What makes a comedy a classic? Something that floats on the changing tides of time and taste, remaining relevant – and hilarious? It probably takes more than a football to the groin or a juiced-up fart on the audio track. (Though we’re not not saying those can sometimes be the pinnacle of professional-grade jokes.) We don’t have the answer, but with our Essential list assembling 140 of the best comedies ever made, we’re getting closer to laugh-out-loud enlightenment than humanly thought possible. We’re melting minds, splitting sides, and slapping knees here.
To that end, we’ve included all forms of the comedy movie. From slapstick (Dumb & Dumber, It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World) to silent (The General, Modern Times). Rom-coms (Moonstruck, Annie Hall) to screwball (It Happened One Night, Bringing Up Baby). Parody (Airplane!, Scary Movie) to postmodern (Monty Python and the Holy Grail, Galaxy Quest). These 140 movies will take you to college (Old School, Animal House), past some fan favorites (Step Brothers, Super Troopers), and all around the globe (Kung Fu Hustle, Amelie).
There’s no minimum review count for this list. We opened it up to movies of yesteryear, which typically don’t get as many reviews as their modern comedy rivals. Many of these inducted films have high Tomatometer scores and are Certified Fresh, but the Tomatometer was not our only guide. Some comedies that stand the test of time did not necessarily pass the critical test on release, and we’re honoring those here. These are not the best-reviewed comedy films ever released, but they are the essential comedies, movies that broke the Laugh-O-Meter – we’ll totally trademark that soon, so dibs – shaped the genre, molded generations, and which audiences return to time and again, to lift the spirits.
Ready to whip out your funny bone and bash it violently on the nearest flat surface? Then you’re ready for our list of the best comedy movies ever: Rotten Tomatoes’ 140 Essential Comedies!
Link: https://editorial.rottentomatoes.com/guide/100-essential-comedy-movies/
The ones I've seen
AFI's 100 Years...100 Movies – 10th Anniversary Edition is an updated edition to AFI's 100 Years...100 Movies, a list of the top 100 greatest American films of all time.
Source: https://www.afi.com/afis-100-years-100-movies-10th-anniversary-edition
Welcome to Rotten Tomatoes’ 100 best-reviewed classic movies of all time ranked by Adjusted Tomatometer! We define ‘classic’ as everything released up until the late-1960s, a tumultuous era that signaled a passing of the guard with national cultural revolutions, destruction of the Motion Picture Production Code, and the impending arrival of New Hollywood filmmakers.
Link: https://editorial.rottentomatoes.com/guide/100-best-classic-movies/
Hooking up? No problem. “Meet cute” at the book shop? Happens all the time. Finding the right one, falling in love, and getting married? What else are you gonna do? But compiling the ultimate list of the Freshest romantic comedies? It’s complicated.
For our list of the 150 best romantic comedies of all time, we searched high and low throughout movie history for every permutation of (hilarious) courtship and love captured on camera. We have the dazzling wit of the early studio system (His Girl Friday, Bringing Up Baby), the realistic cynicism of the ’70s (Annie Hall, The Goodbye Girl), and the sweeping romance in-between (The Apartment, Roman Holiday). There was plenty to find in the John Hughes, teen-driven era (Say Anything…, Pretty in Pink), and the bubbly ’90s decade that followed (Groundhog Day, Four Weddings and a Funeral, While You Were Sleeping). Then we dabbled in 21st century raunch (Knocked Up) and twee ((500) Days of Summer), leading into our current era of new voices declaring that they too are entitled to their own messy relationship stories (The Big Sick, Crazy Rich Asians).
The only stipulation for a rom-com to get a shot at love on this list was achieving a minimum of 20 reviews, before we sorted it all by Adjusted Tomatometer. And because we want you feeling red, and not seeing red, we want to prepare you for some of the relatively low placements for beloved classics like Pretty Woman, Love Actually, and Sleepless in Seattle. The Tomatometer, just like the heart, does not deceive.
Ready to dive into the sea of love? Then continue on with open arms into Rotten Tomatoes’ 150 best romantic comedies of all time!
Link: https://editorial.rottentomatoes.com/guide/best-romantic-comedies-of-all-time/
All the book-to-movie and book-to-tv adaptations I can think of.
I've got the 10th edition of the German translation of "1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die". It's a 960-paged book edited by Steven Jay Schneider, containing the combined knowledge of 77 internationally renowned movie ciritics, with short one to half-sided essays, movie credits, and trivia, throughout all genres and countries.
There are already a number of lists out, however, this book is reviewed every year, and as far as I can tell (I did go through a lot of these lists) non depicts the 2013 edition I possess, which ends with Life of Pi. I then thought of the ideal list being on that includes all movies, starting from the original list from 2003, with all the editions but non of the removals since then. Thanks to the internet, such list exists and therefore I will be adding these here, one by one. I did not "rank" them, because actually the book doesn't either - they are ordered by year and that is as meaningful as any other order I guess. Also, the "ranked lists" all have the problem that some movies are removed, which is why a number of people think about how to renumber this list probably... all things I deem unnecessary.
And yes, I intend to watch them all! If you watch one of them every week, it's just a 20 years task :D
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1001_Movies_You_Must_See_Before_You_Die
http://1001films.wikia.com/wiki/The_List
Mix of AFI top 100 and BFI top 50. I took the Top 100 from the American Film Institute and the Top 50 from the British Film Institute and mixed the list.
www.afi.com/100years/movies10.aspx
http://www.bfi.org.uk/news/50-greatest-films-all-time
A selection of the most iconic films of the twentieth century.
Shit I've seen that's older than I am.
Created by Velocity
AFI's 100 Greatest Love Stories of All Time
Regardless of genre, in these films, a romantic bond between two or more characters, whose actions and/or intentions provide the heart of the film's narrative. These movies possess a "passion" which has enriched America's film and cultural heritage while continuing to inspire contemporary artists and audiences.
The jurors were asked to consider the following criteria while making their selections:
Source: http://www.afi.com/100Years/passions.aspx
AFI's 100 Greatest American Movies of All Time
The very first edition of AFI's 100 Years...100 Movies is a list of the 100 greatest American films of all time.
In 1998, AFI invited more than 1,500 leaders from across the American film community – screenwriters, directors, actors, producers, cinematographers, editors, executives, film historians and critics among them – to choose from a list of 400 nominated films compiled by AFI and select the 100 greatest American movies.
Source: http://www.afi.com/100years/movies.aspx
TUTTI vol. I
by Simone Iperione Riccardi