Top 100 Greatest Movies of All Time According to 10 Top 100 Lists

What are the 100 Greatest Movies of All Time?

An age-old question dating back to the day the 101st film was born. The British Film Institute first published their Top 10 in 1952, the American Film Institute gave us a Top 100 in 1998, and in 2025, somebody with too much free time combined 10 prominent lists to create one super list in an attempt to answer that burning question.

The Methodology

First, I compiled movie lists from ten sources: BFI, AFI, Rotten Tomatoes, IMDb, Letterboxd, Empire, Variety, TIFF Essential, They Make Pictures, Don't They?, and Metacritic.

Then I whipped up a simple scoring system: the Number One movie gets 100 points, the Number Two movie gets 99 points, the Number Three movie gets 98 points, and so on and so forth.

And finally, a few maths later, I created a new, super Top 100 list based on said scoring system. Boom.

The 100 Greatest Films of All Time

Rank	Title	Total Points	List Appearances
1	The Godfather	959	10
2	Seven Samurai	749	9
3	Citizen Kane	716	8
4	Casablanca	688	9
5	Singin' in the Rain	615	9
6	Vertigo	576	8
7	The Godfather Part II	563	7
8	Psycho	553	9
9	Tokyo Story	536	7
10	2001: A Space Odyssey	526	6
11	Apocalypse Now	523	8
12	City Lights	520	7
13	Lawrence of Arabia	459	8
14	Schindler's List	456	6
15	Rear Window	453	8
16	The Passion of Joan of Arc	429	6
17	Goodfellas	426	7
18	Parasite	415	7
19	12 Angry Men	392	7
20	Pulp Fiction	379	7
21	It's a Wonderful Life	376	6
22	Persona	368	5
23	Some Like It Hot	366	6
24	Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans	364	5
25	Sunset Boulevard	337	6
26	Spirited Away	333	6
27	In the Mood for Love	331	6
28	The Battle of Algiers	327	6
29	The Searchers	327	4
30	All About Eve	323	5
31	The 400 Blows	321	5
32	8½	321	4
33	Star Wars	321	4
34	The Dark Knight	319	5
35	The Shawshank Redemption	318	4
36	Taxi Driver	317	6
37	Bicycle Thieves	312	5
38	Gone with the Wind	311	4
39	The Wizard of Oz	310	4
40	Man with a Movie Camera	307	4
41	The Empire Strikes Back	300	4
42	Chinatown	298	5
43	Do the Right Thing	295	6
44	Rashomon	290	4
45	Pather Panchali	276	5
46	The Good, the Bad and the Ugly	267	5
47	Battleship Potemkin	266	4
48	The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring	266	4
49	The Rules of the Game	263	3
50	Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb	261	5
51	North by Northwest	260	5
52	The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers	257	4
53	The Apartment	256	5
54	Breathless	255	4
55	The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King	255	3
56	L'Avventura	247	4
57	Saving Private Ryan	244	4
58	Blade Runner	240	5
59	On the Waterfront	239	3
60	The Silence of the Lambs	230	4
61	L'Atalante	230	3
62	City of God	228	3
63	Jaws	225	5
64	Playtime	223	4
65	Au hasard Balthazar	223	3
66	The Third Man	222	5
67	Moonlight	221	4
68	Metropolis	213	5
69	Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles	212	3
70	Annie Hall	210	4
71	Cinema Paradiso	209	3
72	Close-Up	206	4
73	The Night of the Hunter	201	3
74	Interstellar	199	3
75	Nashville	198	5
76	M	198	4
77	One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest	198	4
78	The Leopard	195	4
79	Mulholland Drive	192	3
80	Andrei Rublev	186	4
81	Fanny and Alexander	185	4
82	The General	185	4
83	Portrait of a Lady on Fire	184	5
84	The Maltese Falcon	184	4
85	Modern Times	181	4
86	Raging Bull	180	3
87	The Wild Bunch	180	4
88	Beau travail	175	3
89	Alien	174	4
90	La Dolce Vita	174	3
91	Pan's Labyrinth	173	4
92	Inception	169	2
93	Shoah	168	3
94	Whiplash	168	3
95	Harakiri	168	2
96	Grave of the Fireflies	167	3
97	Fight Club	166	2
98	The Matrix	165	2
99	Toy Story	162	5
100	Raiders of the Lost Ark	162	3

Interesting Takeaways

Francis Ford Coppola almost has three films in the Top 10. Apocalypse Now is in the 11th spot.

The Godfather, The Number One Greatest Film Of All Time, is the only film to be on all 10 source lists.

Steven Spielberg has four films in this Top 100: Schindler's List, Saving Private Ryan, Jaws, and Raiders of the Lost Ark.

Shout-out to A Man Escaped by Robert Bresson, which appeared in 5 of the source lists but only managed to accumulate 63 points, putting it in the 233rd spot.