Hey everyone, great to be back again. Some of you might remember a similar title from a list I made back in April, where I made a list of the top 250 movies with 13 sources, or a preview of this list I made last month.
I want to emphasize that this is NOT an official ranking nor my personal ranking; it is just a statistical and, personally, interesting look at 500 amazing movies. These rankings reflect the opinions of thousands of critics and millions of people around the world. And I am glad that this list is able to cover a wide range of genres, decades, and countries. So before I get bombarded with "Why isn't X on here?" or "How is X above Y?" comments, I wanted to clear that up.
I sourced my data from Sight & Sound (both critic and director lists), TSPDT, iCheckMovies, 11 domestic websites (Rotten Tomatoes, Metacritic, IMDb, Letterboxd, TMDb, Trakt, Blu-Ray, MovieLens, RateYourMusic, Criticker, and Critics Choice), and 9 international audience sites (FilmAffinity, Douban, Naver, MUBI, Filmweb, Kinopoisk, CSFD, Moviemeter, and Senscritique). This balance of domestic/international ratings made the list more well-rounded and internationally representative (sites from Spain, China, Korea, Poland, Russia, Czech Republic, Netherlands, and France).
As for my algorithm, I weighted websites according to both their Alexa ranking and their number of votes compared to other sites. For example, since The Godfather has hundreds of thousands of votes on Letterboxd but only a couple thousand on Metacritic, Letterboxd would be weighted more heavily. After obtaining the weighted averages, I then added the movie's iCheckMovies' favs/checks ratio and TSPDT ranking, if applicable. Regarding TSPDT, I included the top 2000 movies; as an example of my calculations, Rear Window's ranking of #41 would add (2000-41)/2000=0.9795 points to its weighted average. I removed movies that had <7-8K votes on IMDb, as these mostly had low ratings and numbers of votes across different sites as well. For both Sight & Sound lists, I added between 0.5 and 1 point to a movie's score based on its ranking, which I thought was an adequate reflection of how difficult it is to be included on these lists. As examples, a #21 movie would have 0.9 points added while a #63 would have 0.69 points.
Any feedback is appreciated, especially other sites I may not have sourced. If you found this list interesting, I would really appreciate it if you can give my newish Youtube channel a subscribe. It really helps a lot. Thanks guys.
Some stats:
Decades:
1900s - 1 film
1910s - 1
1920s - 22
1930s - 22
1940s - 40
1950s - 65
1960s - 75
1970s - 58
1980s - 54
1990s - 64
2000s - 55
2010s - 43
Directors with multiple films:
12 films - Akira Kurosawa
10 - Alfred Hitchcock, Ingmar Bergman
8 - Charlie Chaplin, Stanley Kubrick
7 - Andrei Tarkovsky, Billy Wilder, Hayao Miyazaki, Steven Spielberg
6 - Federico Fellini, Luis Buñuel
5 - Christopher Nolan, Buster Keaton, Fritz Lang, Howard Hawks, Krzysztof Kieślowski, Martin Scorsese, Woody Allen
4 - David Lynch, Ernst Lubitsch, F. W. Murnau, Francis Ford Coppola, John Ford, Lee Unkrich, Quentin Tarantino, Roman Polanski, Sergio Leone, Werner Herzog, William Wyler, Yasujirō Ozu
3 - Brad Bird, Carl Theodor Dreyer, Clint Eastwood, Coen Brothers, David Fincher, David Lean, François Truffaut, Frank Capra, Hirokazu Koreeda, James Cameron, Jean-Luc Godard, Jean-Pierre Melville, John Huston, Masaki Kobayashi, Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger, Michelangelo Antonioni, Pete Docter, Peter Jackson, Richard Linklater, Ridley Scott, Robert Bresson, Satyajit Ray, Sidney Lumet, Vittorio De Sica, Wim Wenders
2 - Abbas Kiarostami, Alain Resnais, Andrew Stanton, Arthur Penn, Béla Tarr, Bong Joon-ho, Brian De Palma, Chris Marker, Edward Yang, Elia Kazan, Emir Kusturica, Frank Darabont, George Cukor, George Roy Hill, Henri-Georges Clouzot, Hiroshi Teshigahara, Isao Takahata, Jacques Tati, Jean Cocteau, Jean Renoir, Jim Sheridan, John Cassavetes, John Lasseter, Joseph L. Mankiewicz, Kenji Mizoguchi, Leo McCarey, Louis Malle, Luchino Visconti, Max Ophüls, Mike Leigh, Mike Nichols, Mikhail Kalatozov, Miloš Forman, Orson Welles, Otto Preminger, Park Chan-wook, Pedro Almodóvar, Peter Bogdanovich, Peter Weir, Raoul Walsh, Robert Zemeckis, Sam Mendes, Stanley Donen, Terrence Malick, Terry Gilliam, Thomas Vinterberg, Victor Fleming, Wong Kar-wai, Zhang Yimou
Cloned from:
https://letterboxd.com/reelstats/list/the-500-greatest-movies-of-all-time-according/
/u/StopReadinMyUsername on reddit created a list called "1001 'GREATEST' MOVIES OF ALL TIME" in 2015.
