Kung-fu, machine guns, tasty one-liners: there isn’t a shortage of action movie tropes to be found in this Wachowski Siblings film that turned the heads of both critics and viewers at the turn of the century. Top 20 Greatest Suspense/Thrillers of All Time (The Ultimate List), Top 100 Greatest Actors of All Time (The Ultimate List), Top 25 Greatest War Movies of All Time (The Ultimate List), Top 50 Greatest Biopics of All Time (The Ultimate List), Top 50 Worst Movies of All Time (The Ultimate List). The swirling mythic cauldron (i.e. Top 100 Greatest Movies of All Time (The Ultimate List) 1. Oscar Nominations: 6 Alison Doody, It reimagined the Western genre and became a part of the zeitgeist.—Tomris Laffly, Biting political satires don't have to be long and complicated: This 68-minute masterpiece is perfectly pithy, exposing the absurdities of international politics with swift wit and spot-on slapstick. Silent classics, noir, space operas and everything in between: Somehow we managed to rank the best movies of all time. Golden Globe Nominations: 4, PG-13 But for our money—and that of superfan Martin Scorsese—this dazzling ballet-set romance is first among equals. 106 min | Onscreen comedy, in turn, was modernized for what would be its most transforming decade. Director: | ... Marty McFly, a 17-year-old high school student, is accidentally sent thirty years into the past in a time-traveling DeLorean invented by his close friend, the eccentric scientist Doc Brown. Director: It’s a surreal moment that encapsulates this strange and mighty river movie, about a man so lost in his own obsession, he can no longer process the world around him.—Phil de Semlyen, Political thrillers still owe a debt to Gillo Pontecorvo’s ever-timely tour de force. 120,956 With countless iconic details—a horse’s severed head, Marlon Brando’s wheezy voice, Nino Rota’s catchy waltz—The Godfather’s authority lives on.—Tomris Laffly, Maybe you’ve heard of this one? Undeniably one of the best sci-fi movies out there, The Matrix also totally holds it’s own as one of the best action movies of all time. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004), 90. Oscar Nominations: 4 Richard Attenborough, Oscar Nominations: 5 1,645,002 Sean Bean, Votes: 71,000 BAFTA Awards: 1 Only English-language movies released in the U.S. were considered for the list, and each movie needed both a Metascore and at least 20,000 votes on IMDb to qualify. Stars: 161 min PG | 115 min | Action, Adventure It’s pulp fiction, but alchemically profound.—Stephen Garrett, So much of Stanley Kubrick’s genius was conceptual, and this one asks his most audacious question: What if the world came to an end—and it was hilarious? M is like a sonar listening to a pre-Nazi Germany on the cusp of shedding its humanity.—Joshua Rothkopf, Set in (eek!) Some of the most intimate Indian cinema ever captured, it’s also completely relatable, whether you hail from Kolkata, Kansas or Camden Town.—Phil de Semlyen, Boy meets train. Directors David and Jerry Zucker and their partner in extreme silliness, Jim Abrahams, truly threw the kitchen sink at this dizzying spoof of the ’70s disaster movies that were all the rage at the time. Additionally, we picked only classical period films, so you get outta here with that Best Picture-winning neo-Western nonsense! As much as Orson Welles’s Citizen Kane did with the films of the ’20s, ’30s, and early ’40s, The Conformist offers a powerful compendium of cinematic techniques from the eras preceding it.—Bilge Ebiri, Let John Carpenter’s real masterpiece—the one that horror mavens bow down to—take its place in the pantheon. BAFTA Awards: 1 Eligible movies are ranked based on their Adjusted Scores. In weaving their stories together, Mann presents dueling but equally weighted perspectives, with our allegiance as viewers constantly shifting. All rights reserved. Stars: Kate Capshaw, But his transition to Hollywood was rocky; it was a town that barely understood him. He was able to turn out impeccable ghost stories (Ugetsu) and backstage dramas (The Story of the Last Chrysanthemums), but his greatest trait was a deep, unshakable empathy for women, beaten down by the patriarchy but heartbreaking in their suffering. | James Garner, Wayne’s bitterly wayward ex–Confederate soldier heads a five-year hunt for niece Debbie, captured at age nine by the Comanche. Adventure stories have always held a special place in the culture of society. Christopher Guest, Michael McKean and Harry Shearer are comic royalty, and we can only genuflect in their presence; shortly after this film, Guest kicked off his own directorial brand of humor, directly inspired by Rob Reiner’s heavy-metal satire.