It’s impossible to agree on a definitive list of the greatest movies of all time because everyone has a favorite (or, in our cases, a lifetime). It’s impossible for there to be a single list that encompasses everything. Some of the most well-known action, feminism, and foreign films are represented on this list. You can let us know if we got it incorrect.
List of Top 10 movies all time:
1 The Godfather (1972)
Movie Type: Thriller
Director: Francis Ford Coppola
Screenwriter: Mario Puzo, Francis Ford Coppola
Cast:
- Richard Castellano
- Robert Duvall
- Marlon Brando
- John Cazale
- Al Lettieri
- John Marley
- Sterling Hayden
- Al Pacino
- James Caan
- Talia Shire
- Diane Keaton
- Richard Conte
It’s a tale about everyday Mafia folks, with a severed horse’s head in the bed and a lot of heartfelt family gatherings. In addition, it offers pointers on how not to behave in your neighborhood trattoria. (i.e. blasting the brains of your co-diners out all over their fettuccini).
After the Corleones of Goodfellas and The Sopranos, all subsequent Mafia dynasties are descended from Francis Ford Coppola’s masterpiece, The Godfather. The operatic Mario Puzo adaptation begins with a monumental opening phrase (“I believe in America”), before Francis Ford Coppola’s epic transforms into a terrifying breakdown of the American dream.
Corrupted tale follows a powerful immigrant family as they struggle with the contradicting principles of reign and religion; those moral conflicts crystallize in a legendary baptism sequence, which is beautifully edited in tandem to the murder of four rivaling dons. Iconic aspects such as a horse’s severed head, Marlon Brando’s wheezy voice, Nino Rota waltz are all that remain of The Godfather’s authority today.
2. Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981):
Movie Type: Action and adventure
Director: Steven Spielberg
Screenwriter: Lawrence Kasdan
Cast:
- Harrison Ford
- Karen Allen
- Paul Freeman
- Denholm Elliott
- Alfred Molina
- Ronald Lacey
- John Rhys-Davies
- Wolf Kahler
With this film, Spielberg tries to recapture the sheer delight of watching movies as it was in 1941, when he was trying to escape the realities of modern life. His pre-WWII superhero, outsized and Bogartian, races against the clock to save the powerful Ark of the Covenant from falling into the hands of Hitler’s Nazis, creating one long and magnificent pursuit. It’s worth the price of admission even if you don’t like it for the visual humor alone.
With a transition from the Paramount logo and a finale in a warehouse inspired by Citizen Kane, Raiders of the Lost Ark celebrates what movies can do better than any other picture, perhaps more joyfully than any other film.
Steven Spielberg’s funniest blockbuster is intricately designed as a tribute to the craft. It features rolling boulders, a barroom brawl, a fiery 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 in which heads explode.
Harrison Ford’s portrayal of Indiana Jones, a hero who is both reluctant and resourceful, is the cherry on top of the cake (look at his face when he shoots that swordsman). In a nutshell, this film is cinematic gold.
3. Mulholland Drive (2001)
Movie Type: Drama, Mystery, Thriller
Director: David Lynch
Screenwriter: David Lynch
Cast:
- Naomi Watts
- Laura Harring
- Justin Theroux
- Jeanne Bates
- Dan Birnbaum
- Robert Forster
- Maya Bond
- Brent Briscoe
David Lynch wrote and directed the 2001 surrealist neo-noir mystery Mulholland Drive. Betty Elms (Watts) is an aspiring actress who meets and befriends an amnesiac woman (Harring) who is recovering from a car accident in Los Angeles. A Hollywood film director is one of the many characters who appear in the narrative (Theroux).
Mulholland Drive, without a question, is one of the best films of the new century, and each time you watch it, you discover something new. Lynch’s glossy nightmare of Los Angeles is a tangle of mystery, dread, and strange seduction that has been a recurring motif in his work for a long time, but finally reaches its lurid apotheosis in this film.
At the 2001 Cannes Film Festival, Mulholland Drive, a psychological thriller, won Lynch a Prix de la mise en scène (Best Director Award) with Joel Coen’s The Man Who Wasn’t There. Lynch was nominated for a Best Director Oscar as well. An important stepping stone in the careers of both Ann Miller and Harring, the film also helped raise Watts’s profile in Hollywood.
4. City Lights (1931)
Movie Type: Comedy
Director: Charles Chaplin
Screenwriter: Charles Chaplin
Cast:
- Charles Chaplin
- Virginia Cherrill
- Florence Lee
- Harry Myers
- Hank Mann
- Allan Garcia
Even today, it’s hard to comprehend the scope of Charlie Chaplin’s accomplishments: he not only wrote and directed the films that he also produced and appeared in, but he also orchestrated the music for them. A self-made icon with a global audience was caught on video while those cameras were rolling.
