The Movie Forums Top 100 of All-Time Refresh: Countdown

Should have had Ladybird too!

Thanks, @MovieFan1988, for reminding me this...

My ratings:

HM: The Seventh Seal -
100. Brazil - Unseen
99. Suspiria -
98. Cabaret - Unseen
97. Enter the Dragon -
96. The Searchers - Unseen
95. Ikiru - Unseen
94. Her - Unseen
93. Braveheart -
92. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind - Rewatch due
91. Rosemary's Baby -
90. Harold and Maude -
89. E.T. the Extraterrestrial -
88. Akira -
87. Toy Story -
86. Dazed and Confused - Rewatch due
85. To Kill a Mockingbird -
84. The Apartment -
83. Saving Private Ryan -
82. 8 1/2 - Rewatch due
81. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid -
80. West Side Story - Rewatch due
79. American Beauty -
78. Star Wars -
77. Young Frankenstein - Unseen
76. Stand By Me -
75. Paris, Texas - Unseen
74. Magnolia - Rewatch due
73. Metropolis -
72. A Woman Under the Influence - Unseen
71. Terminator 2: Judgment Day -
70. Heat -
69. American History X - Rewatch due
68. Pan's Labyrinth -
67. Andrei Rublev - Unseen
66. Mulholland Drive -
65. Forrest Gump - Rewatch due
64. Singin' in the Rain -
63. Die Hard -
62. The Tree of Life -
61. City of God - Rewatch due
60. There Will Be Blood -
59. Rocky - Rewatch due
58. The Night of the Hunter - Rewatch due
57. North by Northwest -
56. The Terminator -
55. Gone with the Wind - Rewatch due
54. Come and See -
53. Sunset Boulevard -
52. Fight Club -
51. No Country for Old Men -
50. Amadeus -
49. Raging Bull - Rewatch due
48. The Third Man -
47. The Exorcist -
46. The Silence of the Lambs -
45. Persona -
44. Halloween -
43. Unforgiven -
42. The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers -
41. Schindler's List -
40. Rear Window -
39. Spirited Away -
38. It's a Wonderful Life - Rewatch due
37. Aliens -
36. The Wizard of Oz -
35. The Godfather, Part II -
34. Back to the Future -
33. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest -
32. Once Upon a Time in the West -
31. A Clockwork Orange -
30. The Empire Strikes Back -
29. Se7en -
28. The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King -
27. Psycho -
26. Seven Samurai -
25. Stalker -
24. The Matrix -
23. The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly -
22. 12 Angry Men -
21. The Shining -
20. The Thing -
19. Vertigo -
18. The Big Lebowski -
17. Chinatown -
16. The Shawshank Redemption -
15. Lawrence of Arabia -
14. Taxi Driver -
13. Alien -
12. Dr. Strangelove -
11. The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring -
10. Citizen Kane -
9. Apocalypse Now -
8. Raiders of the Lost Ark -
7. Blade Runner -
6. Jaws -
5. Pulp Fiction -
4. Casablanca -
3. Goodfellas -
2. The Godfather -
1. 2001: A Space Odyssey -

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Seen 95/100. Was not expecting 2001 to top the Godfather. Absolutely amazing effort Suspect and Yoda

1) Toy Story (1995) (#87)
2) Toy Story 2 (1999) (-)
3) Fight Club (1999) (#52)
4) Stand by Me (1986) (#76)
5) Requiem for a Dream (2000) (-)
6) The Hunt (2012) (-)
7) Little Shop of Horrors (1986) (-)
8) The End of Evangelion (1997) (-)
9) Funny Games (1997) (-)
10) Alien (1978) (#13)
11) Whiplash (2014) (-)
12) 12 Angry Men (1957) (#22)
13) The Incredibles (2004) (-)
14) Psycho (1960) (#27)
15) The Shining (1980) (#21)
16) Children of Men (2006) (-)
17) Koyaanisqatsi (1982) (-)
18) Uncut gems (2019) (-)
19) Nightcrawler (2014) (-)
20) Le Trou (1960) (-)
21) 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) (#1)
22) Who’s afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966) (-)
23) Fantastic Mr Fox (2009) (-)
24) The Exorcist (1973) (#47)
25) A Ghost Story (2017) (One-Pointers)

On a filmmaking level, Toy Story 2 may be better than the first one: The animation is much more polished, the brand new characters have just as much of a role in the plot as the old characters and it develops on from the first one instead of being a rehash.



