10 Greatest Movies Turning 30 in 2026, Ranked

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Ewan McGregor as Mark Renton, smoking a cigarette next to Sick Boy, Tommy, and Spud in 'Trainspotting'.

Jeremy has more than 2200 published articles on Collider to his name, and has been writing for the site since February 2022. He's an omnivore when it comes to his movie-watching diet, so will gladly watch and write about almost anything, from old Godzilla films to gangster flicks to samurai movies to classic musicals to the French New Wave to the MCU... well, maybe not the Disney+ shows.
His favorite directors include Martin Scorsese, Sergio Leone, Akira Kurosawa, Quentin Tarantino, Werner Herzog, John Woo, Bob Fosse, Fritz Lang, Guillermo del Toro, and Yoji Yamada. He's also very proud of the fact that he's seen every single Nicolas Cage movie released before 2022, even though doing so often felt like a tremendous waste of time. He's plagued by the question of whether or not The Room is genuinely terrible or some kind of accidental masterpiece, and has been for more than 12 years (and a similar number of viewings).
When he's not writing lists - and the occasional feature article - for Collider, he also likes to upload film reviews to his Letterboxd profile (username: Jeremy Urquhart) and Instagram account.
He has achieved his 2025 goal of reading all 13,467 novels written by Stephen King, and plans to spend the next year or two getting through the author's 82,756 short stories and 105,433 novellas.

1996 was a year that was… eh, it was a fine enough one for movies. It honestly wasn’t as good as 1994 (Pulp Fiction, The Shawshank Redemption, The Lion King, The Crow), and neither was it on the same level as 1999 (Magnolia, Toy Story 2, The Matrix). But it was a year. And every year, there are good movies. There are bad movies every year, too, but that’s not why we’re here right now.

So, why 1996? At the time of writing, it’s just ticked over into 2026, and so a bunch of movies are due for a fairly significant anniversary: their thirtieths. If you're not reading this in 2026, consider this a rundown of some great movies that came out in 1996, but if you are reading this in 2026, consider wishing the following flicks a happy 30th birthday once that date rolls around (in all cases, it’s soon).

10 'The Rock'

John Patrick Mason with a wound on his left eyebrow looking ahead in The Rock - 1996

It’s always wonderful when an action movie has a gonzo premise that it manages to pull off, making you get swept up in the action while also laughing at the ridiculousness of all that’s going on. Enter The Rock, which is one of the hammiest and silliest action movies of the 1990s, pairing Sean Connery with Nicolas Cage and having a premise that involves breaking into a prison, rather than breaking out.

The Rock is one of the hammiest and silliest action movies of the 1990s, pairing Sean Connery with Nicolas Cage, all the while having a wild premise.

Oh, and the prison is Alcatraz, and Connery’s character is the only man who’s ever escaped from there, and some rogue military personnel have taken over the island and are threatening to launch an attack on San Francisco if they don’t get what they want. It’s also directed by Michael Bay at his most wonderfully over-the-top, and yeah, in the end, The Rock is one of those movies that might make you say, “Hmm, guess they don’t really make ‘em like they used to.”

9 'Romeo + Juliet'

Leonardo Dicaprio's Romeo smiling at Claire Danes' Juliet in Romeo + Juliet

Romeo + Juliet is a take on the play you'd expect it to be a take of, but here, things are kind of modernized. The dialogue isn't, but the setting is very different from what you might ordinarily see, with the people in conflict also belonging to modern-day street gangs, with firearms and stuff, which might make it sound a bit like West Side Story, but that one was more inspired by Romeo and Juliet.

Romeo + Juliet is more or less Romeo and Juliet, complete with all the melodrama, romance, and tragedy you'd expect. It’s a story – and an approach to said story – well-suited to Baz Luhrmann’s sensibilities as a director, though. He goes as big, flashy, and bombastic as needed here, and though it results in a sometimes exhausting movie, Romeo + Juliet is mostly great, and it succeeds in re-energizing a story that’s been told so many times over the past few hundred years.

8 'Breaking the Waves'

Emily Watson leaning her face against a door in Breaking the Waves.

If you would prefer not feeling sad for a couple of hours, you might want to sit a movie like Breaking the Waves out. In fact, if you're not really into soul-crushing cinema, perhaps it’s best to tread lightly around Lars von Trier movies more generally, since he almost always goes to some heavy and/or disturbing places, even when (or maybe especially when) he does a musical, for crying out loud (I see you, Dancer in the Dark. Stop cutting onions in my vicinity).

Anyway, Breaking the Waves is about two people in a relationship, and what happens when one of them has a life-changing accident, telling the other she can continue to see other people physically, since that’s not something he can provide for her anymore. And then things get complicated. It goes for a long time, it mines some heavy emotions, and it is an ultimately powerful and effective film… just not one for every day; you really have to be in the right mood (and sufficiently emotionally prepared) for this one.

7 'Scream'

Sidney answering a phone call while Tatum stands beside her in Scream.

Scream kicked off a pretty impressively long franchise that, 30 years later, is still kind of going? Wes Craven has sadly passed away, but there were a couple made in the early 2020s that were pretty good, and without his involvement, but then there’s been other drama with the series, and who even knows what’s happening anymore?