Since this list is still very popular, he posted an updated list on reddit in April 2020.
For this list he combined the average scores from IMDb, Letterboxd, Rotten Tomatoes & Metacritic, and tweaked the results with data from Letterboxd, iCheckMovies, TSPDT?, TMDb and IMDb.
source: https://www.reddit.com/r/movies/comments/fswg60/by_combining_the_average_scores_from_imdb/
Not for those with heart conditions. You might get dirty looks if you mention these films. Welcome aboard fellow traveller. Remember it's only a movie...
In response to the American Film Institute’s list of the 100 greatest American movies, film scholar Jonathan Rosenbaum took the AFI to task for what he saw as a product "symptomatic of an increasingly dumbed-down film culture that continues to outflank our shrinking expectations." Of course, any list of this kind (including Sight and Sound’s decennial roster and the Village Voice Film Critic’s Poll from a few years back) is not without its blind spots. Participants are often forced to pick a select group of favorites and make a number of concessions ("Well, if I want Antonioni to make it into the collective top 10, I’d better hedge my bets with L’Avventura instead of my personal favorite Zabriskie Point."). Consequently, underdogs and obscure gems have little chance of being represented on a composite list that’s typically unveiled with little-to-no "justification for any of its titles" (to borrow again from Rosenbaum). Rather than present a list that looks like everyone else’s, Slant Magazine has decided to do something a little different. While you will find many popular classics and critical favorites on our list of 100 Essential Films, our goal was to mix things up a bit. This list should not be construed as a definitive "greatest films" package, but as an alternative compiled by a group of kinky film-lovers wanting to give serious critical thought to neglected, forgotten and misunderstood gems. We aimed for the kind of list where post-Cahiers Orson Welles could stand shoulder-to-shoulder with a pre-pastiche Brian De Palma; where it’s understood that Hitchcock, Dreyer, Ford, and Ozu created masterpieces besides film school staples like Vertigo, The Passion of Joan of Arc, The Searchers, and Tokyo Story; and where the postmodern irony of Douglas Sirk’s Imitation of Life is allowed space next to its modern-day equivalent: Paul Verhoeven’s Showgirls (gasp!). Because space was tight, documentaries, shorts and animated films were not eligible. Additionally, we limited directors to no more than one spot on the list.
Source: http://www.slantmagazine.com/features/article/100-essential-films
The 2013 version of TSPDT’s 1,000 Greatest Films is finally here. After months of stop-start, data-building and unhealthy calculation antics, the latest group of 1,000 movie offerings has been assembled once again for your pleasure (or displeasure). Depending on your observation skills, you may have already noticed that there is a new presentation for this ongoing project.
Source: http://www.theyshootpictures.com/gf1000.htm
The old 2012 edition can be found @http://trakt.tv/users/sp1ti/lists/they-shoot-pictures-dont-they-1000-greatest-films-2012
The greatest films ever made, as voted by MUBI’s global community of film lovers.
https://mubi.com/lists/the-top-1000
This is a list of the films featured in The Story of Film: An Odyssey series by Mark Cousins.
