The 8 Best Mysteries on movie.guru, Ranked

Ranked by movie.guru score, the blend of critics and audiences. Every one of these keeps a secret from you, and three of them are Hitchcock's.

Number one is from 1954, and its best detective isn't the one you think.

1. 8
   Memento (2000)9.5

   Guy Pearce is the most underrated lead Nolan ever had.

   113 minutes told backwards, 8.4 on IMDb from 1.46 million votes. Pearce plays every scene like it's his first, because for him it is.
2. 7
   Apocalypse Now Redux (2001)9.3

   The mystery isn't where Kurtz is. It's what war does.

   92 on Metacritic, 8.4 on IMDb from 780,204 votes, $105.5 million worldwide. A boat, a river, and a mission nobody will fully explain. Long, heavy and unforgettable.
3. 6
   The Lives of Others (2006)9.5

   A spy movie where the spy becomes the audience.

   Ulrich Tukur plays the most chilling boss on this list, and Sebastian Koch's playwright has no idea who's listening. 92% on Rotten Tomatoes, 137 minutes.
4. 5
   Vertigo (1958)9.5

   Hitchcock's most obsessive movie, and that's a crowded field.

   A perfect 100 on Metacritic, made for $2.5 million. Kim Novak is hypnotic, and those spiral title graphics still look like the future.
5. 4
   Chinatown (1974)9.6

   Faye Dunaway gives the best performance in any noir.

   Critics, audiences and Rotten Tomatoes all land on 98%. Jack Nicholson plays a detective who thinks he's the smartest man in Los Angeles, and the city keeps proving otherwise.
6. 3
   Citizen Kane (1941)9.7

   Its reputation is stuffy. The movie is a riot.

   Metacritic 100, Rotten Tomatoes 99%, and just $1.9 million domestic. Orson Welles plays a newspaper tycoon who buys everything, and the jokes land before the sadness does.
7. 2
   Psycho (1960)9.6

   Made for $807K, and it still runs every horror movie.

   8.5 on IMDb from 797,202 votes, 97 on Metacritic. Hitchcock breaks the rules of the thriller partway through, and audiences in 1960 had never seen anything like it.
8. 1
   Rear Window (1954)9.7

   Grace Kelly is the real detective here, not James Stewart.

   A 9.8 movie.guru score, the highest here, on a $1 million budget. James Stewart sits by the window with a broken leg and big theories, while Grace Kelly does the actual legwork.

$3,922 says you finish Chinatown and suddenly have strong opinions about your water bill.

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