—Phil de Semlyen, If only Hollywood made ’em like they used to: crackling romantic comedies that conquered the Oscars. A man befriends a fellow criminal as the two of them begin serving their sentence on a dreadful prison island, which inspires the man to plot his escape. Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964), 54. Frank Capra’s hilarious hate-at-first-sight love story is still one of the fastest movies ever made. 100 Best War Movies of All Time. But nothing betters it for style, mordant wit, racial and political undertow, and scaring the bejesus out of you, all some 50 years before Us.—Ian Freer, This rousing Russian silent film was conceived in the heat of Soviet propaganda and commissioned by the still-young Communist government to salute an event from 20 years earlier. BAFTA Awards: 2 | Gross: | It’s an essential touchstone for every political thriller since.—Stephen Garrett, We’re cheating by including all three films (Pather Panchali, Aparajito and The World of Apu), but really, how do you separate the installments of Satyajit Ray’s magnificent coming-of-age trilogy? Harrison Ford, Renoir captures his sparklingly astute ensemble cast with fluid, deep-focus camera movements, innovations that inspired directors from Orson Welles to Robert Altman.—Stephen Garrett, Rightly considered one of the most focused and suspenseful movies ever made, Steven Spielberg’s tale of a shark terrorizing a beach town remains effective more than four decades later. Ian McKellen, $402.45M, ***** Orlando Bloom, Director: Parents will love the nostalgia throwback (baby-faced Drew Barrymore) and little ones will love the adorable E.T. Additionally, we picked only classical period films, so you get outta here with that Best Picture-winning neo-Western nonsense! (Pointedly, we never see the sex work Jeanne schedules in her bedroom to make ends meet.) The film also sports a perfect cast, with a top-of-his-game Jack Nicholson as a cynical private eye, an impossibly alluring Faye Dunaway as the femme fatale with a past so dark her final revelation still shocks, and the legendary John Huston as the monstrous millionaire at the heart of it all.—Bilge Ebiri, Not just any film gets homaged by Bill and Ted. 98%: Toy Story 3 (2010) 308: 12. Action, Adventure, Drama. 179 min David Lynch’s glamorous nightmare of Los Angeles is dense with mystery, terror and uncanny sexiness—themes that had long been a constant of the auteur’s work, but which here reached their lurid apotheosis.—Abbey Bender, The pinnacle of Italian Neorealism, Vittorio de Sica’s postwar masterwork exemplifies the movement’s socioeconomic concerns, maneuvering its stylistic conventions with heartbreaking poignancy. On the simplest of frameworks—a poor farming community pools its resources to hire samurai to protect them from the brutal bandits who steal its harvest—Akira Kurosawa mounts a finely drawn epic, by turns absorbing, funny and exciting. BAFTA Awards: 0 | Stacker presents the 100 best fantasy movies of all time, as determined by a weighted index split evenly between IMDb and Metacritic scores. To qualify, the film had to be listed as fantasy on IMDb, have a Metascore, and have at least 5,000 votes. Adventure, Drama, History. Alec Guinness, Intricately designed as a tribute to the craft, Steven Spielberg’s funnest blockbuster has it all: rolling boulders, a barroom brawl, a sparky heroine (Karen Allen) who can hold her liquor and lose her temper, a treacherous monkey, a champagne-drinking villain (Paul Freeman), snakes (“Why did it have to be snakes?”), cinema’s greatest truck chase and a barnstorming supernatural finale where heads explode. Golden Globes: 0 The story of T.E. To me, accuracy when making a Top 10/Top 100 all time list is extremely important. Director: “I understand he’s a nut who lives in a tree in India somewhere,” noted Kubrick when Clarke’s name came up—along with those of Isaac Asimov, Robert A. Heinlein and Ray Bradbury—as a possible writer for his planned sci-fi epic. Bruce Bennett, Votes: It’s a triumph of buried political commentary and purest epic