Top Lists

There have been MANY lists and rankings of movies. Top 10 lists. Greatest Movies lists. Classic Movies lists. Best Movies list. Must See Movies lists. This website provides our own GREATEST MOVIES through 1960 list by tallying how many times each movie appeared in the TOP 3 and TOP 10 of these many lists.  We also used lists that did not rank the movies.  We grouped the lists into the following four types of lists (and include our favorite list within each type):

1. Ranked and Rated by the public (viewers)
   Favorite: IMDB Top 250
2. Ranked and Rated by film critics and those in the movie business (critics)
   Favorite: Decent Films Best Rated Movies
3. Ranked and Rated by books (books)
   Favorite: Greatest Movies Ever: The Ultimate Ranked List of the 101 Best Films of All Time
4. Ranked and Rated by other means – like a hybrid listing (other)
   Favorite: Filmsite’s 100 Greatest Films
5. Special List (other)
   Favorite: 50 Films Every Christian Should See

This is still a work in progress … but here are the lists that we thought were significant and useful for our own filtered compiled list:

Ranked and Rated by the public:

• Box Office – Domestic Gross Adjusted for Inflation – this is the ranking of movies based on how people “voted” with their pocketbook
• FilmCrave – Top 100 Movies of All Time – members (free to register) rate their favorite movies. Anyone can view the ranked listing of movies (warning: a malware/virus window popped up right after I visited the site)
• Flickchart – The Top 100 Movies of All Time – You can register for free and rank your favorite movies or view charts of the movie rankings filtered by year, decade, genre, etc
• IMDB Top 250 (as listed June 2012) – the general public can vote for movies and rank them at IMDB. Only votes from REGULAR voters are considered when they compile their Top 250 list
• L.A. Daily News – 100 Greatest American Films – as voted by their readers in 1997
• Mr. Showbiz’s Readers’ Picks: The 100 Best Movies of All Time – visitors were asked to vote for their own TEN BEST movies and the responses were tabulated to this list
• Ranker – The Best Movies of All Time – Movies nominated by Ranker users and then ranked by a vote open to anyone
• Time Out’s Readers choice – Top 100 Films – Readers submitted their own all time Top Ten movies with over 1,000 nominated
• Zagat Favorite Films and Top Movies of All Time – Over 20,000 movie goers voted for the top movies of all time

Ranked and Rated by Film Critics and those in the movie business:

• American Film Institute – AFI’s 100 Years 100 Movies – chosen by over 1,500 film critics, artists and historians
• BeliefNet Movie Mom – movies graded A with content advisory and audience recommendation
• Decent Films Movies Rated A with Superior Artistic-Entertainment Value – our list using their Power Search feature
• Films101 Top 100 Movies – the ultimate database of the best movies picked by critics and filmmakers
• Leonard Maltin’s 100 Must See Films of the 20th Century – and 3/4ths of them are movies released through 1960
• Mr. Showbiz’s Critics Picks: The 100 Best Movies of All Time – English Language films after the birth of “the talkies”
• MRQE’s 100 Best Ranked Films – ranked by the number of positive reviews
• New York Times Best 1,000 Movies Ever Made
• Roger Ebert – Great Movies – the full list of Great Movies from his bi-weekly column (collected into three books)
• Rolling Stone – 1,000 Best Movies on DVD – Peter Travers, movie reviewer for Rolling Stone, chose the best 1,000 movies
• Rotten Tomatoes Top 100 Movies of All Time – Movies with many positive reviews
• They Shoot Pictures, Don’t They – The 1,000 Greatest Films – allows you to download their list into Excel and lots more
• Time Magazine – All-TIME 100 Movies – their list of the greatest movies ever mode since 1923
• Time Out’s Centenary Top 100 Films – compiled from lists of Top Ten from film critics and those in the business
• Total Film’s 100 Greatest Movies of All Time – they chose the 100 best movies that got 5 star reviews in all of their back issues
• Village Voice 100 Best Films of the 20th Century – over 50 distinguished film critics selected their top 10 and the results were compiled for their January 4, 2000 issue

Books:

• The 100 Greatest Movies of All Time by Entertainment Weekly (1999 book) – This book lists the 100 best movies in order from their Number One choice to the last in their list.  Lots of good sized photos and interesting summaries of the movies.
• 1,001 Movies You Must See Before You Die – several updated editions, we used the one referenced in the IMDB list (more than 100 movies – reference only, not for our chart scores)
• The A List: The National Society of Film Critics’ 100 Essential Films (2002 book) – This book concludes that there are 100  “essential” films.  According to the book, the “society has made its selections based on a film’s intrinsic merits, its role in the development of the motion-picture art, and its impact on culture and society.”
• The Entertainment Weekly Guide to the Greatest Movies Ever Made (1996 book) – ranks the greatest movies by genre
• Four Star Movies (book) – appears to be the original title of the book The Greates Movies Ever: the Ultimate Ranked List of the 101 Best Films of All Time
• The Great Movies (1973 book) by William Bayer – a very interesting take on choosing the greatest movies, by setting 12 genres (categories) and then choosing the five best in each genre.
• The Greatest Movies Ever: the Ultimate Ranked List of the 101 Best Films of All Time! (2011 second edition book) – this is our favorite of all the greatest movies books! While it does give a plot summary, most of the book is large photos and background info about the director, actors and interesting tidbits and trivia. It even lists for each movie how many of 9 other great movies lists included the movie!
• Jeffrey Lyons’ 101 Great Movies for Kids – not a book of “greatest” movies – rather a book of “alternative choices”
• Reel Culture by Mimi O’Connor (2009 book) – She reviews and gives snippets of neat info about “50 classic movies you should know about” (her words).
• Reel Views by James Berardinelli (2003 book) – He provided short movie summaries for 1,000 movies that were on DVD and VIDEO and likely available to rent at a video store.  Thus, nearly all the movies in his book are “newer” movies, likely still in video stores.  However, he did provide a small group of movies he called CLASSICS.  We used that small group as his list of the greatest movies through 1960.

Other Lists:

• 50 Films Every Christian Should See – unranked list by Chuck Colson
• About.com – Ten Great Classic Films to Get You Started – unranked list of great movies
• Academy Awards Best Picture Winners ranked two ways – Best Picture Oscar winners ranked by artistic merit and by number of Oscars won
• Empire presents the 500 Greatest Movies of All Time – Rankings of the Greatest Movies of All Time as rated by 10,000 Empire readers, 150 of Hollywood’s finest and 50 key film critics. This was the most ambitious movie poll ever attempted
• Film Four’s 100 Greatest Films of All Time – England’s UK Channel 4 compiled their own list of the greatest movies of all time
• Filmsite.org’s Greatest 100 Movies of All Time – we LIKE this list! The 100 movies he chose stays the same, but the ranking of them change as people vote on them
• Sight & Sound Magazine’s 10 Best Films of All Time – compiled from over 250 reviewers and directors once each decade since 1952
• TV Guide’s 50 Greatest Movies – rated and ranked by TV Guide including a very nice write up for each movie they chose.
• Vanity Fair 50 Greatest Films of All Time – from their September 2005 issue