These are 21st century problems, though. Going back to near the end of the 20th century, you’ve got Scream (the first one), and it holds up as a pretty great comedic slasher movie that, unlike a lot of horror comedies, probably puts the emphasis more on horror than comedy. The meta stuff is cute, and allows for some comedic relief, but Scream still works well as a mystery/horror movie, and if anyone can enter into this first one unspoiled (miraculously), then they're likely to remain just as surprised at some of the stuff that happens as audiences back in 1996 would've been.

6 'Bound'

Jennifer Tilly and Gina Gershon in 'Bound'

The Wachowskis became bigger names a few years on from 1996, thanks to the release of The Matrix, but Bound – which did come out in 1996 – shouldn’t be overlooked. This one is kind of a mix of a neo-noir sort of movie and an erotic film all at once, being about two women who find themselves attracted to each other, with only an abusive male partner of one of them standing in the way.

So, they kind of do what they have to do, to someone who pretty much had it coming, and then Bound takes off in a really energetic and engaging way. Tonally and stylistically, it’s got a unique and hard-to-describe vibe, but there is something very compelling overall, and it was an early sign that the Wachowskis certainly had quite a bit to contribute to the cinematic landscape, as filmmakers.

5 'Pusher'

Mads Mikkelsen looking to the distance as Tonny in Pusher (1996)

Before Nicolas Winding Refn was well-known for Drive, and Mads Mikkelsen was well-known for things like Casino Royale and Hannibal, the two teamed up for Pusher, which is more underrated than some of the other movies mentioned here, but largely just as good. There’s a drug deal that goes wrong early on, because they never seem to go right in crime movies, and that sets in motion a film that involves one man trying to dig his way out of what might well be an inevitable doom.

That’s all to say that Pusher is intense, and it’s also up there among the grittiest and grimiest crime movies ever made. There’s just a real forward momentum to this one, and a persistent anxiety, that is quite admirable. It’s always felt a bit overlooked, compared to some other Winding Refn and Mikkelsen projects, so it’s worth a look if you’ve not seen it and generally dig down-and-dirty crime/thriller/drama movies.

4 'Hamlet'

Charlton Heston as the Player King and Kenneth Branagh as Hamlet in Kenneth Branagh's Hamlet (1996)

You want a plot summary of Hamlet? What is this, high school? You know Hamlet! It’s like the Shakespeare play, or at least in the running alongside Romeo and Juliet (which, hey, also got a solid film adaptation in 1996) and Macbeth. Hamlet could well be his ultimate tragedy, though, and his grandest, with this version of Hamlet being noteworthy for handling everything on a truly epic scale.

Hamlet (1996) doesn’t condense or cut out characters/scenes, meaning that it is Hamlet in all its Hamlet-ness, with a runtime of four hours, as a result. But it’s a good four hours, especially because Hamlet (1996) has one of the greatest casts assembled for any movie of its decade, and maybe even of all time, come to think of it.

3 'From Dusk Till Dawn'

From Dusk Till Dawn - Four men standing in a bar, holding weapons ready themselves for the battle ahead

The wonderful thing about From Dusk Till Dawn is that it’s like two rather crazy movies slammed into one, and the movie itself does not care about how jarring you think that change of pace is. There is a hostage situation involving a family and a pair of criminal brothers who take them captive while trying to helm an escape that involves crossing the border between the U.S. and Mexico.

That’s the first half-hour or so. They wait at a strange bar for a while, all part of the plan, and then at that bar, chaos erupts, and the movie lunges into unexpected territory. Yeah, you probably know that territory by now, but in case you didn't, and still wanted to watch From Dusk Till Dawn unspoiled, you're welcome.

Rosebud is a sled, by the way.

2 'Fargo'

The Coen Brothers are particularly good at making movies about very unlucky people, sometimes with that bad luck deserved, sometimes having it feel tragic, and, at other times, making it feel somewhere in between. That’s a convoluted way of saying they're masters at balancing tone, and Fargo demonstrates that particularly well, because fate, luck, and tragedy all intertwine here, and the movie’s funny when it wants to be, intense at other times, and oddly moving at a few points, too.

It did inspire an anthology series that’s relatively compelling as well, but you can’t really go past the movie, when you're talking about Fargo, and it did indeed, quite surprisingly, come out 30 years ago now. It likely felt pretty close to an instant classic when it first came out, and nowadays, with it still being as good as it is, it’s easy to call it, quite simply, an absolute classic, in the traditional sense of the word.

1 'Trainspotting'

Ewan McGregor as Mark Renton, smoking a cigarette at a nightclub in 'Trainspotting'.

When Trainspotting turned 20, in 2016, it was the best movie of its year, and when it turns 40, it’ll still probably stand as the greatest thing that came out in 1996. Calling it now, it’ll still be amazing in 2036, and then remain so in 2046, 2056, and so on… endlessly. It’s risky to try to imagine future classics, sometimes, but this one really hasn’t lost any of its impact yet, so its prospects are good.

As for what Trainspotting is about? Mostly addiction, but also how one lives their life when they're either trying to come off a substance they're dependent on, or in the middle of that dependence, all in a very balanced way. You understand why the highs are enticing, and then the movie does a good job at helping you feel the crushing and disturbing lows. Phenomenal soundtrack here, too. But the main thing is, there’s more nuance to Trainspotting, compared to other movies about addiction, and all the while, it’s also darkly funny, stylish, consistently exciting, sometimes frightening, and absolutely devastating on an emotional front, when it wants to be.