AFI Top 100 Movies

top100moviesWant to know the best AFI Top 100 movies?  How about the worst AFI Top 100 movies?  Curious about AFI Top 100 box office grosses or which AFI Top 100 movie picked up the most Oscar® nominations? Need to know which AFI Top 100 movie got the best reviews from critics and audiences? Well you have come to the right place….because we have all of that information.

In 1998, AFI (American Film Institure) invited more than 1,500 leaders from across the American film community – screenwriters, directors, actors, producers, cinematographers, editors, executives, film historians and critics among them – to choose from a list of 400 nominated films compiled by AFI and select the 100 greatest American movies.  In 2007 they released an updated list….which means next year they will be updating the list again.  Recently we complete a massive project that looked at the careers of the AFI Top 50 Screen Legends. One of the comments on that page suggested doing a Ultimate Movie Rankings page on the AFI TOP 100 movies….well….Steve Lensman here you go.

We were happy to see not one but two Bruce Willis movies made the Top 100.
We were happy to see not one but two Bruce Willis movies made the Top 100.

AFI Top 100 Movies Can Be Ranked 6 Ways In This Table

The really cool thing about this table is that it is “user-sortable”. Rank the movies anyway you want.

  • Sort AFI Top 100 movies by stars of the movies
  • Sort AFI Top 100 movies by adjusted box office grosses using current movie ticket cost (in millions)
  • Sort AFI Top 100 movies by yearly domestic box offic rank
  • Sort AFI Top 100 movies by how they were received by critics and audiences.  60% rating or higher should indicate a good movie.
  • Sort by how many Oscar® nominations and how many Oscar® wins each AFI Top 100 movie received.
  • Sort AFI Top 100 movies by Ultimate Movie Ranking (UMR) Score.  UMR Score puts box office, reviews and awards into a mathematical equation and gives each movie a score.
  • Blue link in Co-star column takes you to that star or director’s UMR movie page
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My late father would be happy how highly ranked Lawrence of Arabia is by AFI and by UMR Score.
My late father would be happy how highly ranked Lawrence of Arabia is by AFI and by UMR Score.

Things we found interesting in the above AFI Top 100 Movies table

  1. On the actor side: James Stewart, Robert DeNiro and Harrison Ford lead the way with 5 movies on the Top 100.  Dustin Hoffman, Humphrey Bogart and Robert Duvall have 4 movies.
  2. On the actress side: Katharine Hepburn leads the way with 3 movies in the Top 100.  Meryl Streep, Vivien Leigh, Marilyn Monroe, Jodie Foster, Grace Kelly and Natalie Wood have 2 movies.
  3. On the director side:  Steven Spielberg leads the way with 5 movies in the Top 100.  Stanley Kubrick, Billy Wilder and Alfred Hitchcock have 4 movies .
  4. The average adjusted domestic box office gross for the Top 100 AFI movies is $368.60 million.
  5. 73 of the AFI Top 100 movies were nominated for a Best Picture Oscar® nomination. 28 of the AFI Top Movies won the Best Picture Oscar®.
  6. Overall the AFI Top 100 movies earned 648 Oscar® nominations…winning 265 Oscars®.
  7. When looking at the lowest scoring movies according to critics and audiences there are a few surprises. Nashville was the worst reviewed AFI Top 100 movie (ok…not too surprising) but Titanic as the 2nd worst movie and Forrest Gump as the 3rd worst movie by critics and audiences really seemed surprising.
  8. The average critic/audience rating is 88.50%….according to RottenTomatoes.com…..60% is the gold standard for a good movie.

Academy Award® and Oscar® are the registered trademarks of the Academy of Motion Arts and Sciences. Golden Globes® are the registered trademark and service mark of the Hollywood Foreign Press.

27 thoughts on “AFI Top 100 Movies

  1. Hi

    An incredible list of movies I’ve seen about 90 of them. For me ones that stand out would be Shane, the wee boy was fantastic. I don’t think Alan Ladd done anything better.
    Bringing up Baby, Hepburn and Grant singing to the leopard.
    King Kong 1933, it did incredible business for 1933.
    The Philadelphia Story, which I seen the other week. It’s as smooth as a limousine. Every scene, every line, every actor all come across so well.
    More up to date has to be Goodfellas and One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest, Nickelson’s finest hour. Shawshank, probably the greatest prison movie ever.
    There’s a couple of movies I would have to question. Who’s Afraid of Virginia Wolf, after watching it once I don’t think I could stomach it again. Nevertheless, an incredible list.

    1. Hey Chris….I agree with you about Ladd and Shane. Actually started to research Mr. Ladd….the good news on the first sweep of his movies…got lots of his movies with great sources for box office numbers….so his page will be coming soon. As for King Kong….this is the total of all of its re-releases. I read somewhere that Kong actually did better on it’s first re-release than it did on it’s first release. I used to not like The Philadelphia Story….probably because as a huge Cary Grant fan….I did not like his part so much….but as the years have passed it has become one of my favorite Grant movies…and I appreciate his performance much more. We agree on many of your comments….I found Va Woolfe a one and done movie for me….great acting but like A Streetcar Named Desire….I have no desire to spend two hours with the characters in the movie. Thanks for sharing your movie thoughts.

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