100 Essential Columbia Pictures Films

Columbia Pictures, a part of the Sony studios family, turns 100, and like the lady in their famous logo, we’re raising the torch and shining a light on Columbia’s 100 essential movies.

Columbia Pictures is the house Frank Capra helped build. Partnership between studio and director yielded multiple classics in the 1930s, including Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, You Can’t Take It With You, and Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. 1934’s ultimate rom-com It Happened One Night was the first movie ever to sweep the five major Academy Awards for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Actress, and Best Screenplay.

In the 1940s and 1950s, Columbia produced film noirs (Gilda, The Lady from Shanghai, All the King’s Men, The Big Heat) and military epics (The Bridge on the River Kwai, From Here to Eternity). And Marlon Brando revolutionized acting with his iconic method performances in On the Waterfront and The Wild One.

In a decade of social revolution, Columbia started the 1960s with sweeping historical epics (Lawrence of Arabia, Major Dundee, A Man for All Seasons) and closed them out with the anti-war Dr. Strangelove, groundbreaking race dramedy Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, and counter-culture anthem Easy Rider.

With the gritty and urbane New Hollywood taking over in the 1970s, Columbia bet and won with upstart directors Martin Scorsese (Taxi Driver) and Steven Spielberg (Close Encounters of the Third Kind), while winning Best Picture for more classical fare like The Last Picture Show and Kramer vs. Kramer.

For the next generation of the 1980s, the Columbia logo was certainly seen by young folks the world over in front of Ghostbusters and The Karate Kid, and with the expanding demographics for School Daze and La Bamba.

In the 1990s, the first full decade under Sony ownership, let’s hone in on Columbia’s elevated genre productions in action (Bad Boys, Desperado) and science fiction (Gattaca, The Fifth Element, Men in Black).

The 2000s set Columbia and Sony on the major trajectory we know up to today: comic books and comedies. Spider-Man proved superhero movies could succeed as pop culture blockbusters, and the character has carried into animation (Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse) and across collaboration with the Marvel Cinematic Universe (Spider-Man: No Way Home).

And you can’t think 21st-century comedy without movies like Step Brothers, Superbad, 21 Jump Street, Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle, and even Once Upon a Time In Hollywood.

Come celebrate a century of of cinema with Columbia Pictures’ 100 essential movies (sorted by release year)!