The films are in order of appearance in the series.
The following are missing (not in Trakt):
Source:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Story_of_Film:_An_Odyssey
From https://letterboxd.com/reelstats/list/the-500-greatest-movies-of-all-time-according/
Hey everyone, great to be back again. Some of you might remember a similar title from a list I made back in April, where I made a list of the top 250 movies with 13 sources, or a preview of this list I made last month.
I want to emphasize that this is NOT an official ranking nor my personal ranking; it is just a statistical and, personally, interesting look at 500 amazing movies. These rankings reflect the opinions of thousands of critics and millions of people around the world. And I am glad that this list is able to cover a wide range of genres, decades, and countries. So before I get bombarded with "Why isn't X on here?" or "How is X above Y?" comments, I wanted to clear that up.
I sourced my data from Sight & Sound (both critic and director lists), TSPDT, iCheckMovies, 11 domestic websites (Rotten Tomatoes, Metacritic, IMDb, Letterboxd, TMDb, Trakt, Blu-Ray, MovieLens, RateYourMusic, Criticker, and Critics Choice), and 9 international audience sites (FilmAffinity, Douban, Naver, MUBI, Filmweb, Kinopoisk, CSFD, Moviemeter, and Senscritique). This balance of domestic/international ratings made the list more well-rounded and internationally representative (sites from Spain, China, Korea, Poland, Russia, Czech Republic, Netherlands, and France).
As for my algorithm, I weighted websites according to both their Alexa ranking and their number of votes compared to other sites. For example, since The Godfather has hundreds of thousands of votes on Letterboxd but only a couple thousand on Metacritic, Letterboxd would be weighted more heavily. After obtaining the weighted averages, I then added the movie's iCheckMovies' favs/checks ratio and TSPDT ranking, if applicable. Regarding TSPDT, I included the top 2000 movies; as an example of my calculations, Rear Window's ranking of #41 would add (2000-41)/2000=0.9795 points to its weighted average. I removed movies that had <7-8K votes on IMDb, as these mostly had low ratings and numbers of votes across different sites as well. For both Sight & Sound lists, I added between 0.5 and 1 point to a movie's score based on its ranking, which I thought was an adequate reflection of how difficult it is to be included on these lists. As examples, a #21 movie would have 0.9 points added while a #63 would have 0.69 points.
Any feedback is appreciated, especially other sites I may not have sourced. If you found this list interesting, I would really appreciate it if you can give my newish Youtube channel a subscribe. It really helps a lot. Thanks guys.
Some stats:
Decades:
1900s - 1 film
1910s - 1
1920s - 22
1930s - 22
1940s - 40
1950s - 65
1960s - 75
1970s - 58
1980s - 54
1990s - 64
2000s - 55
2010s - 43
Directors with multiple films:
12 films - Akira Kurosawa
10 - Alfred Hitchcock, Ingmar Bergman
8 - Charlie Chaplin, Stanley Kubrick
7 - Andrei Tarkovsky, Billy Wilder, Hayao Miyazaki, Steven Spielberg
6 - Federico Fellini, Luis Buñuel
5 - Christopher Nolan, Buster Keaton, Fritz Lang, Howard Hawks, Krzysztof Kieślowski, Martin Scorsese, Woody Allen
4 - David Lynch, Ernst Lubitsch, F. W. Murnau, Francis Ford Coppola, John Ford, Lee Unkrich, Quentin Tarantino, Roman Polanski, Sergio Leone, Werner Herzog, William Wyler, Yasujirō Ozu
3 - Brad Bird, Carl Theodor Dreyer, Clint Eastwood, Coen Brothers, David Fincher, David Lean, François Truffaut, Frank Capra, Hirokazu Koreeda, James Cameron, Jean-Luc Godard, Jean-Pierre Melville, John Huston, Masaki Kobayashi, Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger, Michelangelo Antonioni, Pete Docter, Peter Jackson, Richard Linklater, Ridley Scott, Robert Bresson, Satyajit Ray, Sidney Lumet, Vittorio De Sica, Wim Wenders
