Sunday November 8

On this day Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home turns 40, the Star Trek film without a villain Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home turns 40 on November 26. It opened in North America on that day in 1986, the day before Thanksgiving, and was the top-grossing film at that weekend's box office.

Monday November 2

On this day Rocky turns 50, and its biggest gamble happened before a frame was shot Rocky turns 50 on November 21. It opened on that day in 1976 at the Cinema II in New York, and set a house record on its first day there. It widened over the following weeks and became the highest-grossing film of 1976 in the US and Canada.

Sunday November 1

On this day Monsters, Inc. turns 25, and its workplace comedy still powers Pixar's best world-building Monsters, Inc. opened in theaters 25 years ago today, on November 1, 2001, introducing a metropolis powered by children's screams and the factory floor workers who clock in every night to collect them.

Friday October 23

On this day Weekend turns 15, and almost did not get made at all Weekend turns 15 this year. Andrew Haigh's film follows two men, Russell and Glen, who meet at a club and spend one weekend together before one of them is set to leave the country, turning what starts as a one night stand into something neither of them planned for.

Wednesday October 21

On this day Moonlight turns 10, and it deserves to be remembered for more than an Oscars mixup Moonlight turns 10 this year. Barry Jenkins' film follows a boy growing up in Miami across three chapters of his life, tracing how he learns to protect himself long before he learns how to be known by anyone.

Tuesday October 20

On this day Return to Halloweentown turns 20, and the recast still defines it Return to Halloweentown turns 20 this year. The fourth and final film in Disney Channel's Halloweentown series sends Marnie Piper off to Witch University, where a secret society and a decades old conspiracy threaten to turn her magic against her.

Sunday October 18

On this day The Color of Money turns 40 this month The Color of Money turns 40 this month. Paul Newman plays pool hustler Fast Eddie Felson, pulled out of retirement by the itch to back a new talent, and finds him in Tom Cruise's brash, undisciplined Vincent Lauria. Martin Scorsese only took the project on after Newman called him directly and asked him to direct it, and he rebuilt the script from Walter Tevis's novel rather than lean on footage from the original film. On this day Sleepers turns 30, and so does the argument about whether it's true Sleepers turns 30 this year. Barry Levinson's adaptation of Lorenzo Carcaterra's bestselling memoir follows two childhood friends who were brutalized at a New York juvenile detention center, and the plan they build as adults to make the men responsible pay.

Thursday October 15

On this day Fifteen years later, Sleep Tight's point of view is still the scariest thing about it Sleep Tight follows Cesar, a concierge at an upscale Barcelona apartment building who has decided that if he cannot be happy, he will at least control who around him gets to be. He fixes his attention on Clara, one of the tenants, and uses the kind of access a concierge has to every door in the building to make her life harder than she realizes. Released in Spain in October 2011, it is a stalker thriller built on proximity rather than jump scares.

Wednesday October 14

On this day Moana turns 10 the same year its live-action remake arrived Ten years ago, Moana sent an impetuous chief's daughter past the reef to find a disgraced demigod and set the ocean right again. Auli'i Cravalho voiced the title role in her first ever screen performance, opposite Dwayne Johnson's Maui, with songs from a not-yet-ubiquitous Lin-Manuel Miranda.

Tuesday October 13

On this day The Artist at 15: a silent film that still wins over audiences Fifteen years after it first charmed audiences, The Artist remains one of the strangest successes in modern Hollywood: a black and white movie about the end of silent film, made in 2011 as if sound had never been invented. Michel Hazanavicius wrote and directed it as a loving dare, built around Jean Dujardin's George Valentin, a silent-era matinee idol who refuses to believe talking pictures could end his career, and Bérénice Bejo's Peppy Miller, a chorus girl on her way up just as he is on his way down.

Friday October 2

On this day Fifteen years of Shame, and the rating nobody else would take Shame is fifteen, and the most consequential thing about it now may be the argument over how it reached audiences at all. Steve McQueen made a film about a man in New York whose life has been reorganized around a compulsion, and the Motion Picture Association rated it NC-17 for explicit sexual content.

Wednesday September 30

On this day 50/50 at fifteen, and the week that made it 50/50 is fifteen, and the thing that still separates it from every other film about a young person with cancer is that it is not trying to move you. It is trying to be accurate, and the accuracy turns out to be far more moving than the alternative would have been.

Tuesday September 29

On this day Fifteen years of Perfect Sense, the pandemic romance nobody was ready for Perfect Sense is fifteen years old, and it has quietly become a far harder film to watch than it was ever designed to be. A chef and an epidemiologist meet in Glasgow just as an epidemic begins moving through the population, taking one sense at a time. The losses arrive in waves, each one announced by a surge of feeling that hits everyone at once.

Monday September 28

On this day Zoolander at 25, and the skyline it had to hide Zoolander is twenty five, and the number lands strangely, because the film has never really aged into a classic so much as refused to leave. It gets quoted constantly by people who have not actually watched it in a decade.

Saturday September 26

On this day Crocodile Dundee turned an Australian persona into a global hit Crocodile Dundee opened in the United States 40 years ago today, on September 26, 1986. The comedy sends Paul Hogan's Outback showman to New York with reporter Sue Charlton, using each place to make the other look newly strange.

