15 Movies with Great Cinematography

​Written by Trevor Pacelli.
​Photography has been a hobby of mine since high school, and that combined with my special interest in movies drew me to visually striking movies. Being on the autism spectrum, I don’t follow verbal or written words as well as seeing a story or set of instructions visualized, so I connect well with movies made by directors who understand the meaning of “show don’t tell.” Therefore, here are fifteen movies that I believe best utilize the art of cinematography:

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15. Marriage Story 2019

Director of Photography: Robbie Ryan (The Favourite, Poor Things)

​Marriage Story crops up close and personal to its subjects, embracing a documentary style that follows the actors around with a handheld camera. The cinematography complements the editing style by intentionally lingering on the actors’ faces as they monologue, which takes on an aura of isolated loneliness when combined with the use of white walls. No other movie about marriage and divorce maintains such consistency in cropping the two main actors to show their true interpersonal distance from one another, as well as their personal distance from themselves.

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14. The Grand Budapest Hotel ​2014

Director of Photography: Robert D. Yeoman (Bridesmaids)

​The picture-perfect imagery of The Grand Budapest Hotel has symmetrical candy-colored compositions with an aspect ratio that changes to each decade across the timeline of the film. The camera also moves smoothly and quickly for comedic effect while the actors are framed in the most playful way possible, presenting the very best of Wes Anderson’s unique lens as a director. No other cinematic auteur could turn his signature style into a genre the same way Anderson achieved it alongside his director of photography.

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13. Nope ​2022

Director of Photography: Hoyte Van Hoytema (Dunkirk, Her, Interstellar, Oppenheimer, Spectre)

Nope’s sequence of images is structured around shots of the sky meeting the land, symbolically merging the two into a cohesive whole. The crew took a new approach to the day-for-night effects (or filming during the day and making it look like nighttime in post-production) with two cameras filming these scenes: one film, one infrared, and to ensure the sharpest, most detailed image possible throughout, the entire movie was filmed in IMAX. The result is a horrifying Frankenstein-contraption that challenges what can be made possible with cinematic horror.

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12. The Shawshank Redemption ​1994

Director of Photography: Roger Deakins (1917, The Big Lebowski, Blade Runner 2049, Fargo, No Country for Old Men, Skyfall)

​The Shawshank Redemption wasn’t successful right away, but eventually it shook up the independent filmmaking industry, giving those studios the tools to hold a candle next to the major studios. The film’s techniques included “heightened naturalism,” ergo, using soft lights that utilized the prison’s practical light fixtures so that it all looked like a real functioning prison, not a movie set. To top things off, the desaturated colors and shadows suggest a claustrophobic environment as the tracking shots give a powerful sense of realism not felt in many movies. 

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11. The Social Network ​2010

Director of Photography: Jeff Cronenweth (Fight Club)

​The Social Network’s ambitious techniques gave other filmmakers the realization of what can be achieved with great digital cinematography. Director David Fincher combines his signature style of deep shadows and warm colors with effects not seen in other biopics like a surreal tilt-shift blur during the rowing scene that gives a depth of field that almost steps into the supernatural. It’s amazing how despite the dark color palette, this movie still has such super detailed photography, which wouldn’t have been as effective if shot on a film camera.

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10. American Beauty ​1999

Director of Photography: Conrad L. Hall (Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Cool Hand Luke, In Cold Blood, Road to Perdition)

​The techniques used to achieve American Beauty’s cinematography were ambitious for the time, including the compelling ways it fits camcorder video footage into the frame. The characters are also framed in certain ways that make them appear bigger or smaller depending on how much power they have, while they’re framed in ways that communicate the condition of their relationships. Lights illuminate how a specific character wants to be perceived while shadows illuminate what they’re really like when nobody’s watching—all delicate ways to make the audience look closer.

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9. The Favourite ​2018

Director of Photography: Robbie Ryan (Marriage Story, Poor Things)

​No period drama ever resembled The Favourite, one that uses almost 100 percent natural light, even for candlelight shots, as a fisheye lens is used to give a sensation of claustrophobia. Certain shots also contain lots of motion as the camera angles go extremely low to put the queen at equal power to the classes beneath herself. Its brave cinematography techniques make for a bizarre, repulsive, and unforgettable cautionary tale about the queen’s closest companions taking advantage of her gout to manipulate her for power.

