Every Film by a Director Who Once Hit 8.5

A retrospective is being programmed around directors with at least one great film. The brief: if a director ever reached 8.5, screen everything of theirs in the table.

Show exactly these 4 columns, in this order: title, year, rating, director. No aliases, no rounding. Include every movie whose director appears at least once in the table with a rating of 8.5 or higher. Order by director ascending, then year ascending, then title ascending.

The new idea: the subquery can read the same table you are already selecting from. (SELECT director FROM movies WHERE rating >= 8.5) returns a column of names — repeats and all, which IN does not mind — and the outer query keeps every row whose director is on that list.

Look at what comes back: films rated well below 8.5 are in the result, because the test is on the director, not on the row. That is exactly why a plain WHERE rating >= 8.5 cannot answer this question.