Team FC
No Hindi film has enjoyed the sort of cult status Ramesh Sippy's Sholay does, and the film wears the reasons visibly: it's almost too well-made for the kind of film it is, there is real feeling to the emotion, and who doesn't like a good villain?
Fazil's film may have produced numerous remakes, but the original has the teeth of a genre film that'll actually catch viewers off-guard, and it has all the hallmarks of good filmmaking to keep it going.
Mani Ratnam barely changed the politics of Tamil Nadu and yet managed to make a film that not only riled up people, but also had them thronging to watch the country's most favoured topic of conversation play out on the big screen.
Farah Khan and Shah Rukh Khan united as director-actor for the second time to produce this melodramatic spoof on Bollywood that still manages to be as memorable as the best of masala cinema.
Two Superstar Rajnikanths and one Aishwarya Rai Bachchan in a film by Shankar - what more could you want? The director's VFX heavy Frankenstein-esque film was a major success, and likely triggered a change in how film in India was imagined.
Anurag Kashyap's film is the definitive Hindi crime drama of the 21st century; that it is as good, perhaps better than its reputation suggests makes it even better.
S.S. Rajamouli's historical adventure is grand in every way, from the imagination to the scale of storytelling to the two leading men, matching each other beat for beat, step for step, be it during "Naatu Naatu" or while taking down the British Raj.