What Makes a Movie Great?
A film critic’s litmus test, distilled to three simple truths.
By Natalie McCarty
An avid Letterboxd user and a professional film critic, I spend most of my life talking about movies. I’ve seen 2,278 films over the past three years, which means that most of my days are spent immersed in narrative: studying structure, unpacking performances, and tracing the emotional temperature of an original score. It’s a job, yes, but it’s also the lens through which I process the world.
Inevitably, in conversations with friends, strangers, or peers in the industry, the same question surfaces: How do any movies still surprise you? And just behind that, another: What makes a movie great?
To me, a truly great film doesn’t always hinge on technical perfection. It hinges on impact.
Aftersun (2022)
For me, a film earns greatness by doing at least one of three things:
It changes me in the way that it alters my worldview, empowers something inside me, opens my eyes to a new issue, or helps me make sense of something in a way I hadn’t before.
It is wholly original in form, voice, or vision.
It shapes the culture by infiltrating language, fashion, or a school of thought. (Think The Matrix, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, Fight Club, The Godfather.)
Some films check one box. The best ones check two or even all three. And then there are others, like Pulp Fiction, that may hit all the criteria and still fall just short of perfection for me (don’t kill me!). Because greatness isn’t necessarily a formula, but it is a feeling.
It’s that simple and that complicated.
Sound of Metal (2019)
There are the films that reframe something you thought you understood. Sound of Metal accomplishes this without spectacle. It doesn’t exploit deafness or addiction for narrative drama. Instead, it explores silence and the physical, emotional, and psychological stillness with an honesty that feels rare. It doesn’t offer resolution so much as perspective.
Sing Sing is another. Built around a real theater program inside a maximum-security prison, it’s acted largely by incarcerated men playing versions of themselves. The power of the film lies in its refusal to flatten its subjects into symbols; instead, it simply lets them be human. It’s profoundly impactful for any viewer, but especially so because it urges prison reform without ever preaching it.
Judas and the Black Messiah does something different. It reclaims a history too often erased or distorted. Fred Hampton becomes a presence: magnetic, flawed, and real. You feel close to the story, because the film doesn’t sensationalize. Instead, it reasserts and challenges the viewer to reconsider what they’ve been taught. And, moreover, what they’ve overlooked.
Then there are the documentaries that, despite having less visibility, feel truly revolutionary. Daughters and Soundtrack to a Coup d’État deepen our understanding and widen the frame of perspective.
Aftersun (2022)
Originality also earns a film its place—when something feels singular, uncopied, uninterested in emulating. Aftersun is one of the strongest examples in recent memory, as it holds an entire life in its narrative. Past Lives, too, achieves something similar, packing decades of what-ifs and almosts into one lingering conversation. You feel the passage of time not through montages, but through stillness, language, restraint.
The Iron Claw approaches family trauma without melodrama as it frames grief as something that compounds over time. Even La La Land deserves recognition for its willingness to be earnest.
Rocky (1976)
Then there are the films that embed themselves into the culture through fashion, dialogue, structure, and tone. The Godfather and Rocky reshaped the rhythm of American storytelling. The Matrix influenced not just filmmaking but also the aesthetic of an entire decade. Fast Times at Ridgemont High distilled suburban adolescence into something both exaggerated and instantly recognizable, launching a new subgenre in the process. Jerry Maguire gave us some of the most enduring lines in pop culture, while Get Out reengineered the horror genre by putting it in direct conversation with race, power, and American history. These films defined cultural moments.
Jesus Christ Superstar (1973)
Of course, not every movie needs to bear this weight. Some are built to comfort, others to distract. Plenty of films succeed on humor, charm, or cinematic beauty alone. But when a film surprises you, reorients you, or lingers long after you watch it, when it finds a way to shape your thinking or simply lets you see yourself more clearly, that’s when it earns its place.
Greatness often is not found in award count, box office numbers, or critical consensus. It’s a matter of what sticks. And sometimes, all it takes is one moment—one scene, one choice, one idea—for a film to reach that threshold.
That’s what makes a great movie.