2 - Abbas Kiarostami, Alain Resnais, Andrew Stanton, Arthur Penn, Béla Tarr, Bong Joon-ho, Brian De Palma, Chris Marker, Edward Yang, Elia Kazan, Emir Kusturica, Frank Darabont, George Cukor, George Roy Hill, Henri-Georges Clouzot, Hiroshi Teshigahara, Isao Takahata, Jacques Tati, Jean Cocteau, Jean Renoir, Jim Sheridan, John Cassavetes, John Lasseter, Joseph L. Mankiewicz, Kenji Mizoguchi, Leo McCarey, Louis Malle, Luchino Visconti, Max Ophüls, Mike Leigh, Mike Nichols, Mikhail Kalatozov, Miloš Forman, Orson Welles, Otto Preminger, Park Chan-wook, Pedro Almodóvar, Peter Bogdanovich, Peter Weir, Raoul Walsh, Robert Zemeckis, Sam Mendes, Stanley Donen, Terrence Malick, Terry Gilliam, Thomas Vinterberg, Victor Fleming, Wong Kar-wai, Zhang Yimou
They Shoot Pictures, Don't They? (TSPDT) is a modest but growing film resource dedicated to the art of motion picture filmmaking and most specifically to that one particular individual calling the shots from behind the camera - the film director.
This list is based on TSPDT's 1,000 Greatest Films, a list compilated by Bill Georgaris using thousands of best-of/all-time lists.
www.theyshootpictures.com
Well over a century has passed since the Lumière brothers frightened the life out of Parisians with The Arrival of a Train at a Station, and well over a million titles have since been recorded - if the Internet Movie Database is anything to go by.
Out of these million-plus movies, our team of experts has picked what we believe is the essential 1,000 - those that best sum up the dazzling achievement and variety of the movies.
Source: https://www.theguardian.com/film/series/1000-films-to-see-before-you-die
The 2013 edition can be found at http://trakt.tv/user/sp1ti/lists/they-shoot-pictures-dont-they-1000-greatest-films-2013.
Welcome to 2012's edition of the 1,000 Greatest Films. This will be the last update prior to the publication of the 'earth-shattering' Sight & Sound poll which will be unfurled later in the year. The Sight & Sound results will no doubt have a major impact on TSPDT's 1,000 Greatest Films listing. It will become the most heavily weighted poll within our calculations. Anyway, that is then, and this is now."
Source: http://www.theyshootpictures.com/gf1000.htm
The top films in the 2012 Sight and Sound Poll from the combined votes of 846 critics and 359 directors. Contains films with 3 or more votes. In order by number of votes.
The following is a list of positions and the number of corresponding votes. 21-22 (66 votes), 27-28 (55 votes), 29-30 (54 votes), 36-37 (46 votes), 39-42 (44 votes), 43-46 (43 votes), 47-50 (41 votes), 51-52 (40 votes), 53-55 (39 votes), 56-57 (38 votes), 59-60 (35 votes), 62-74 (33 votes), 75-77 (32 votes), 78-79 (31 votes), 82-88 (28 votes), 89-90 (27 votes), 91-93 (26 votes), 94-99 (25 votes), 100-103 (24 votes), 104-106 (23 votes), 107-110 (22 votes), 111-118 (21 votes), 119-127 (20 votes), 128-139 (19 votes), 140-146 (18 votes), 147-153 (17 votes), 154-166 (16 votes), 167-182 (15 votes), 183-193 (14 votes), 194-206 (13 votes), 207-228 (12 votes), 229-243 (11 votes), 244-271 (10 votes), 272-302 (9 votes), 303-330 (8 votes), 331-375 (7 votes), 376-423 (6 votes), 424-497 (5 votes), 498-624 (4 votes), 625-817 (3 votes)
Source: http://www.bfi.org.uk/films-tv-people/sightandsoundpoll2012
The They Shoot Pictures, Don't They? 1,000 greatest films list is primarily compiled by using over 6000 individual critics' and filmmakers' best-films-of-all-time lists/ballots. The resulting list is very diverse and spans virtually all movie-producing decades and countries.
