Best movies that are oscar winners or nominees in best director motion picture category

The English Patient(1996)

Combined Rating:
83
Combined Critics Rating: 76

At the close of WWII, a young nurse tends to a badly-burned plane crash victim. His past is shown in flashbacks, revealing an involvement in a fateful love affair.



Erin Brockovich(2000)

Combined Rating:
82
Combined Critics Rating: 76

An unemployed single mother becomes a legal assistant and almost single-handedly brings down a California power company accused of polluting a city's water supply.



Chinatown(1974)

Combined Rating:
82
Combined Critics Rating: 74

A private detective hired to expose an adulterer finds himself caught up in a web of deceit, corruption, and murder.



The Fugitive(1993)

Combined Rating:
82
Combined Critics Rating: 75

Dr. Richard Kimble, unjustly accused of murdering his wife, must find the real killer while being the target of a nationwide manhunt lead by a seasoned US Marshall.



Midnight Cowboy(1969)

Combined Rating:
81
Combined Critics Rating: 76

A naive hustler travels from Texas to New York to seek personal fortune but, in the process, finds himself a new friend.



The Exorcist(1973)

Combined Rating:
81
Combined Critics Rating: 73

When a teenage girl is possessed by a mysterious entity, her mother seeks the help of two priests to save her daughter.



Network(1976)

Combined Rating:
81
Combined Critics Rating: 74

A television network cynically exploits a deranged former anchor's ravings and revelations about the news media for its own profit.



Close Encounters of the Third Kind(1977)

Combined Rating:
81
Combined Critics Rating: 74

Following an accidental encounter with otherworldly vessels, an ordinary man follows a series of psychic clues to the first scheduled meeting between representatives of Earth and visitors from the cosmos.



The Deer Hunter(1978)

Combined Rating:
81
Combined Critics Rating: 73

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.



The Reader(2008)

Combined Rating:
80
Combined Critics Rating: 72

Post-WWII Germany: Nearly a decade after his affair with an older woman came to a mysterious end, law student Michael Berg re-encounters his former lover as she defends herself in a war-crime trial.



Kramer vs. Kramer(1979)

Combined Rating:
80
Combined Critics Rating: 73

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.



Ordinary People(1980)

Combined Rating:
80
Combined Critics Rating: 78

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.



Rain Man(1988)

Combined Rating:
80
Combined Critics Rating: 70

Selfish yuppie Charlie Babbitt's father left a fortune to his savant brother Raymond and a pittance to Charlie; they travel cross-country.



Apollo 13(1995)

Combined Rating:
80
Combined Critics Rating: 72

NASA must devise a strategy to return Apollo 13 to Earth safely after the spacecraft undergoes massive internal damage putting the lives of the three astronauts on board in jeopardy.



The Graduate(1967)

Combined Rating:
79
Combined Critics Rating: 71

A disillusioned college graduate finds himself torn between his older lover and her daughter.





The Piano(1993)

Combined Rating:
79
Combined Critics Rating: 74

A mute woman is sent to 1850s New Zealand along with her young daughter and prized piano for an arranged marriage to a wealthy landowner, but is soon lusted after by a local worker on the plantation.



Patton(1970)

Combined Rating:
78
Combined Critics Rating: 71

The World War II phase of the career of the controversial American general, George S. Patton.



Bonnie and Clyde(1967)

Combined Rating:
77
Combined Critics Rating: 69

Bonnie Parker, a bored waitress falls in love with an ex-con named Clyde Barrow and together they start a violent crime spree through the country, robbing cars and banks.



Days of Heaven(1978)

Combined Rating:
77
Combined Critics Rating: 73

A hot-tempered farm laborer convinces the woman he loves to marry their rich but dying boss so that they can have a claim to his fortune.




4
5
6