Click here for the Honorable Mentions.
And #100-91.
And #90-81.
And #80-71.
And #70-61.
And #60-51.
And #50-41.
And #40-31.
And #30-21.
Any top list ranking is subjective, and don’t let any other critic or movie watcher tell you differently. Movies are a personal experience, so know what you like, and rank using your criteria.
#20-11 is the runner ups to my all time Top 10. Any one of these films is deserving of the title greatest movie of all time. Most of these movies birth a genre, are career highlights for their directors/actors, or represent the best of what cinema has to offer. I hope you love all these stories as much as I do.
| 20 | Boyz n the Hood (1991) |
| No tale better encapsulates what it is like to grow up as an African American in a city. John Singleton’s force of nature tells the tale of 3 boys, Tre (Cuba Gooding Jr.), Ricky (Morris Chestnut), and Doughboy (Ice Cube) as they become men living in South Central Los Angeles. Singleton paints Inglewood as America’s version of a warzone: helicopters fly by in every scene, risk of violence is constant, and unexpected, and short term survival outweighs any long term plans. In this place of potential despair Singleton weaves a beautiful tapestry of people and stories, showing how perilous is not the same as hopeless. The same rites of passage exist here as anywhere else: have fun with your friends, chase girls, party, etc. But at the same time other more terrifying rites of passage have to also be passed: caring for a teenage mom/baby, gun violence threats, police brutality, etc. We also get the point of view of what it’s like to parent a kid in this place/time from the amazing Laurence Fishburne and Angela Bassett. By the time we reach the end, Singleton is commanding each piece of his work of art like an orchestra, crescendoing to an emotionally complicated but wholly satisfying climax of a story about a world we’ve never seen before on film. |
| 19 | The Social Network (2010) |
| The birth of social media is given a glorious, Shakespearean origin story. We first see Mark Zuckerberg (Jesse Eisenberg) dumped and wallowing in alcohol while blogging and writing a “hotness rating” app of the girls on Harvard’s campus. In that anger came inspiration: the idea for Facebook. What follows is a common tale modernized: a relatively unknown kid rises to popularity/fame/power. That popularity attracts interest from other powerful people like the Winklevoss Twins (Armie Hammer) and Sean Parker (a never better Justin Timberlake), which threatens Zuckerberg’s established friendships like the ones with Eduardo Saverin (Andrew Garfield) and Dustin Moskovitz (Joseph Mazzello). This tale is brought to vivid life through two behind the scenes powerhouses. Aaron Sorkin’s script turns all these Harvard genius’ conversations into car races, with ideas and side notes coming fast and furious out of their mouths that make those scenes as exciting as any action set piece. And David Fincher brings all the pieces together with his amazing direction, taking what could have been a story about a bunch of people at computers and making it an epic complicated comic tragedy for the computer generation. |
| 18 | National Lampoon’s Animal House (1978) |
| Certainly there were comedies before Animal House. But few brilliantly capture college bro culture better than this classic. John Belushi unleashes his prodigious comedic talents here as one of the leaders of Delta House: the most boozy, and clearly worst performing fraternity on campus. What makes Animal House so special is its unwavering condescension toward the rule makers, pointing out their hypocrisy while laughing and partying it up. For better or worse, this movie made everyone want to be Bluto, Otter (Tim Matheson), Boon (Peter Riegert), or take a class from Prof. Jennings (Donald Sutherland), because of how fun it must have been to go to a toga party, or smoke pot with a professor, or road trip with some fraternity brothers. You don’t get Caddyshack, Revenge of the Nerds, or the entire Apatow generation with out Douglas Kenney/John Landis/ and Harold Ramis’s amazing encapsulation of a specific time in a college bro’s coming of age, creating numerous futile and stupid gestures along the way. |
| 17 | Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964) |
| Comedies that hold up the longest usually end up being satires of a ubiquitous part of everyday life. In 1964, the Cold War was in full tense swing, with the constant threat of nuclear proliferation from the United States and Soviet Union endangering the lives of everyone on Earth. Enter Stanley Kubrick: one of our greatest filmmakers. He saw the potential of turning this story into a pitch black satire of Cold War politics; every warmongering general going rogue is met with endless debate about whether or not to stop them while the generals use the power of their office/systems in place to make their war impossible to stop. Silly nonsensical debates are treated with the utmost seriousness, leading into pointless squabbling and more importantly, an abdication of responsibility to prevent something awful from happening. It’s cynical stuff, but in Kubrick’s hands the points couldn’t be clearer as the ending reaches it’s dark but expected climax. |