Source: http://www.theyshootpictures.com/gf1000.htm
:popcorn::earth_africa:
Updated Jan 2022
Cahiers du Cinéma, (Notebooks on Cinema) is a French film magazine founded in 1951. Top 10 films chosen annually by the critics of Cahiers du Cinéma.
The history of the Cahiers is related to the Cinéma history, in particular because of a generation of enthusiasts who gave birth to the Nouvelle Vague. Jean-Luc Godard, François Truffaut, Éric Rohmer, Jacques Rivette, Claude Chabrol and many others wrote their first reviews before becoming filmmakers.
The magazine has picked its top ten films of the year, most years. Top ten films were not picked in the years 1952-1954, 1969-1980, and in the year 2003. Rankings can be viewed in my source list URL, or via the link provided in the comments section. In some cases, films tie for a certain spot in the yearly top 10; for example, 2012's #4 spot is tied between three films (consequently, there is no #5 or #6). Some directors definitely appear to be heavily preferred by those responsible for selecting the list.
This list does not include the special "best of 1990s" and "best of 2000s" decade lists, though most of those twenty films are included here. (The exceptions are David Lynch's TV show Twin Peaks on the 1990s list, and Gus Van Sant's Elephant, Abdellatif Kechiche's The Secret of the Grain, and Steven Spielberg's War of the Worlds on the 2000s decade list.)
Other anomalies:
The TV show "24" tied for the #10 spot in 2002, along with Gus Van Sant's Gerry. Gerry also tied for #6 on the 2004 list.
A TV episode "Travolta et moi" (dir. Patricia Mazuy) from the show "Tous les garçons et les filles de leur âge..." was selected as #6 in 1994. Claire Denis' episode "US Go Home" from the same series rated #9 in 1994.
Raul Ruiz's Les trois couronnes du matelot (Three Crowns of the Sailor) tied for #7 in 1983 and tied for #8 in 1982.
1968's #4 spot for Histoires extraordinaires is specifically for Federico Fellini's segment "Toby Damnit."
1965's #4 spot for Paris vu par... is specifically for the Jean Rouch episode.
1959's #3 spot was claimed by Eisenstein's Ivan the Terrible. Since Part II was released in 1958, it is possible that the award was for Part II, but since my sources didn't specify a part and both parts may have been shown together, I have included Parts I & II in the list.
Love it or hate it, here it is...
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cahiers_du_cin%C3%A9ma
Source: http://www.imdb.com/list/pVQCkiZoP9c/
35 movies missing from source.
They Shoot Pictures, Don't They? (TSPDT) is a modest but growing film resource dedicated to the art of motion picture filmmaking and most specifically to that one particular individual calling the shots from behind the camera - the film director.
This list is based on TSPDT's 1,000 Greatest Films, a list compilated by Bill Georgaris using thousands of best-of/all-time lists.
www.theyshootpictures.com
Trading on its impeccable reputation, Halliwell’s now presents it’s Top 1,000 favorite films. Starting at number 1,000, each entry includes a plot summary, cast and crew, awards, key critical comments, DVD and soundtrack availability, and a wealth of other interesting details. To supplement the countdown, there is commentary from film stars, show business personalities, well-known critics, and the movers and shakers in the film industry, each naming their favorite films or weighing in on Halliwell’s selection. Illustrated throughout with classic and modern film stills and posters, this is a book that every cinema fan will want to own. John Walker is one of Britain’s leading film critics.
The list has 42 extra films, because trilogies, or series, are counted as one entry (The Godfather, The Apu Trilogy, The Lord of the Rings, Antoine Doinel, Laurel and Hardy shorts, etc...)
