Greta Gerwig’s upcoming third feature, Barbie, is creating enough feverish excitement among fans to match the vibrancy of the movie’s colors. It stars Margot Robbie as Barbie with Ryan Gosling by her side as Ken. While plot details are largely under wraps, it looks like we’ll meet Barbie as she’s heading out into the real world. But what she’ll do out there, we are not exactly sure — much like Ken when he asks to sleep over at Barbie’s house.

One of the most exciting things about the few peeks we’ve had into the world of Barbie is its aesthetics. The crew has strongly leaned into the overly-saturated colors, hot pink in particular, that we expect from a Barbie product. Committing to such a vivid color palette helps to create a clear and immersive sense of place. Similarly to the shift from black and white to color in The Wizard of Oz, there’s no doubt that we’re not in the real world anymore.

While it can be easy to downplay the role of color in film when it comes to those with a more standard appearance, it’s clear how important it is when a movie makes bold choices. Here are 13 other colorful movies to watch before Barbie comes out.

13 In the Mood for Love (2000)

Maggie Cheung and Tony Leung in In the Mood for Love
Block 2 Pictures

In the Mood for Love is one of Wong Kar-Wai’s most iconic movies, famous for its bold color palette. It follows two neighbors, played by Tony Leung Chiu-wai and Maggie Cheung, who bond over the fact that they both suspect their partners of cheating on them. The bond they form is strong, but they agree that they must keep it platonic or else they would be no better than their cheating spouses. The strength of the colors we see could represent several things, from the new world the protagonists have opened up for each other to the intensity of their feelings.

12 The Green Knight (2021)

Dev Patel as Gawain in The Green Knight
A24

Adapted from a story from around the 1400s, The Green Knight is a beautifully shot Arthurian tale with a unique almost gothic appearance. The story follows Dev Patel as Gawain who is on a journey across the country to reunite with the green knight in question and potentially meet his death. As you might be able to tell from the title, colors play a significant role here and therefore are heightened and saturated. The Green Knight is thematically concerned with the cyclical nature of life and the earth, with green representing the unstoppable quality of nature that steadily and inevitably takes over all things.

11 The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014)

The two young people in the mail room filled with pink boxes in The Grand Budapest Hotel
Fox Searchlight Pictures

Wes Anderson is a director known for his pastel colors, perhaps never more so than in The Grand Budapest Hotel. Its story emerges from an aging hotel concierge, Ralph Fiennes, who retells events from his glory days when he and a lobby boy, Tony Revolori, were involved in the theft of a famous Renaissance painting. This movie is famous for its pastel pinks, which contrasts with the vivid pink of Barbie, and its characters’ unique costuming. A large part of the appeal of Anderson’s direction is the visuals and The Grand Budapest Hotel finds this style at its best.

Related: 11 Film Directors Who Love to Play with Color

10 The Florida Project (2017)

A scene from The Florida Project.

With a similar pastel palette, The Florida Project trades a European fantasy hotel for a run-down American motel. It follows the life of six-year-old Moonee who lives at the motel in question with her mother. We see both the joys of her young, creative mind as well as the hardships of the poverty in which she lives. It’s an incredibly touching and empathetically drawn portrait of childhood, with the emphasis on soft, warm colors drawing you into Moonee’s world. By including these noteworthy colors but keeping their intensity somewhat muted we get an idea of Moonee's childhood sense of wonder that is often stunted by her circumstances.

9 La La Land (2016)

Ryan Gosling La La Land
Summit Entertainment

Starring Barbie’s own Ryan Gosling as Sebastian along with Emma Stone as Mia, La La Land is the story of a couple determined to find success in Los Angeles and is packed with color. From Mia’s iconic yellow dress from the movie’s poster to the beautiful golden hour sunset in the background, color is unavoidable in this movie. A lot has been said about the use of color here. For example, writing for Film School Rejects, Zosha Millman theorizes that blue represents creativity and control, yellow marks a change in the narrative, and red signifies reality.

8 Danse Serpentine (1897)

Loie Fuller in Danse Serpentine
Lumière

From the earliest days of cinema comes Danse Serpentine, directed by the legendary Lumière brothers. It features Loie Fuller, a lesbian icon and trailblazer of modern dance conducting hypnotic angelic and demonic serpentine dances. Given that this short film was made in the 1800s, in order to include color here, the frames were individually hand painted. This technique produced a beautiful watercolor-like effect that is so different from the way our movies look today. Both Fuller and the Lumières created timeless art that still inspires those working today, including the likes of Taylor Swift.

