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

:popcorn::earth_africa:
Updated Jan 2022

Description

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.

Background

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.

Sources:

• https://www.cahiersducinema.com
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cahiers_du_cinéma

A list of movies which famous movie critic Roger Ebert considers to be the best movies of all-time. Ebert has written extensive reviews for each and every one of these movies.

Source: https://www.rogerebert.com/great-movies

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

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

All nominees including the winners of the Honorary Award.

Note: Un lugar en el mundo (1992) was declared ineligible and removed from the final ballot.

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Academy_Award_winners_and_nominees_for_Best_Foreign_Language_Film#Winners_and_nominees

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.

The BAFTA Award for Best Film is given annually by the British Academy of Film and Television Arts and presented at the British Academy Film Awards. It has been given since the 1st BAFTA Awards, representing the best films of 1947, but until 1969 it was called the BAFTA Award for Best Film From Any 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

Updated 20 June, 2023

HollyWood Movies based on Popularity

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.

In his Guide for the Film Fanatic (1986), Danny Peary provides short reviews for over 1600 “Must See” films.

104 movies missing. Imported from external source.

This list is "an educational resource that offers guidance and encouragement as students seek to find points of orientation within the vast history of film and video." It is not a list of the best films of all time. Rather, it reflects a variety of criteria.

Source: https://ves.fas.harvard.edu/files/ves/files/fvs_suggested_viewing_2012.pdf

Imported with Trakt.tv List Importer.

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