cinema. $248.16M, Oscars: 4 Top 100 Movies of All Time Best of Rotten Tomatoes Movies with 40 or more critic reviews vie for their place in history at Rotten Tomatoes. Look out for your first newsletter in your inbox soon! John Sturges 100 Best War Movies of All Time. Orson Welles’s iconic film, made when he was just 25, forever altered the language of cinema and set the auteur on a long path of fiercely iconoclastic work (and the Hollywood misunderstandings that unfortunately came with it). Affairs among aristocrats and servants alike bloom during a weeklong hunting trip at a country manor, where the only crime is to trade frivolity with sincerity. Harrison Ford, If you're a thrill-seeking, adrenaline-obsessed movie-goer, these are the top adventure movies you have to see. 2. An unyielding critique of capitalism through the story of an everyman’s losing battle to safeguard a hard-earned job and preserve his dignity in the eyes of his son, Bicycle Thieves continues to inform the most humanist works of our time, from Winter’s Bone to Shoplifters.—Tomris Laffly, Christopher Nolan’s brooding, expansive Batman sequel fuses the comic-book flick with the crime epic, and delivers something truly special: a pop spectacle with passages of surprisingly potent despair. Action, Adventure. 257,543 Thomas Kretschmann, Votes: His Spanish soldier, Don Lope de Aguirre, finds himself with only these furry friends for company, his dreams of finding the mythical El Dorado in tatters. It even won him an unlikely Oscar.—Joshua Rothkopf, An antiwar movie, a courtroom thriller, an upstairs-downstairs study of social status, a religious critique, an absurdist satire and, finally, a heartbreakingly futile plea for compassion in the face of destruction, Stanley Kubrick’s humanist masterpiece dissects all the delusional facets of the male psyche. BAFTA Nominations: 5 Mark Hamill, $315.54M, Oscars: 4 It also made Marcello Mastroianni a star; here, he plays a gossip journalist caught up in the frenzied, freewheeling world of Roman nightlife. Geoffrey Rush, | Gross: 115 min | In 1938, after his father Professor Henry Jones, Sr. goes missing while pursuing the Holy Grail, Professor Henry "Indiana" Jones, Jr. finds himself up against Adolf Hitler's Nazis again to stop them from obtaining its powers. | Gross: From peacetime to frontlines, from coming home to left behind: Rotten Tomatoes presents the 100 best-reviewed war movies of all time, ranked by Adjusted Tomatometer with at least 20 reviews each. $5.01M, Oscars: 3 | Check out the 50 best adventure films of all time, ranked by Adjusted Tomatometer score! Welcome to Rotten Tomatoes’ compendium of cinema’s best-reviewed tales of swords and sorcery, fire and ice, and dungeons and…you get the idea. | The Matrix. BAFTA Nominations: 6 Golden Globes: 0 1. It was also monumentally subversive, sneaking in a clutch of racy moments under the nose of Hollywood’s moralistic Hays Code and all but neutering it in the process. 178 min Golden Globes: 0 BAFTA Nominations: 2 | Steven Spielberg As director, producer, cowriter and star, Welles cemented his status as an innovator. Golden Globes: 0 Still, it’s shocking to remember that The Shining—so redolent of the director’s pet themes of mazelike obsession and the banality of evil—was once considered a minor work. Luke Skywalker’s quest to rescue a princess instantly elevated B-movie bliss to billion-dollar-franchise sagas.—Stephen Garrett, Carl Theodor Dreyer’s classic tale of the trial of Joan of Arc is somehow both austere and maximalist. Ben Kingsley, It may not sound like your average love story, but that’s exactly what Buster Keaton’s deadpan and death-defying silent comedy is: a majestic demonstration of trick photography, balletic courage and comic timing, all underpinned by genuine heart. Oscar Nominations: 8 Our favorite joke? Battlegrounds abound—psychological, emotional, physical—making the bleakly entrenched soldiers of 1916, and the officers who confuse folly for fame, still feel painfully relevant.