| 16 | All Quiet on the Western Front (1930) |
| The first masterpiece of the sound era in movies. Lewis “lives up to his last name” Milestone directs the hell out of the greatest WWI book ever written, turning it into the greatest WWI movie ever made. The movie tells us the story of a German recruit, Paul (Lew Ayres). Roused to join from his patriotic teacher, Paul enlists to fight for his country, expecting a heroes welcome and excitement on the front lines. What he really finds is the cruel, unrelenting chaos soldiers have to deal with during a war: food stealing, pointless stagnant trench warfare, horrible living conditions, and other things war movies have stolen from this one. Milestone’s sets are amazing, and he also has spectacular tracking shots (in any era) of what a bombing looks like from above and below in a trench. But above all else, the screenplay shines brightest. Besides Paul, we get a few amazing characters, especially the jaded but clever/poignant Kat (Louis Wolheim). Over the course of the story, his experiences take him from a cockeyed optimist into that “veteran with a long stare” seen all over the movie world; experiences as engaging as a bunch of soldiers discussing what they are fighting for, to traumatizing nighttime enemies turned brief friends. Each scene builds upon the other until the beautiful but tragic climax, capturing how innocent boys turn into sad men in just over two and a half magnificent hours. |
| 15 | Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back (1980) |
| Of course a Star Wars movie was going to make my list! While Episode IV created a new world that 8 year old kids would dream about for generations, it’s the sequel that made those dreams last forever and ever. This movie introduces us to legendary characters like Yoda, Lando Calrissian, and Boba Fett. Leigh Brackett and Lawrence Kasdan’s screenplay split the heroes up, giving us the hero’s journey and a great romcom in the same movie that are equally entertaining and exciting. Plus the story takes a deep, epic plunge with a plot twist that’s a lock for the Mt. Rushmore of all time plot twists, and takes the tale into new, unexpected heights. Amazing space battles, great scenes, awesome characters, an amazing story AND an all time plot twist. There’s nothing more you could want from an entertainment. |
| 14 | The Shawshank Redemption (1994) |
| One of the most rewatchable movies of all time is also one of cinema’s finest. Tim Robbins plays Andy Dufresne, a former banker unjustly serving a double life sentence. Inside Shawshank prison he meets Red (Morgan Freeman), the self-proclaimed man who knows how to get things. Over the next decades, the two form one of cinema’s most amazing friendships, taking a central presence in the prison run by the vile calculating Warden Norton (Bob Gunton). Along the way, Frank Darabont weaves in all sorts of wonderful themes – the dehumanization of the prison industrial complex, absolute power corrupts absolutely, and salvation lies within – through an opera song montage, building a library, and a man caring for a raven. This sounds hella boring, but thanks to Darabont, Freeman, and Robbins, the movie plays like a fable unfolding in real time, sucking you in with its layered storytelling, and easing you to bed with an ending that makes even the steeliest of grown men burst into tears and sobs like a baby. |
| 13 | The Dark Knight (2008) |
| Christopher Nolan’s magnum opus: a movie so brilliant that it somehow convinced society to take superheroes seriously, and it altered the Best Picture race at the Oscars because it was maddeningly left off the Top 5 list. After Batman Begins, the Caped Crusader (Christian Bale) has made the mobs that run Gotham desperate, and in their desperation they turn to the Joker (Heath Ledger) to find a way to kill the Bat Man. The minute we get the Heat homage heist at the beginning and the pencil trick, Ledger dominates the movie with one of those performances people will be talking about for years to come, playing a walking terrifying chaos creator Batman has no idea how to stop. In addition to Ledger, Nolan deserves a lot of credit here, becoming Steven Spielberg and Alfred Hitchcock’s unholy, modern blockbuster director offspring. He crafts spectacular set pieces (the truck flip gives me chills even today), builds the characters and themes beautifully, and crafts a globe hopping, suspense filled tale that has you on the edge of your seat beginning to end until you lie back, exhausted, and wholly satisfied that you just witnessed a truly special movie experience for the ages. |
| 12 | All the President’s Men (1976) |