Requiem For a Dream could be criticised for being too ‘tryhard’ in its disturbing elements, or that the editing hasn’t aged well, but those don’t particularly bother me; In fact, I think they add a lot of character to the film. Ellen Burstyn’s performance as a tormented mother is one of my all time favourite performances.



Thomas Vinterberg is great at showing resentment and family relationships in film. As much as I love Festen, it can’t top The Hunt. Mads Mikkelsen is amazing as a loving father who has to deal with violence and ostracism due to a false allegation. The scene in the church is tearjerking.



Little Shop of Horrors is a nostalgic favourite of mine. Manages to blend the very dark aspects with lightheartedness, and the puppetry is shockingly great. I know everyone likes the original dark ending more, but I prefer the alternate version due to seeing it the most.



The End of Evangelion acts as an alternate series finale to the show Evangelion. Starts off as entertaining mecha-anime fair (albeit more violent than the series), but slowly transitions into an astounding display of surreal images and music that effectively reflect the inner turmoil of angst and depression more effectively than most films, I find.



While I personally find Michael Haneke’s philosophy of trying to punish the audience for liking violence childish, I can still acknowledge his excellence at filmmaking that is reflected in Funny Games. What can I say other than I find it to be an excellent thriller?



Whiplash explores a topic I find incredibly interesting: teaching methods. The two main characters have so much depth. Fletcher is awful, but he truly believes what he’s doing is for his students’ benefit. And while you want to see Andrew succeed, you can’t help but pity him as he distances himself from loved ones and unnecessarily makes himself bleed. Oh, and the music and lighting is great too.



The Incredibles is a real standout amongst Pixar’s catalogue. The dialogue is much more naturalistic than most kids films (I don’t mind kids films simplifying the language for younger audiences, I just find the lack of it in The Incredibles fascinating). The scope of the film and the geography of the new environments makes for a film with a wonderful sense of adventure. The comedy and the music are also amazing.



It’s possibly poor judgement of mine to put Children of Men on this list, as I have only seen it once and was mostly impressed by its technical skill rather than story, but I still find it to be an excellent film.



Koyaanisqatsi presents a critique of modern society with fast-paced editing and a transcendent soundtrack. There’s a 10-15 minute sequence near the end of the film that I can safely say is one of my all-time favourite scenes in cinema.



There’s possible recency bias in putting Uncut Gems on here, but I feel it's a confident pick. It’s a wonderful, honest depiction of the director’s culture that's also nostalgic for the early 2010’s (which I wasn’t even sure was possible before this!). The electronic soundtrack adds an almost universal or religious quality to Howard’s character and his successes and failures.



Nightcrawler is one of the very few films from recent years that I feel qualifies (or will be qualified in the future) as a classic. The escalation in tension is perfect and Jake’s character is very unique.



Le Trou is a prison escape film that is extremely straight forward: About 30 minutes of character exposition, then the rest of the film is the escape attempt. With such a simple presentation, it’s amazing how tense it manages to be.



Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf is one of those ‘play adaptation’ films that provides a unique perspective on the story due to Nichols’ talent. The anger and resentment presented by the characters is very theatrical but also feels so real (Marriage Story found dead in a ditch).



I usually find Wes Anderson annoying, but Fantastic Mr Fox is just awesome. His bizarre dialogue and framing seems fitting for an adaptation of an already bizarre novella. The fact that only the first half of the film is actually from Dahl’s book, and that the rest of it is a unique take by Anderson, really shows his creativity.

