10 Best Movies of All Time
Ask ten film lovers to name the 10 best movies of all time and you will get ten different lists. But some films show up again and again, on nearly every serious ranking, from the American Film Institute’s AFI 100 list to the Sight and Sound critics’ poll, which has been held once a decade since 1952. The list below is built from that shared ground. Whether you are filling gaps in your film education or looking for a great movie night, these ten are a solid place to start.
How This List Was Chosen
There is no single official ranking of the greatest films ever made, so this list draws on the two most respected ones. The American Film Institute polled more than 1,500 film industry figures for its 100 Years…100 Movies list, and Sight and Sound’s 2022 poll asked over 1,600 critics, academics and programmers around the world. The films below appear high on one or both, and have stayed in the conversation for years. A few modern favourites earned their place too, because audiences have kept watching and talking about them long after release.
1. The Godfather (1972)
Directed by Francis Ford Coppola, The Godfather sits at number two on the AFI’s updated 100 list, and it is easy to see why. Marlon Brando plays Vito Corleone, the head of a New York crime family, and Al Pacino plays his youngest son Michael, who is slowly pulled into the family business he once wanted to escape. It is a crime story, but it is really about family, loyalty and power. The acting, the writing and the quiet, patient direction all work together, and the film still feels fresh more than fifty years later. If you only watch one film on this list, make it this one.
2. Citizen Kane (1941)
Orson Welles was only 25 when he directed Citizen Kane, and it topped the Sight and Sound poll for five straight decades, from 1962 to 2002. The film follows a newspaper magnate, Charles Foster Kane, through the memories of the people who knew him, trying to solve the mystery of his last word: “Rosebud.” What makes it great is not just the story but how it is told. Welles and cinematographer Gregg Toland used deep focus, unusual camera angles and a non-linear structure that filmmakers are still learning from today. It is the film that changed what cinema could do.
3. Casablanca (1942)
Casablanca is the most quoted film ever made, and for good reason. Set in Morocco during the Second World War, it stars Humphrey Bogart as Rick, a cynical bar owner, and Ingrid Bergman as Ilsa, the woman who walked out of his life and walks back into it. It has romance, sacrifice, humour and one of the most famous endings in cinema. The American Film Institute ranked it number three on its original 100 list, and it has barely left the top ten of any all-time ranking since. It is also just a very enjoyable two hours.
4. The Shawshank Redemption (1994)
Directed by Frank Darabont and based on a Stephen King story, The Shawshank Redemption tells the story of Andy Dufresne, a banker sentenced to life in prison for a crime he says he did not commit, and his friendship with fellow inmate Red, played by Morgan Freeman. It did not do big business when it first came out, but audiences discovered it on home video and television, and it has spent years at the top of IMDb’s user-voted chart. Its message is simple and hopeful: patience and friendship can carry a person through almost anything.
5. Schindler’s List (1993)
Steven Spielberg’s Schindler’s List is the hardest film on this list to watch, and one of the most important. Shot mostly in black and white, it tells the true story of Oskar Schindler, a German businessman who saved more than a thousand Jewish people from the Holocaust. Liam Neeson plays Schindler, and the film won the Academy Award for Best Picture. It is long and heavy, but it is also a reminder of what cinema can do when it takes history seriously.
6. Lawrence of Arabia (1962)
David Lean’s desert epic follows T.E. Lawrence, a British officer who helped lead the Arab revolt against the Ottoman Empire during the First World War. Peter O’Toole stars in his first leading role, and the film is famous for its enormous desert landscapes, shot in 70mm, and Maurice Jarre’s sweeping score. It sits at number five on the AFI’s original list. This is a film that rewards a big screen and your full attention, because so much of its power is in the images themselves.
7. Vertigo (1958)
Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo won the Sight and Sound critics’ poll in 2012 and came second in 2022, after holding a high place for decades. James Stewart plays a retired detective with a fear of heights who is hired to follow a friend’s wife, played by Kim Novak, and becomes obsessed with her. It is a strange, dreamlike thriller about obsession and identity, and it was not fully appreciated when it first came out. Today, many critics call it Hitchcock’s masterpiece. If you want to see a thriller that works on a deeper level, start here.
8. 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey is the most ambitious science fiction film ever made. It begins with apes discovering tools and ends with a journey beyond Jupiter that still puzzles viewers today. It was made years before the first Moon landing, yet its vision of space travel still looks convincing. The Sight and Sound poll has kept it in its top ten for decades, and its influence on every space film since is impossible to miss.
9. Pulp Fiction (1994)
Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction changed independent cinema in the 1990s. Its stories of hitmen, a boxer and a gangster’s wife are told out of order, with dialogue that sounds like real conversation even when it is about nothing at all. John Travolta, Samuel L. Jackson, Uma Thurman and Bruce Willis lead the cast. The film won the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival and earned a place on the AFI 100 list. It is funny, violent and endlessly quotable, and it showed a whole generation of filmmakers that a film could break the rules and still reach a wide audience.
10. The Dark Knight (2008)
Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight is the most recent film on this list, and it earned its place by doing something rare: a superhero film that works as a serious crime drama. Christian Bale returns as Batman, but the film belongs just as much to Heath Ledger, whose performance as the Joker won him a posthumous Academy Award. It is a film about chaos, order and the choices people make under pressure. More than fifteen years later, it is still the standard other comic-book films are measured against.
Where to Start
If you are new to classic cinema, start with Casablanca or The Godfather: both are gripping from the first scene and easy to love on a first viewing. If you want something to think about afterwards, try Vertigo or 2001: A Space Odyssey. And if you are looking for more ideas, our list of must-see movies and our guide to good movies to see have plenty more recommendations to work through.
Great films do not really go out of date. Pick one from this list tonight, and see for yourself why these ten have stayed at the top for so long.
