, and romance before joining the Roman Catholic clergy, but his level gaze and twinkling eyes make it clear that he knows ...
79. Watch on the Rhine
Directed by Herman Shumlin, Hal Mohr | 114 min | 1943
A German-born engineer, his American wife and their children travel from Mexico to the United States to visit his brother but their plans are complicated by a Romanian count.
80. In Which We Serve
Directed by Noël Coward, David Lean | 115 min | 1942
This "story of a ship," the British destroyer HMS Torrin, is told in flash backs by survivors as they cling to a life raft.
81. Citizen Kane
Directed by Orson Welles | 119 min | 1941
Following the death of a publishing tycoon, news reporters scramble to discover the meaning of his final utterance.
82. The Grapes of Wrath
Directed by John Ford | 129 min | 1940
A poor Midwest family is forced off of their land. They travel to California, suffering the misfortunes of the homeless in the Great Depression.
83. Wuthering Heights
Directed by William Wyler | 104 min | 1939
A servant in the house of Wuthering Heights tells a traveler the unfortunate tale of lovers Cathy and Heathcliff.
84. The Citadel
Directed by King Vidor | 110 min | 1938
Andrew Manson, a young, enthusiastic doctor takes his first job in a Welsh mining town, and begins to wonder at the persistent cough many of the miners have. When his attempts to prove its ...
85. The Life of Emile Zola
Directed by William Dieterle | 116 min | 1937
The biopic of the famous French muckraking writer and his involvement in fighting the injustice of the Dreyfuss Affair.
86. Mr. Deeds Goes to Town
Directed by Frank Capra | 115 min | 1936
Longfellow Deeds, a simple-hearted Vermont tuba player, inherits a fortune and has to contend with opportunist city slickers.
87. The Informer
Directed by John Ford | 91 min | 1935
In 1922, an Irish rebel informs on his friend, then feels doom closing in.