| The crowning achievement of arguably the crowning decade of American Cinema. In a decade about political upheaval, conspiracies, and distrust of establishment figures, of course the movie about the Watergate Scandal would stand tallest. Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman play journalists Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, young beat reporters on the Washington Post assigned to what was initially perceived to be a minor break in at the Watergate Building housing the Democratic National Committee. But as Woodward and Bernstein started digging and following the money, that minor break in could be linked all the way to the White House. Movies about journalists, until that point, were pretty boring, usually built around interviews and weird facts inside of strange documents. But Alan Pakula’s movie is more like a political thriller, with real stakes involved for the journalists as they find themselves targeting people with more and more power. Meetings with “Deep Throat” (Hal Holbrook) are as tense as any horror movie, taking place in covert areas shadowed everywhere with no idea if “Deep Throat” will double-cross them or be double-crossed at any point. That sort of bravery is why investigative journalists are so important to society: they risking their own careers, lives, and loved ones potentially in the process to simply speak truth to power, as noble a goal as there is. |
| 11 | Seven Samurai (1956) |
| When putting together a list of the greatest directors of all time, Akira Kurosawa is somewhere in the Top 4. The amazing Japanese filmmaker was inspired by the John Ford westerns, so he took that love and appreciation and applied it to his own country’s growing movie industry via the samurai film. Seven Samurai’s premise is simple, but completely engaging: bandits are attacking a feudal Japanese village, so the village elders hire seven rogue samurai to defend the town and defeat the bandits. The first half of Kurosawa’s magnum opus is about “getting the band together (one of the first films to do this),” with each of the seven samurai getting an origin story of their skills/talents, as well as several of the townspeople going through battle training. The second half is about the bandit siege on the town, in which Kurosawa turns the battles into these majestic balletic displays of violence, like people moving like a sea to take down one or two isolated bandits. The acting, led by Kurosawa muses Takashi Shimura and Toshiro Mifune, is excellent across the board, the sets are wonderfully constructed to capture the even more wonderfully constructed battle sequences, the story is easy to understand but contains a wealth of ideas and themes, and conducting this train is the master conductor Kurosawa, showing why the next generation of American filmmakers copied (Magnificent Seven ring any bells?) or worshipped (Steven Spielberg and Geroge Lucas listed Kurosawa as the greatest living filmmaker) everything the directing genius created, especially this masterpiece. |
Below I’ve included a little mini recognition section to honor some of the films above!
| Will Probably Drop Out | There’s the obvious sexual politics issue of Animal House that aren’t helping, but, and I can’t believe I’m saying this, The Empire Strikes Back is growing more and more overrated as I rewatch it. |
| The Newbie | I really never thought a war movie made in the 1930s would hold up by today’s movie standards, which is what makes All Quiet on the Western Front so special: each scene is more divine than the next; the movie was the biggest joy I had in my quarantine watching. |
| Growing in Esteem | It’s near impossible for a movie to crack my top 10 all time, but Seven Samurai has come damn close, and might end up in there as time goes on. |
| Needs a Rewatch | I haven’t seen Dr. Strangelove in a long time. I’m certain it holds up, but what I’m not sure of is how much better it’s gotten as I’ve aged. |
| The Surprise | Probably the Zuckerberg movie right? But The Social Network does the near impossible: taking a movie about staring at computer screens and making it the Citizen Kane of the computer era. |
How the Subjective 100 was made…
My process to get 100 films was as follows: go through each top 10 list from every movie year on my website, and pull the best movies of that year that might qualify for my all time list (number of films per year varies, depending on the quality of the year). I took that set of films, and put them into their respective genres (sci-fi, drama, horror, etc). From there the films in each genre got ranked against each other. Then I worked backwards, taking the worst film from each of the genres and ranking them based on my personal judgment. Once the worst film from a genre was used, it was discarded, and the next highest film was then ranked against the current set. This process was repeated until I exhausted the entire film list, creating the list you’ll see forthcoming.