City Lights comes perilously close to the weepy wonderland of Magnificent Obsession and other lace-handkerchief efforts with its plot centered on Charlie’s love for a blind flower-seller and his attempts to get enough money for an eye operation.
Even so, City Lights was a unique experience. In order to preserve the visual skills he had developed, Chaplin insisted on making his new comedy silent, even as the audience was becoming more and more accustomed to sound. With a commercial triumph and a tragic close-up that is one of cinema’s most memorable, it’s safe to say that the star had the last laugh.
Slapstick and Chaplin’s extraordinary skill in depicting all shades of human emotion let the girl evade her terrible fate with a sliver of luck. This is made worse worse by the film’s sloppy plotting and sagging structure. However, there are some wonderful moments, and the occasional funny use of sound is well-judged in this film.
5. Star Wars (1977)
Movie Type: Science fiction
Director: George Lucas
Screenwriter: George Lucas
Cast:
- Mark Hamill
- Harrison Ford
- Carrie Fisher
- Peter Cushing
- Alec Guinness
- David Prowse
- Peter Mayhew
An American epic space opera film written and directed by George Lucas in 1977, Star Wars is a production of Lucasfilm, released by 20th Century Fox, and produced by Lucasfilm. When it was released, this was the first Star Wars film and it’s fourth in the “Skywalker Saga” sequence.
Immediately after George Lucas released his interplanetary Western, which was an exciting gee-whiz space opera laced with Joseph Campbell-style mythologizing, popcorn movies went into overdrive.
From Metropolis and Triumph of the Will to Kurosawa’s samurai actioners, Flash Gordon serials, and WWII thrillers like The Dam Busters, this postmodern movie-brat parody recalls a full curriculum of genre masterpieces. B-movie bliss was elevated to billion-dollar-franchise sagas by Luke Skywalker’s mission to rescue a princess.
On May 25, 1977, after a tumultuous production period, a small number of American theaters opened Star Wars, which rapidly became a smash hit and was subsequently released to a far wider audience. Critics praised the film’s revolutionary visual effects, particularly its use of CGI. In total, it raked in $775 million in revenue.
6. Tokyo Story (1951)
Movie Type: Drama
Director: Yasujiro Ozu
Screenwriter: Kogo Noda, Yasujiro Ozu
Cast:
- Chishu Ryu
- Chiyeko Higashiyama
- Setsuko Hara
- Kyoko Kagawa
- So Yamamura
Yasujiro Ozu’s 1953 drama Tokyo Story, starring Chish Ryu and Chieko Higashiyama, tells the story of an elderly couple visiting their adult children in Tokyo. Japan’s film exporters first thought it was too Japanese to promote to the rest of the world when it was first released. Following a 1972 New York City screening of the film, it was awarded the first Sutherland Trophy in London the following year, and garnered high accolades from film reviewers in the United States after that screening.
Yasujiro Ozu’s tiny yet wonderfully crafted domestic drama is simply weaved. They are both elegant and moving as parents visiting their children and grandchildren only to be overlooked. Ozu’s masterwork is the family movie given grandeur and tenderness, with delicately played and wonderfully filmed (sometimes with the camera hovering barely above the ground) actors. If you like Shoplifters from last year, you’ll enjoy this one much more.
There are several families surrounding Tomi and Shukishi in the film’s early scenes: busy doctor Koichi; no-nonsense hair-salon owner Shige; and the sweet widowed daughter of Shukishi Noriko, all of whom are observed with little or no introduction. Old friends and Shukishi share their disappointment in their children during a night of sake drinking. A prominent theme of “Tokyo Story” is the development of coping mechanisms for dealing with disappointment.
7. Chinatown (1974)
Movie Type: Thriller, mystery
Director: Roman Polanski
Screenwriter: Robert Towne
Cast:
- Jack Nicholson
- Darrell Zwerling
- Perry Lopez
- Faye Dunaway
- John Huston
- Diane Ladd
- Roman Polanski
- John Hillerman
Release date: Friday January 4 2013
Duration: 131 mins
Roman Polanski directed Chinatown, a 1974 American neo-noir mystery film. According to legend, this picture was inspired on the early twentieth century California water wars, a series of legal battles for water rights in the Owens Valley won by Los Angeles interests.
From a mildly sleazy noir framework, director Roman Polanski and screenwriter Robert Towne elevated it into a meditation on the tragedies of American history and predatory capitalism. The film’s cast is likewise flawless, with a star at the top of his game. Faye Dunaway as the femme fatale, Jack Nicholson as the cynical private detective, and the great John Huston as the monstrous millionaire at the center of it all are the stars of this film. Bilge Ebiri, the author.
“Cultural, historically or artistically significant”: The Library of Congress selected the picture for preservation in the United States National Film Registry in 1991 as “culturally, historically or aesthetically significant.” It was nominated for 11 Oscars at the 47th Academy Awards, including Best Original Screenplay by Towne.