"Requiem for a Dream" is brilliant and disgusted that I couldn't find room for it on my list. It is only 25,,,dammit!

So many great films just missed the cut and a lot of weird films made the spreadsheet...CKY2K???

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"A laugh can be a very powerful thing. Why, sometimes in life, it's the only weapon we have."

Suspect's Reviews

Here's the full spreadsheet. You can also click the preview image here below:

Wow. It blows my mind that The Karate Kid and Predator are so high.

Why, though? Presumably a lot of people grew up with The Karate Kid, and presumably those people are voting for the things that bring them that kind of joy, and not the kinds of things that they have some deep aesthetic appreciation of (or some other similar standard that aspires to objectivity). So if your mind is blown, it has to be blown over the fact that people are using that kind of idiosyncratic criteria at all, I guess?

(I had neither on my ballot, for the record.)

That is ... a lot of movies.

I'm surprised that Dredd got so high. Also, It Happened One Night got pretty close. I put it in my top 15. It's also nice that Eraserhead made it pretty high up. It's sad that Sansho the Bailiff didn't make it so high though. More people should watch it.

Thanks for letting us see the spreadsheet!

Because I didn't think this was 'top 100 films that brought the most joy to you as a kid'

I grew up with both of those films too and liked them as a kid. But I can't think of any cinematic qualities that they would posses to make a top 1000 yet alone a top 100.

Wow, my IT mind is begging to ask if you're making all those calculations by hand (the total points, the amount per ranking, etc.) and just putting them on the spreadsheet. Cause there are formulas you can make to generate those results automatically.


(Sorry, I work with Excel A LOT; specifically with trainings, and my mind automatically goes there)

Rather than rate every single one, I'm going to try to rank them all in preferential order...

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Iro's Top 100 Movies v3.0

It's not. But it's also not the Top 100 Most Somberly Profound Films or the Top 100 Films That Advance the Art Form. It's not any one thing. It's literally just what everyone decides it means. We've had many, many debates about the criteria before, and while I come down way closer to (what I think is) your view on how to rank these things, that, itself, is just as much a personal preference as any film choice.

It can definitely make sense to dislike someone's criteria for one reason or another (I've argued against highly idiosyncratic choices repeatedly), but I'm not sure it makes sense to keep being shocked by them, since it's abundantly clear a lot of people see this list as an amalgamation of user life experiences, and not something meant to showcase the height of cinematic potential. At least not entirely.

Maybe they didn't copy over (it was done in Excel or some open source alternative and merely copied into Google Sheets), but yes, the spreadsheet uses formulas to tally the results. The films and votes are still entered by hand, of course, which is a stupid amount of work anyway.

I think it's been said numerous times that there's no way to single out the way most people will determine the films they would put on their list. Some people will take into consideration the filmmaking qualities and technical strengths of a film, or how groundbreaking it was, whereas others will pick the ones that had the most impact in them emotionally, or films they enjoy rewatching more. So even though you can't think of "any cinematic qualities" that The Karate Kid or Predator would possess to make a Top 1000 or Top 100, clearly some people do. The appreciation we get from a film is not finite or ultimately measurable. Some people put Predator on the list, others put The Human Condition, and none of those are wrong. But if enough people thought that Predator, Karate Kid, or Paul Blart had some sort of impact on them, be it by its technical merits or just by pure enjoyment, to put them on the list, then who's to argue against? At the end of the day, the list is a snapshot of what films a diverse collective of people consider "important".

Yeah, I might have said this already but I've been gravitating towards "beloved," since I think it encompasses what people actually use to make these choices pretty well. That covers the things that are loved nostalgically and admired artistically in equal measure.

Yes I agree. It's time for me to let go of it now, as I don't want it to detract from the hard work put into it.

Yeah, I had to keep reminding myself of the criterion for the poll: that it was a "favorites" list, not a "best made" films list. IMO there are only 8-10 movies in the top 25 that would likely be considered in a top 25 "best made" list.

It would be interesting to see a poll of "best made" films from our members, and to see how it compared with various "favorites" lists.