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8. Mad Max: Fury Road ​2015

Director of Photography: John Seale (Dead Poets Society, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, Rain Man)

​Mad Max: Fury Road brought arthouse techniques to the action-heavy blockbuster genre, which in turn influenced every other movie under that genre made afterward. The many car chases used practical effects in the desert, which naturally necessitated every piece of photography equipment imaginable, like putting the camera on wires to fly over the action. Though a rich color palette of fiery hues added with the magic of color grading is the real key to completing the signature harsh look of this dystopian world.

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7. A Quiet Place ​2018

Director of Photography: Charlotte Bruus Christensen (Fences)

​A Quiet Place pushes the standards of not just horror, nor just any movie set in the future, but any movie that portrays a disability like deafness. As the camera smoothly moves around the sets to convey the relevant plot exposition, the main actors are framed to look like a traditional American family portrait. The photography, despite its heavily contrasted lights and colors, still maintains a sentimental aesthetic by visually harkening back to the imagery of Hollywood westerns, making for one of cinema history’s most progressive horror films.

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6. Nomadland ​2021

​Director of Photography: Joshua James Richards

​Nomadland uses natural imagery to tell the story in ways no other movie has done before—not even ones directed by Terrence Mallick, who was a large influence on the slow meditative nature of the movie’s cinematography. Real nomads are interviewed for key scenes under mostly natural light—even while filming at magic hour, demonstrating how powerfully the closeups work to aid the film’s intimate nature. Hard to believe that even though this movie was originally screened in IMAX, IMAX cameras weren’t used on set! 

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5. Slumdog Millionaire ​2008

​Director of Photography: Anthony Dod Mantle

​Slumdog Millionaire came about when digital cameras were still new, so the results of this project helped give future cinematographers the courage to embrace the new technology. The highly saturated colors lit by natural light are supported by other keen techniques like canted angles to give a chaotic view of the Mumbai slums and a camera that moves quickly without jarring the image. The “Jai Ho” end credits number also provides some excellent fun filming techniques that bring together Bollywood and Hollywood.

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4. The Batman ​2022

Director of Photography: Greig Fraser (Dune: Part One, Dune: Part Two, The Mandalorian)

​Unlike other comic book movies nowadays, The Batman aims for the heightened realism of movies in the low-budget crime/thriller genre. The practical effects take advantage of sodium lights, anamorphic lenses, silicone lenses, and other ambitious techniques to generate a more tangible image, even allowing one scene to be lit by nothing more than muzzle flashes. Besides being a technical marvel to watch, the film also stylistically harkens back to 1970s thrillers like Chinatown and All the President’s Men, giving a new modern identity to the caped crusader.

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3. The Dark Knight ​2008

Director of Photography: Wally Pfister (Inception)

​Yet another Batman movie on this list, The Dark Knight is the first movie to use IMAX at such a broad scale. Christopher Nolan’s elaborate vision is realized by crane shots and a shifting color palette that adds to the thematic duality of good vs. evil, with specific shots lighting the actors’ faces only on a single side. The 2000s was a time when audiences grew sick of traditional campy superhero content, so the darkly realistic visual style here forever changed the genre across all artistic media.

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2. Birdman ​2014

Director of Photography: Emmanuel Lubezki (Gravity, The Revenant)

​Birdman or (the Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) uses techniques never seen before, as multiple shots are strung together to make it look like this entire movie is one continuous take. The transitions between shots often involve a swipe across a wall or set piece, meaning consistency in camera was paramount during production. Most of these shots go the extra mile by using natural lights, with digital enhancements made to 90 minutes of the runtime, in turn paving way for the last movie on this list...

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1. 1917 ​2019

Director of Photography: Roger Deakins (The Big Lebowski, Blade Runner 2049, Fargo, No Country for Old Men, The Shawshank Redemption, Skyfall)

​Since 1917, like Birdman, imitates a continuous uninterrupted shot, the movie gives the set pieces a 360-degree field of view. An operator while filming would often hold the camera, then instantly hook it onto a crane that would be lifted before the director calls, “cut!” The production crew’s patience was constantly tested, seeing how they fell under the mercy of the weather while filming—a process that nobody ten years earlier would’ve ever dreamed of being possible. The fluid cinematography in the end really works with the incredible special effects to pull off an impossible illusion that provides the best of what a movie could do to tell the story through simple visuals.

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Trevor Pacelli is a young adult on the autism spectrum as well as the author of What Movies Can Teach Us About Disabilities, What Movies Can Teach Us About Bullying, Summer of the Fruit Virus and the illustrator of The Kindergarten Adventures of Amazing Grace: What in the World is Autism?, and the author/illustrator of Amazing Grace Goes to the Zoo.