8. 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
Movie Type: Thriller,mystery
Director: Stanley Kubrick
Screenwriter: Stanley Kubrick, Arthur C Clarke
Cast:
- William Sylvester
- Keir Dullea
- Gary Lockwood
- Leonard Rossiter
Release date: Friday November 28 2014
Duration: 141 mins
Stanley Kubrick produced and directed the epic science fiction film A Space Odyssey in 1968. “The Sentinel” by Arthur C. Clarke served as the inspiration for the screenplay, which was created by Kubrick and Clarke. After the film’s premiere, a novel was published that was in part based on the screenplay. A journey to Jupiter with HAL, a sentient computer, takes place following the discovery of an alien monolith on the surface of Jupiter. It touches with existentialism, human evolution, technology, artificial intelligence, and the potential of alien life.
On the contrary, Clarke was in Ceylon (non-Indian territory) and lived in a tree. But the two men met, hit it off and collaborated on a story of technical advancement and tragedy (hello, HAL) that is rooted firmly in humanity. When the Star Gate sequence and pioneering visuals wowed a stoner audience, it became their favorite movie. In the absence of them, 2001 may have drifted into oblivion, but it’s unlikely that it would have remained there. Despite being more than 50 years old, Kubrick’s terrifyingly clinical vision of the future — AI and all – nevertheless feels predictive.
The film elicited a wide range of critical reactions, ranging from those who found it to be darkly apocalyptic to those who found it to be a hopeful reconsideration of humanity’s hopes. It was nominated for four Academy Awards, with Kubrick taking home the prize for best visual effects direction for his work on the film.
9. La Dolce Vita (1960)
Movie Type: Comedy-drama
Director: Federico Fellini
Screenwriter: Federico Fellini, Ennio Flaiano, Tullio Pinelli, and Brunello Rondi
Cast:
- Marcello Mastroianni (Marcello Rubino)
- Anita Ekberg (Sylvia)
- Anouk Aimée (Maddalena)
- Annibale Ninchi (Marcello’s father)
- Walter Santesso (Paparazzo)
- Academy Award
Release date: Friday December 17 2004
Duration: 174 mins
La Dolce Vita (Italian: “The Sweet Life”) is a 1960 Italian film widely regarded as one of the most important ever filmed, and the first of several celebrated collaborations between director Federico Fellini and actor Marcello Mastroianni, who became the director’s alter ego.
The film’s opening sequence, which juxtaposes a helicopter carrying a statue of Christ to Rome with a shot of a slew of bikini-clad ladies, is just one of several that dovetails the sacred with the superficial. As a result of these scenes, some governments, including the Vatican, condemned or outright banned the film.
Federico Fellini’s huge box-office hit, made in the midst of Italy’s golden years, came to define hot splendour and celebrity culture for the entire planet. Marcello Mastroianni, who plays a gossip journalist caught up in the frantic, unrestrained world of Roman nightlife, became a famous as a result of the film.
Ironically, the movie’s portrayal of this milieu as vapid and soul-corrodingly hedonistic appears to have passed many viewers by. Perhaps that’s because Fellini films everything with so much cinematic verve and wit that it’s often hard not to get caught up in the delirious happenings onscreen.
10. In the Mood for Love (2000)
Movie Type: Drama- Romantic
Director: Wong Kar-wai
Screenwriter: Wong Kar-wai
Cast:
- Chin Tsi-Ang
- Siu Ping-Lam
- Rebecca Pan
- Maggie Cheung
- Tony Leung Leung Chiu-Wai
- Lai Chin
Release date: May 20, 2000
Duration: 97 mins
Wong Kar-wai wrote, produced, and directed In the Mood for Love, a romantic drama released in 2000. It’s a Hong Kong-French co-production about a guy (Tony Leung) and a lady (Maggie Cheung) whose wives are having an affair and who gradually develop affections for each other.
Is it possible for a movie to become an instant classic? If you saw In The Mood for Love when it came out in 2000, you might have responded yes. You know you’re in the hands of a maestro the moment this love story begins. Wong Kar-wai takes us on a journey through 1960s Hong Kong’s small alleyways and stairwells, and into the lives of two neighbors (Maggie Cheung and Tony Leung) who find their wives are having an affair.
They fall for one other as they imagine—and partly reenact—how their partners may act while remaining committed to their wedding vows. The picture, which is full with longing, benefits from three cinematographers who work together to create an incredible sense of closeness, while the flawless performances make you shiver with sexual tension.
The film premiered on May 20, 2000, at the Cannes Film Festival, to critical acclaim and a Palme d’Or nomination; Leung won Best Actor (the first Hong Kong actor to win the award). It is frequently recognized as one of the best films of all time and a landmark work of Asian cinema. In a 2016 BBC poll, 177 film reviewers from around the world rated it the second-best film of the twenty-first century.