—Stephen Garrett, Actors are the lifeblood of director Mike Leigh’s famous process, a much-discussed method of workshopping, character exploration, group improvisation and collaborative writing. Loaded with longing, the film benefits from no less than three cinematographers, who together create an intense sense of intimacy, while the faultless performances shiver with sexual tension. A monumental opening line (“I believe in America”) sets the operatic Mario Puzo adaptation in motion, before Coppola’s epic morphs into a chilling dismantling of the American dream. It’s a triumph of buried political commentary and purest epic cinema. Best of Rotten Tomatoes. Stars: Director: When a killer shark unleashes chaos on a beach community, it's up to a local sheriff, a marine biologist, and an old seafarer to hunt the beast down. | | Sam Neill, 2. So, what does he do? Cary Grant’s suavely hollow adman Roger O. Thornhill (“What does the O. stand for?” “Nothing.”) is Don Draper with a sense of humor, which he sorely needs when he contracts a bad case of Wrong Man–itis. | Paul Freeman, The Bengali great follows young Apu (Apurba Kumar Roy) from boyhood to adult life via schooling and a move from his remote village to the big city, as well as loves and losses. But the filmmaking is what makes this a classic, particularly the energy, wit and style with which Lee presents this microcosm and the social forces at play inside it.—Bilge Ebiri, It’s no exaggeration to say that Akira Kurosawa’s Rashomon redefined cinematic storytelling. Despite becoming somehow synonymous with “difficult art-house statement,” it’s not all weighty themes, plague-strewn landscapes and chess games with the Grim Reaper. By entering your email address you agree to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy and consent to receive emails from Time Out about news, events, offers and partner promotions. Adventure movies come in all shapes and sizes: such as superhero movies, monster movies, time travel movies, or battles between the dark side and the light in a galaxy far far away. Oscar Nominations: 11 Jeanne Dielman, 23, Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1975), 51. $342.55M, Oscars: 2 the Extra-Terrestrial” Steven Spielberg's classic sci-fi story of an extraterrestrial stranded on planet Earth is pure movie magic. In other words, a film's commercial success (Oscars & BAFTA Awards), and greatness in direction, screenwriting and production, is how I ranked the films on this list. Spielberg proved that less is more when it comes to crafting a feeling of dread, barely even showing us the beast that went on to haunt a whole generation.—Dave Calhoun, The deliciously dark, stylish genre of film noir simply wouldn’t exist without Double Indemnity. Ultimately, it’s the tale of a man’s attempt to overcome his crisis of faith in a world that seems to have an endless supply of violence and strife—and it’s a remarkable testament to the persistence of artists working under oppressive regimes.—Bilge Ebiri, The melancholy of Michel Legrand’s glorious score washes over viewers’ hearts from the first moment of Jacques Demy’s nontraditional, sung-through musical. Extreme Classics: The 100 Greatest Adventure Books of All Time "A list we had hoped our readers would enjoy turned out to be one of the most popular features in Adventure's five-year history. | After the Rebels are brutally overpowered by the Empire on the ice planet Hoth, Luke Skywalker begins Jedi training with Yoda, while his friends are pursued by Darth Vader and a bounty hunter named Boba Fett all over the galaxy. 98%: The African Queen (1951) 45: 53. Can there ever be one list to rule them all? Delicately played, beautifully shot (often with the camera hovering just off the ground), Ozu’s masterpiece is the family movie given grandeur and intimacy. | Gross: Giger’s strangely elegant double-jawed creature, a nightmarish vision of hostility—and one of cinema’s most unforgettable pieces of pure craft.—Tomris Laffly, Simply spun, Yasujiro Ozu’s domestic drama is small but perfectly formed. Orlando Bloom, 61%. 2. | $74.70M, Oscars: 11 Stars: “Looks like I picked the wrong week to quit amphetamines.”—Phil de Semlyen, Hypnotic, bewitching, thought-provoking, disturbing, horrifying: However you react to it, you won't forget Jonathan Glazer's startling adaptation of Michel Faber's woman-who-fell-to-earth novel. Stars: 100%: The Terminator (1984) 64: 51. But Alien claims masterpiece status with its subversive gender politics (this is a movie that impregnates men), its shocking chestburster centerpiece and industrial designer H.R. | Gross: | The Shawshank Redemption (1994) 3. Golden Globe Nominations: 4, PG View the most influential and essential anime films here! And let’s not forget the movie itself, which kicked off the “found-footage” trend. Journey to the Center of the Earth (2008) By DeAnna Janes. Forget the shower shenanigans, the end is creepy AF.