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
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/
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
All credits go to IMDb user: RDLongoria
The Sight and Sound critic's poll began in 1952, and has continued on each decade, growing in scope as time has passed.
This list represents the results of the 2022 critic's poll, which is the eighth poll overall, and the largest ever, with 1,639 participants. This year is notable for Vertigo falling to the number two slot, replaced by Jeanne Dielman at number one.
http://www.bbc.com/culture/story/20181029-the-100-greatest-foreign-language-films
Source: http://www.imdb.com/list/pVQCkiZoP9c/
35 movies missing from source.
The 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die list is actually a film reference book compiled by various critics worldwide and edited by Steven Jay Schneider. The list spans movies from as early as 1902 up to recent releases.
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1001_Movies_You_Must_See_Before_You_Die
This is a complete list of every movie that has ever been included in the various editions of 1001 movies. Given that I only own one edition of the physical book, this is a easier way to keep track of what has been (once) considered essential viewing.
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
From the Short Cuts book Fantasy Cinema: Impossible Worlds on Screen.
quote:
Often dismissed as simple escapist tales of sword and sorcery, fantasy is one of the fundamental impulses in filmmaking, a source of some of the most vivid and memorable films ever made that reaches far beyond the confines of a single genre. As well as some of the major genres, stylistic approaches and exponents of cinematic fantasy - from Georges Méliè̀s, Walt Disney, and Andrei Tarkovsky to contemporary fantasists such as Terry Gilliam and Peter Jackson - this volume focuses on fantasy's social function with case studies including The Thief of Baghdad (1924), Excalibur (1981), the Lord of the Rings trilogy (2001-03), and Bruce Almighty (2003). Taking in the popular and the experimental, subversive desires and reactionary dreams, this book is an accessible introduction to one of the vital energies in cinema. The Short Cuts series is a comprehensive list of introductory texts covering the full spectrum of Film Studies, specifically designed for building an individually-styled library for all students and enthusiasts of cinema and popular culture.
Three films are considered lost:
- La cigale et la fourmi (1897)
- La caverne maudite (1898)
- Le petit chaperon rouge (1901)
Source: https://www.amazon.com/Fantasy-Cinema-Impossible-Worlds-Wallflower/dp/1906660166
Surrealism in cinema refers to the use of dreamlike and irrational elements in films to create a unique visual style that challenges conventional notions of reality. It originated from the artistic movement of surrealism in the 1920s and 30s, which sought to tap into the subconscious mind through the use of irrational imagery and symbolism. In film, surrealism often employs techniques such as discontinuous editing, unexpected imagery, and the use of special effects to create a dream-like atmosphere and to challenge the viewer's perception of reality. The aim of surrealist films is to provoke an emotional and intellectual response from the audience, and to blur the boundaries between the conscious and the unconscious mind.
Updated 20 June, 2023
HollyWood Movies based on Popularity
BFI List of 100 Greatest Moves of All Time voted by Only Directors
https://www.bfi.org.uk/sight-and-sound/directors-100-greatest-films-all-time
Includes all the films of the 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die Book, including films culled to make way for newer releases, up to the 2021 edition.
All credits go to IMDb user: RDLongoria
From https://letterboxd.com/reelstats/list/the-1001-greatest-movies-of-all-time-according/
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
Sight & Sound's The Greatest Films of All Time
by maxwelldeuxVIP 8