A Journey Through The Top 100 Films

January 5, 2016

It’s the beginning of January, which means the beginning of a new year. And you know what that means - a time for making resolutions that will probably not be kept! Well, let’s see how far this one goes…

Instead of wasting away my time playing video games, I’ve decided to take a bit more seriously another passion: watching movies. I’m going to try to make this constructive by reviewing each of the top 100 movies, many of which I’ll be sitting down and watching for the very first time, and many of which are old favorites that I’ll be rewatching, unfortunately not with fresh eyes.

This should be completely doable, as this comes out to watching roughly 2 movies a week. The part I expect to be time-consuming are the reviews for each film, which I want to be worthwhile to read, with screenshots and such, to keep the readers’ eyes stimulated between the walls of text I’m sure to write.

Selecting the 100

My method for selecting the top 100 movies is to take the unweighted highest rated films on IMDB and filter out anything from the last 15 years, meaning that all of these films will be pre-2000.

This may seem pretty arbitrary to some folks, but if you’ve watched the IMDB rankings for any period of time you’ll notice new movies have a tendency to show up high in the rankings for a brief period before falling lower over time. My guess here is that time is a sort of sieve, and as such it takes time for the sieve to filter these newer movies. But I can sort of speed up that process by jumping back 15 years (because 2000 is a nice round number), to movies that the sieve has had time to work on.

The more recent films are also in our more recent collective conscious - you can see this reflected in the distribution of films by decade below.

Also, this somewhat avoids the type of film rankings where Citizen Kane always shows up as #1, and most of the pre-1980 classics seem to have strong preference over anything recent.

Some Quick Statistics

only 27 films not previously watched before
only one film not on Blu Ray: Sholay (1975)
average running time: 130 minutes (2 hours 10 minutes)

Films by Decade	Count
1920s	5
1930s	4
1940s	8
1950s	15
1960s	12
1970s	12
1980s	18
1990s	26

The List

So let’s get started! Here’s the current list of the top IMDB movies, with newer movies filtered out as explained above.

I’ll be linking each title to my full review as I work my way through.

Position	AFI Position	Title	Year	Previously Watched?
1	-	The Shawshank Redemption	1994	yes
2	3	The Godfather	1972	yes
3	32	The Godfather: Part II	1974	yes
4	-	12 Angry Men	1957	yes
5	9	Schindler’s List	1993	no
6	95	Pulp Fiction	1994	yes
7	Ineligible - Italian	The Good, the Bad and the Ugly	1966	yes
8	-	Fight Club	1999	yes
9	-	Star Wars: Episode V - The Empire Strikes Back	1980	yes
10	71	Forrest Gump	1994	yes
11	20	One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest	1975	yes
12	Ineligible - Japanese	Seven Samurai	1954	yes
13	-	The Matrix	1999	yes
14	94	Goodfellas	1990	yes
15	15	Star Wars	1977	yes
16	-	Se7en	1995	no
17	11	It’s a Wonderful Life	1946	yes
18	-	The Usual Suspects	1995	yes
19	Ineligible - Italian	Life Is Beautiful	1997	no
20	65	The Silence of the Lambs	1991	yes
21	Ineligible - French	Léon: The Professional	1994	no
22	Ineligible - Indian	Sholay	1975	no
23	Ineligible - Italian	Once Upon a Time in the West	1968	yes
24	76	City Lights	1931	no
25	-	Saving Private Ryan	1998	yes
26	2	Casablanca	1942	yes
27	-	American History X	1998	yes
28	81	Modern Times	1936	yes
29	60	Raiders of the Lost Ark	1981	yes
30	18	Psycho	1960	yes
31	42	Rear Window	1954	yes
32	-	The Green Mile	1999	yes
33	-	Terminator 2: Judgment Day	1991	yes
34	12	Sunset Blvd.	1950	yes
35	-	Back to the Future	1985	yes
36	26	Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb	1964	yes
37	28	Apocalypse Now	1979	yes
38	Ineligible - Italian	Cinema Paradiso	1988	yes
39	-	The Great Dictator	1940	no
40	-	The Lion King	1994	yes
41	-	Alien	1979	no
42	-	Paths of Glory	1957	yes
43	Ineligible - Japanese	Grave of the Fireflies	1988	no
44	-	The Shining	1980	yes
45	-	Witness for the Prosecution	1957	no
46	Ineligible - Japanese	Princess Mononoke	1997	no
47	Ineligible - German	Das Boot	1981	yes
48	Ineligible - German	M	1931	yes
49	-	American Beauty	1999	yes
50	-	Once Upon a Time in America	1984	no
51	1	Citizen Kane	1941	yes
52	-	Aliens	1986	no
53	40	North by Northwest	1959	yes
54	61	Vertigo	1958	yes
55	-	Star Wars: Episode VI - Return of the Jedi	1983	yes
56	38	Double Indemnity	1944	yes
57	-	Braveheart	1995	yes
58	-	Sunrise	1927	no
59	34	To Kill a Mockingbird	1962	yes
60	5	Lawrence of Arabia	1962	yes
61	46	Clockwork Orange	1971	yes
62	-	Reservoir Dogs	1992	no
63	-	The Kid	1921	no
64	Ineligible - Italian	Bicycle Thieves	1948	no
65	47	Taxi Driver	1976	yes
66	10	Singin’ in the Rain	1952	yes
67	16	All About Eve	1950	no
68	-	The Sting	1973	yes
69	53	Amadeus	1984	yes
70	Ineligible - Japanese	Yojimbo	1961	yes
71	Ineligible - Japanese	Rashomon	1950	yes
72	-	Full Metal Jacket	1987	yes
73	30	The Treasure of the Sierra Madre	1948	yes
74	Ineligible - British	Monty Python and the Holy Grail	1975	yes
75	93	The Apartment	1960	yes
76	22	2001: A Space Odyssey	1968	yes
77	Ineligible - Japanese	Ikiru	1952	yes
78	Ineligible - German	Metropolis	1927	yes
79	Ineligible - Italian	For a Few Dollars More	1965	no
80	57	The Third Man	1949	yes
81	-	Scarface	1983	yes
82	-	Toy Story	1995	yes
83	14	Some Like It Hot	1959	yes
84	-	L.A. Confidential	1997	no
85	-	Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade	1989	yes
86	98	Unforgiven	1992	no
87	29	Mr. Smith Goes to Washington	1939	yes
88	Ineligible - British	The Great Escape	1963	yes
89	8	On the Waterfront	1954	yes
90	24	Raging Bull	1980	no
91	Ineligible - Japanese	Ran	1985	yes
92	-	The General	1926	yes
93	-	Good Will Hunting	1997	yes
94	74	The Gold Rush	1925	yes
95	Ineligible - Japanese	My Neighbor Totoro	1988	yes
96	Ineligible - Swedish	Wild Strawberries	1957	no
97	19	Chinatown	1974	yes
98	-	Judgment at Nuremberg	1961	no
99	-	Heat	1995	no
100	-	Die Hard	1988	no

A Journey Through The Top 100 Films

Selecting the 100

Some Quick Statistics

The List

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