Related: Some of the First Movies Ever Made in Full Color

7 Her (2013)

Theodore wearing glasses, JPG.
Warner Bros. Pictures. 

Spike Jonze’s Her is set somewhere in the near future and stars Joaquin Phoenix in the central role of Theodore. He falls in love with an advanced artificial intelligence operating system, voiced by Scarlet Johansson. The coloring of this movie is important as it is an interesting combination of pastel colors that are somehow also quite saturated. This gives the movie a strange appearance, helping to position the events in the future without having to imagine too much of an advancement in technology and society. We can tell that its appearance is slightly off but not so much that its world is unrecognizable.

6 Moulin Rouge! (2001)

Christian, Satine, and the ensemble performing "Come What May," Moulin Rouge.
20th Century Fox

Moulin Rouge! is wonderfully larger than life in true Baz Luhrmann fashion. It stars Ewan McGregor as Christian, a poor poet who falls for Nicole Kidman’s character, Satine, a nightclub courtesan. Anyone who is familiar with Luhrmann’s movies will know that there is no subtlety in sight, everything must be dialed all the way up, including color. In Moulin Rouge!, he often contrasts red and blue, the colors of fiery passion and cold loneliness. While not the most intricate of color coding, it’s effective and in keeping with the Luhrmann style.

5 Moonlight (2016)

Little in Moonlight
A24

Following the life of a man from childhood, to adolescence, to adulthood, Moonlight is a singular coming-of-age portrait. It features gut-wrenching performances from Alex R. Hibbard, Ashton Sanders, and Trevante Rhodes as Chiron at these different ages. The line of dialogue where the movie gets its title is, “In moonlight, Black boys look blue,” showing that colors are highly significant in the movie where the most emotional moments happen under the cover of darkness. Even in its nighttime scenes, the screen is drenched in vivid blues and purples, often mirroring the sadness and vulnerability in Chiron.

4 Coraline (2009)

Coraline
Focus Features

Coraline is a spookily beautiful stop-motion animated movie. Its voice cast includes Dakota Fanning in the titular role, Keith David, and Dawn French. Coraline finds herself in an alternate world, where many aspects of her usual life are idealized, but others are more sinister than she first thought. Similarly to The Florida Project, Coraline uses its colors to draw the audience into the more vivid world of childhood imagination. This is particularly necessary here as Coraline’s departure from reality requires the audience to suspend their disbelief more than some of the other movies listed here.

3 Enter the Void (2009)

Trippy imagery in the movie Enter the Void
Wild Bunch

In Gaspar Noé’s Enter the Void we meet Oscar, played by Nathaniel Brown, the protagonist. He is a drug dealer who was killed in Tokyo as a result of a betrayal by his best friend. Now, he roams the city hoping for rebirth while he watches the aftermath of his death. The intense and kaleidoscopic use of color here aligns with the central elements of the movie: drug use and the afterlife. It creates an other-worldly feeling that disconnects the viewer from reality just as Oscar is by his death.

2 The Neon Demon (2016)

A scene from The Neon Demon
Wild Bunch

Elle Fanning stars in The Neon Demon as a fresh-faced teenage model hoping to make it in the industry. When her career swiftly picks up, her peers aren’t happy and will stop at nothing to take whatever “it factor” she has for themselves. The whole movie is artfully composed, reflecting the photographic industry it is depicting. In an interview with The Guardian, Natasha Braier, the cinematographer, explains that the movie is a minimalist retelling of the narcissus story, with the color blue being most representative of those referential moments.

1 Amélie (2001)

Audrey Tautou in Amélie
UGC Fox Distribution 

Amélie is a charming movie about a sheltered woman, played by Audrey Tautou, helping and connecting with those around her in her own unique way. It is known for its striking visual style, both in terms of unique framing and strong, memorable color use. Red is one of the main colors that come up repeatedly in this movie which could be a way of visualizing Amélie’s quest for connection. Whether it’s in her clothing, her food, or her surroundings, red is ever-present just as Amélie’s openness to love is.