Source: https://www.amazon.com/Halliwells-Top-1000-Ultimate-Countdown/dp/0007181655
In response to the American Film Institute’s list of the 100 greatest American movies, film scholar Jonathan Rosenbaum took the AFI to task for what he saw as a product "symptomatic of an increasingly dumbed-down film culture that continues to outflank our shrinking expectations." Of course, any list of this kind (including Sight and Sound’s decennial roster and the Village Voice Film Critic’s Poll from a few years back) is not without its blind spots. Participants are often forced to pick a select group of favorites and make a number of concessions ("Well, if I want Antonioni to make it into the collective top 10, I’d better hedge my bets with L’Avventura instead of my personal favorite Zabriskie Point."). Consequently, underdogs and obscure gems have little chance of being represented on a composite list that’s typically unveiled with little-to-no "justification for any of its titles" (to borrow again from Rosenbaum). Rather than present a list that looks like everyone else’s, Slant Magazine has decided to do something a little different. While you will find many popular classics and critical favorites on our list of 100 Essential Films, our goal was to mix things up a bit. This list should not be construed as a definitive "greatest films" package, but as an alternative compiled by a group of kinky film-lovers wanting to give serious critical thought to neglected, forgotten and misunderstood gems. We aimed for the kind of list where post-Cahiers Orson Welles could stand shoulder-to-shoulder with a pre-pastiche Brian De Palma; where it’s understood that Hitchcock, Dreyer, Ford, and Ozu created masterpieces besides film school staples like Vertigo, The Passion of Joan of Arc, The Searchers, and Tokyo Story; and where the postmodern irony of Douglas Sirk’s Imitation of Life is allowed space next to its modern-day equivalent: Paul Verhoeven’s Showgirls (gasp!). Because space was tight, documentaries, shorts and animated films were not eligible. Additionally, we limited directors to no more than one spot on the list.
The Story of Film: An Odyssey, a 15-part series written and directed by award-winning film-maker Mark Cousins, is the story of international cinema told through the history of cinematic innovation.
The series provides a worldwide guided tour of the greatest movies ever made; an epic tale that starts in nickelodeons and ends as a multi-billion-dollar globalised digital industry."
Note: "Motion Capture Mirrors Emotion (2009) dir. Jorge Ribas," a documentary about the making of Avatar, is missing because it does not appear to have an imdb page.
Source: https://www.amazon.com/Birth-Cinema-Hollywood-Dream/dp/B00AMQ1B1O
From https://letterboxd.com/reelstats/list/the-1001-greatest-movies-of-all-time-according/
The European Film Awards are presented annually by the European Film Academy to recognize excellence in European cinematic achievements. The awards are given in over ten categories of which the most important is the Film of the year. They are restricted to European cinema and European producers, directors, and actors.
The awards were originally called the Felix Awards but the name was changed to the European Film Awards.
Source: http://www.europeanfilmacademy.org/
https://assortedopinions.home.blog/
This is not a comprehensive list of leftist cinema, this is a curated selection of suggestions for people who want to watch great, and potent, leftist films.
The Polish Film Institute created this list for the 100th anniversary of Polish cinema. The films were selected by Polish critics Rafał Marszałek and Andrzej Bukowiecki using the following criteria: "their acknowledged artistic value, national and international awards granted, the influence exerted within a certain film trend, and finally the attendance records indicating the interest aroused among the cinema goers.
Source: http://web.archive.org/web/20101119083114/http://100latpolskiegofilmu.pl/en/movies/
In 2015, the Museum of Cinematography in Łódź asked 279 film professionals to vote for the best Polish films of all time. The top 65 films are ranked, all with 12 votes or more. The next 40 films are unranked, with 6-11 votes.
Source: http://kinomuzeum.pl/?p=15020
TSPDT's The 1,000 Greatest Films
13th Edition (January 2018)
List curated by Bill Georgaris on They Shoot Pictures, Don't They?
Notes: Olympia (#750/751) is a single entry on TSPDT, but as two entries on Trakt.
Source: https://www.theyshootpictures.com/gf1000.htm
The 500 Greatest Movies of All Time, According to Statistics
by Edward Abarilla