—Ian Freer, Japanese cinema has produced no shortage of heavy hitters, but director Kenji Mizoguchi may deserve prime of place. | | Check out the 50 best adventure films of all time, ranked by Adjusted Tomatometer score! Director: 8. Stars: Steve McQueen, Anthony Quinn, Elijah Wood, The gags come almost as fast as you can process them, with the typically pinpoint Chaplin slapstick conjured here from scenarios that seem purpose-built to end in disaster. Singularly ahead of its time, Daughters mourns the enduring tragedy of enslavement. Golden Globe Nominations: 2, PG-13 The 1970s were U.S. cinema’s most exciting period, and Nashville—broadened by its admirable scope and freewheeling energy—is emblematic of that creativity.—Abbey Bender, Nicolas Roeg lays claim to being one of the most influential British directors to have ever picked up a viewfinder, and this elliptical take on a Daphne du Maurier yarn is the main reason for it. Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown (1988), 92. Most wonderfully, this comedy best celebrates the rule of wit: He—or, more often, she—with the sharpest tongue wins. A meek Hobbit from the Shire and eight companions set out on a journey to destroy the powerful One Ring and save Middle-earth from the Dark Lord Sauron. Top 100 Mystery & Suspense Movies Best of Rotten Tomatoes Movies with 40 or more critic reviews vie for their place in history at Rotten Tomatoes. | :), PG BAFTA Awards: 0 $760.51M, ***** Billy Dee Williams, Votes: Part psychoanalysis session, part colorful genre fantasia, director Bernardo Bertolucci’s enormously influential drama journeys through different styles and aesthetics. Lorraine Gary, Votes: Action, Adventure, Drama. Golden Globe Nominations: 1, PG-13 The stunts are awesome, the dialogue is endlessly quotable, and Bruce Willis and Alan Rickman are a white-hat–black-hat duo straight out of a classic Western.—Phil de Semlyen, In Mussolini’s Italy, a repressed homosexual (Jean-Louis Trintignant) joins the Fascist party in order to blend in and hide his true self. | Sigourney Weaver, $260.00M, Oscars: 3 Many films emerge from Sundance with a deafening buzz; how do you explain a $250 million global box-office gross? Harrison Ford, Orlando Bloom, Votes: Oscar Nominations: 8 Coppola approaches each of her characters with a warmth and sensitivity that exudes from the screen—and ensures that “Brass in Pocket” will remain a karaoke favorite around the world (pink wig optional). Alongside its historical truths, the film’s grammar and visual language—there are passages that play like an ultra-violent acid trip—are what truly elevates it. made by Sean Dawn. Clarke was actually living in Ceylon (not in India, or a tree), but the pair met, hit it off, and forged a story of technological progress and disaster (hello, HAL) that’s steeped in humanity, in all its brilliance, weakness, courage and mad ambition. Its trio of dancers—rubber-faced (and heeled) Donald O’Connor, sparkling newcomer Debbie Reynolds and co-director and headline act Gene Kelly—are a triple threat, nailing the stellar songs, intricate and physically demanding dance routines and selling all the comic beats with consummate skill. 118 min Stars: 127 min Credit a revolutionary internet campaign, spooky and immersive, that’s now a tactic in every publicist’s playbook. 877,624 BAFTA Awards: 4 Don’t Look Now is a primal cry of grief that shakes you to your core.—Phil de Semlyen, Arthur Penn’s game-changing action film was made in the same spirit of the revisionist Westerns of the ’60s and ’70s—irreverent, fun, morally all over the place, and unafraid of blood and bullets. But Battleship Potemkin is full of powerful images and heady ideas, and director Sergei Eisenstein is rightly considered one of the pioneers of early film language, with his influence felt through the decades.—Dave Calhoun, The only Charlie Chaplin movie to see the Little Tramp go on a massive cocaine binge, this relentlessly inventive silent classic hardly needs the added kick. score: 41 of 100 (41%) required scores: 1, 20, 36, 48, 63 list stats leaders vote Vote print comments. Adventure, Drama, Western. | Gross: 1,112,563 Haya Harareet, Votes: John Huston Henry Fonda’s icy stare, composer Ennio Morricone’s twangy guitars of doom and the monumental Charles Bronson as the last gunfighter (“an ancient race…”) are just three reasons of a million to saddle up.