Wednesday September 23

On this day Moneyball made institutional change feel like a thriller Moneyball opened in the United States 15 years ago today, on September 23, 2011. Brad Pitt plays Oakland Athletics general manager Billy Beane, trying to build a competitive baseball team with a fraction of his rivals' payroll by looking for value the sport's traditional gatekeepers overlook.

Tuesday September 22

On this day Children of Men made the future look terrifyingly familiar Children of Men opened in the United Kingdom 20 years ago today, on September 22, 2006. In its 2027, humanity has gone nearly two decades without a birth, and Clive Owen's exhausted civil servant is pulled into protecting a pregnant refugee through an increasingly authoritarian Britain.

Monday September 21

On this day It's Only the End of the World traps a family inside what goes unsaid It's Only the End of the World opened in France 10 years ago today, on September 21, 2016. Gaspard Ulliel plays Louis, a writer returning after 12 years away to tell his family that he is dying, only to find the visit consumed by interruptions, resentments, and performances of affection.

Saturday September 19

On this day Blue Velvet still finds terror beneath the perfect lawn Blue Velvet opened in the United States 40 years ago today, on September 19, 1986. David Lynch begins with a college student finding a severed ear in a field, then follows that clue beneath the immaculate lawns and neighborly manners of a small American town.

Wednesday September 16

On this day Carnage turns 15, and the Brooklyn apartment was never real Carnage turns 15 this year. Roman Polanski's black comedy puts two sets of parents in one Brooklyn apartment after their sons get into a schoolyard fight, and the polite conversation meant to settle things quickly curdles into something far messier.

Tuesday September 15

On this day Drive at fifteen, the getaway thriller that turned a jacket into a legend Drive turns fifteen this year, and it still moves like nothing else from its decade. Ryan Gosling plays an unnamed Hollywood stunt driver who moonlights as a wheelman for hire, a quiet arrangement that unravels once he starts falling for his neighbor Irene and her young son Benicio. When Irene's husband gets out of prison owing the wrong people money, Driver signs on to help with one job, and it goes horribly wrong.

Monday September 14

On this day The Magnificent Seven at 10: a western built on James Horner's last score Ten years ago this month, an industrialist rode into the town of Rose Creek and told its people to leave or die, and one bounty hunter decided the fight was worth taking on. The Magnificent Seven turns 10, and the setup still lands cleanly: a mining boss squeezing a small town for its land, and seven strangers with nothing in common except a paycheck and, eventually, a reason to stay.

Wednesday September 9

On this day Warrior turns fifteen this month Warrior opened in theaters on September 9, 2011, and fifteen years on it still stands as one of the most purely felt sports dramas of its decade, a film about two brothers that uses a mixed martial arts tournament as the excuse to talk about something else entirely.

Tuesday September 8

On this day Contagion turns 15 Contagion premiered fifteen years ago this week, in September 2011, and it remains one of Steven Soderbergh's most unsettling films: a thriller spanning the globe about a virus that kills within days and the scramble to contain both the disease and the panic it sets off.

Monday September 7

On this day Sully turns 10 Sully opened in US theaters ten years ago this week, on September 9, 2016, revisiting the January day when Captain Chesley Sullenberger glided a crippled Airbus onto the Hudson River and saved all 155 people aboard. Clint Eastwood's film is not really about the water landing itself, which it treats briskly. It is about what happened to Sullenberger's reputation in the weeks after.

Saturday September 5

On this day The Piano Teacher turns 25 The Piano Teacher opened in French theaters on September 5, 2001, twenty five years ago today, and it has lost none of its capacity to disturb. Michael Haneke's clinical, exacting drama follows Erika Kohut, a piano teacher at a Vienna conservatory who still lives with, and sleeps beside, her domineering mother. When a young student begins pursuing her, the tightly controlled life she has built starts to come apart in ways that are difficult to watch and harder to forget.

Wednesday August 26

On this day Headhunters turns 15 Fifteen years ago, Headhunters turned the polite ritual of a job interview into the setup for a chase. Aksel Hennie plays Roger Brown, a star corporate recruiter who funds his lavish apartment and his even more lavish wife by moonlighting as an art thief, using his interviews to case the walls of the executives he is supposedly vetting.

Tuesday August 25

On this day Mechanic: Resurrection turns 10 Ten years ago this week, Mechanic: Resurrection sent Jason Statham back into the family business of murder disguised as accidents. Arthur Bishop had gotten out once already, in the 2011 remake that kicked off this version of the story, and Resurrection made a whole plot out of proving that retirement never really sticks.

Monday August 24

On this day This Must Be the Place turns 15 Sean Penn barely resembles himself in This Must Be the Place. As Cheyenne, a retired goth rock star hiding out in Dublin, he wears smudged eyeliner, a teased mop of hair and the flattened, half whispered voice of someone who quit performing decades ago. When his estranged father dies, Cheyenne flies back to New York and quietly takes up a search his father never finished, tracking down the former camp guard who tormented him.