The 10 Best Anthology Movies Ever Made

Anthology movies can be tricky to pull off. They’re made up of a bunch of short films, edited together into a feature-length movie, so invariably, a lot of anthology movies have segments that are better than others. They’re the cinematic equivalent of a short story collection.

There are plenty of bad anthology movies, like the V/H/S franchise, but there are also some examples where visionary filmmakers, from Jim Jarmusch to the Coen brothers, have tied together each segment with a common thread. Wading through the bad ones can be a depressing ordeal, so here are the 10 best anthology movies ever made.

10 Sin City (2005)

Directed, written, and produced by Robert Rodriguez and Frank Miller, whose graphic novels the movie was based on, Sin City is an anthology of hyper-stylized, hard-boiled noir stories. Shot in black-and-white (with the occasional splash of red), Sin City remained as faithful to the source material as possible.

The great thing about anthology movies is that they require less commitment from each cast member, so it’s easier to cast big-name A-listers. The cast of Sin City includes Jessica Alba, Mickey Rourke, Bruce Willis, and Elijah Wood.

9 Twilight Zone: The Movie (1983)

Burgess Meredith replaces Rod Serling as the narrator in this big-screen adaptation of The Twilight Zone. The movie remakes three episodes of the original series and also provides one new story. John Landis directed the first segment along with the prologue and epilogue, with Steven Spielberg, Joe Dante, and George Miller each helming a segment (with the latter tackling the most memorable sequence, “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet”).

No subsequent take on The Twilight Zone has matched the greatness of Serling’s original, but this movie comes pretty close.

8 New York Stories (1989)

Three quintessential New York directors with vastly different styles – Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola, and Woody Allen – collaborated on New York Stories to give a rounded cinematic portrait of the city.

New York Stories doesn’t find any of these directors at the height of their powers, but they each deliver an interesting short story.

7 Black Sabbath (1963)

As both the namesake of the groundbreaking rock band and the inspiration for the structure of Pulp Fiction, Mario Bava’s Black Sabbath is an underrated gem of Italian horror cinema. Originally titled I Tre Volti Della Paura, which literally translates into English as The Three Faces of Fear, Black Sabbath tells three frightening tales, each introduced by the great horror film legend Boris Karloff.

In one story, a woman is stalked by an escaped convict. In another story, a nurse considers stealing jewelry from a corpse. And in the third, a Russian count crosses paths with some vampires.

6 History Of The World, Part I (1981)

From the brilliant mind of Mel Brooks, History of the World, Part I is presented as a series of sketches lampooning historical figures and events. Brooks himself plays five roles, including Moses and King Louis XVI, while his giant ensemble cast includes such comedy greats as Sid Caesar, Madeline Kahn, Dom DeLuise, Cloris Leachman, and Spike Milligan.

Despite the “Part I” in the title, Brooks never intended to make a sequel. “Part I” is actually a joke, a reference to Sir Walter Raleigh, who started writing The History of the World as a prisoner in the Tower of London, but got executed after writing just one volume.

5 Paris, Je T’aime (2006)

Across its two-hour runtime, Paris, je t’aime (which translates to English as Paris, I Love You) contains 18 short films, helmed by a total of 22 directors (some of them doubled up). Each of the segments is set in a different arrondissement in the titular city.

The 22 directors include Alfonso Cuarón, Alexander Payne, the Coen brothers, Gérard Depardieu, Wes Craven, and Gus Van Sant, and the movie’s ensemble cast consists of actors of varying nationalities.

4 Coffee And Cigarettes (2003)

Jim Jarmusch directed three short films under the title Coffee and Cigarettes before he decided to shoot eight more and edit them all together as a feature-length anthology. The titular everyday commodities are a recurring thread throughout the 11 short segments.

The ensemble cast contains such disparate talent as Steve Buscemi, Cate Blanchett, Steve Coogan, Bill Murray, Alfred Molina, screen legend Roberto Benigni, rapper RZA, deadpan comedian Steven Wright, and pop star Iggy Pop.

3 The Ballad Of Buster Scruggs (2018)

Although they originally developed it as a TV miniseries, the Coen brothers retooled The Ballad of Buster Scruggs to be a feature film in the middle of production.

The stories range from the lighthearted (a prospector digging for gold under the hot sun) to the super dark (an impresario throwing his limbless act into a river to make room for a chicken that can do math), and feature such recognizable stars as Tim Blake Nelson (in the title role), Liam Neeson, and James Franco.

2 Heavy Metal (1981)

Adapted from sci-fi and fantasy stories found in the magazine of the same name, Heavy Metal is a rare case of an animated movie featuring graphic violence and sexually explicit material. It all revolves around a meteorite that is supposedly the source of all the evil in the universe.

There’s been talk of a remake of this movie for years, with everyone from David Fincher to Zack Snyder to Guillermo del Toro to James Cameron to Tenacious D coming and going from the project, so until that project finally comes to fruition (if it ever does), you can check out the original.

1 Pulp Fiction (1994)

When Quentin Tarantino and Roger Avary initially conceived their Oscar-winning screenplay Pulp Fiction, they planned to follow the anthology structure of Black Sabbath more rigidly. The finished product is a little more fluid than that, existing as a complete piece with each storyline spilling over into the others. Because of this editing style, it’s technically “hyperlink cinema,” but it still has the feel of a classic anthology movie.

Each storyline plays on a familiar trope from hard-boiled crime stories in pulp magazines — a gangster taking the boss’ wife to dinner, a boxer who’s paid by the mob to throw a fight, and two hitmen struggling to dispose of a corpse — and does something completely unexpected with them.

About The Author

Ben Sherlock
(3458 Articles Published)

Ben Sherlock is a writer, comedian, independent filmmaker, and Burt Reynolds enthusiast. He writes lists for Screen Rant and features and reviews for Game Rant. He’s currently in pre-production on his first feature (and has been for a while, because filmmaking is expensive). You can catch him performing standup at odd pubs around the UK that will give him stage time. Previously, he wrote for Taste of Cinema, Comic Book Resources, and BabbleTop.

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