—Joshua Rothkopf, If all it did was to launch a franchise centered on Sigourney Weaver’s fierce survivor (still among the toughest action heroines of cinema), Ridley Scott’s claustrophobic, deliberately paced sci-fi-horror classic would still be cemented in the film canon. Golden Globes: 1 type to search. | | A passion project that got clobbered by audiences and critics alike, The Thing was, in fact, that rarest of remakes: one that improves upon its source. An audience of stoners, wowed by its eye-candy Star Gate sequence and pioneering visuals, adopted it as a pet movie. It features Cubistic jump cuts, restless handheld camerawork, location shoots, eccentric pacing (the 24-minute centerpiece is two lovers talking in a bedroom), and self-conscious asides about painting, poetry, pop culture, literature and film. Daniel Plainview is, in the final analysis, an ultra-scary Daniel Day-Lewis who will drink your milkshake. For its intimacy and economy alone, the film feels like a preview of the scrappy decade to come. After a Jewish prince is betrayed and sent into slavery by a Roman friend, he regains his freedom and comes back for revenge. | 8. Golden Globe Nominations: 4, PG The first film made by an African-American woman to receive theatrical distribution, Daughters of the Dust is permeated with pride, history and matriarchal wisdom. Welcome to Rotten Tomatoes’ list of the 100 best-reviewed Western movies of all time, sorted by Adjusted Tomatometer with at least 20 reviews for each selection. Try another? BAFTA Nominations: 2 If you loved last year’s Shoplifters, you’ll love this.—Ian Freer, What’s the best part of Pulp Fiction? This is nose-to-the-grindstone investigative work in an analog world—think rotary phones, electric typewriters, handwritten notes on legal pads, red-pen edits and Xerox copiers—and a master class in making movie dialogue absolutely riveting. So much of how we view fame still dates back to this film; it even gave us the word paparazzi.—Bilge Ebiri, It’s the easiest 207 minutes of cinema you’ll ever sit through. 1,220,955 From peacetime to frontlines, from coming home to left behind: Rotten Tomatoes presents the 100 best-reviewed war movies of all time, ranked by Adjusted Tomatometer with at least 20 reviews each. 1. Charles Bronson, Votes: Laura Dern, This one, her celebrated breakout, is something of a spin on Herman Melville’s Billy Budd—but that’s like calling Jaws something of a spin on Moby-Dick. Aug 26, 2020 Everett. | Gross: The set pieces, the villains, Eva Marie Saint’s femme fatale, Saul Bass’s credits, Bernard Herrmann’s musical cues—somehow the film manages to be even more than the sum of its glorious parts. These women are central to Sansho the Bailiff, a feudal tale of familial dissolution that will wreck you. Alec Guinness, It’s since come to represent the most concentrated blast of Kubrick’s total command; he’s the god of the film, Steadicam-ing around corners and making the audience notice that he was born to redefine horror. We just couldn't resist. Via darkest comedy (the only way into the subject) and an unhinged Peter Sellers playing three separate parts, Kubrick made his point.—Joshua Rothkopf, One of those epochal films—there’s only a handful—that sits on the divide between silent cinema and the sound era but taps into the virtues of both, Fritz Lang’s serial-killer thriller burns with deep-etched visual darkness while perking ears with its whistled “In the Hall of the Mountain King” (performed by a purse-lipped Lang himself; his star, Peter Lorre, couldn’t whistle). Raging Bull (1980) 5. Adventure, Drama, Family. The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966) Steven Spielberg British POWs are forced to build a railway bridge across the river Kwai for their Japanese captors, not knowing that the allied forces are planning to destroy it. 100%: Paddington 2 (2018) 243: 7. The romance of the mob lifestyle—the food, the nightclubs, the cheating, the violence—made for a glittering surface; underneath it was jail, abandonment and living one’s life like a schnook in the witness-protection program.—Joshua Rothkopf, There’s no other thriller as elegant, light-touched and sexy as Hitchcock’s silken caper.