The Best Movie Of Each Year From 1925-2025

99. 1927 - Wings

Wings 1927
Paramount Pictures

Honourable Mentions: Metropolis, Napoleon, Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans

1927 was a monumental year for silent cinema, with Fritz Lang's Metropolis and Abel Gance's Napoleon two of the most formative and defining pieces of filmmaking from that era. Masterpieces as those two films are, however, William A. Wellman's Wings is so monumental in influence and technical daring that it's impossible to ignore.

Wellman, who was himself an aviator during the First World War, orchestrated some of the most iconic shots ever put to screen in Wings, with its story of two rival pilots overcoming their feud while the great Clara Bow attempts to win the affections of one still utterly engrossing and balletic almost 100 years on from its release.

 
Posted On: 
Content Producer/Presenter

WhatCulture's very own resident movie guy, Ewan has been working in the content creation biz for over 10 years now, having started as a freelance contributor to WhatCulture Gaming all the way back in 2015. After graduating with a First-Class Honours in History from Northumbria University in 2017 (where he won a prize for a totally killer dissertation on the Watergate years), Ewan took on the role of Comics Editor at WhatCulture and quickly developed WhatCulture Comics into one of the biggest superhero-focused channels on YouTube. He followed this with a brief hiatus at Screen Rant in 2021, where he worked across the Gaming and Film sections as a writer and editor, before returning to WhatCulture as a Senior Content Producer / Presenter in 2023. He started his own podcast, We Love Dad Movies, in 2022, and has contributed several written pieces to the Eisner-nominated comics website Shelfdust as well. In his current role, Ewan incorporates his love of cinema, comic books, and history into written pieces and video essays for WhatCulture's Film & TV channel, as well as WhatCulture Gaming and WhatCulture Horror, with a particular focus on nineties-era Dad Movies, old school Westerns, and Golden Age Hollywood Noir. John Carpenter is his fave, and he thinks Batman Beyond should never have been cancelled. If that's your vibe, you'll probably like his stuff.