UltimateMovieRankings.com has scored over 20,000 movies so far. A huge part of the score is how well the movie was received by film critics and the movie going public.
Each movie in my database has a minimum of 5 sources that are used in calculating a movie’s Critic/Audience rating. Here are some of the more popular websites/reviewers that I use: Rottentomatoes.com, IMDb.com, Roger Ebert, Leonard Maltin, VideoHound, Letterbox.com, MetaCritic and Fandango.
Of the thousands of movies in my database…the following table shows the Top 100 Best Reviewed Movies. Some of the interesting things you will find in the table? The oldest movie is 1921’s The Kid….while the newest movie is 2014’s Whiplash. 8 Alfred Hitchcock movies made the Top 100. James Stewart had 7 movies make the Top 100. Johnny Depp got shut out. Obviously there are many many movies that I have not scored yet….but here is the currently Top 100 in my database.
Top 100 Best Reviewed Movies Can Be Sorted 5 Ways In This Table
The really cool thing about this table is that it is “user-sortable”. Rank the movies anyway you want.
- Sort Top 100 Best Reviewed Movies by decades movie was made
- Sort Top 100 Best Reviewed Movies by IMDb rank
- Sort Top 100 Best Reviewed Movies by the stars of the movie
- Sort Top 100 Best Reviewed Movies by the director of the movie
- Sort Top 100 Best Reviewed Movies how they were received by critics and audiences. 60% rating or higher should indicate a good movie
- The search button makes it easy to play with this table….if you type in “James Stewart” in the search box…the 7 Stewart movies that made this Top 100 will pop up.
| Rank | MovieYear | Decade | IMDb Rank on 5/15/15 | Stars of the Movie | Director | AvgOfRating |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| The Godfather (1972) | 1970s | 2nd | Marlon Brando & Al Pacino | Francis Ford Coppola | 94.50 | |
| Schindler's List (1993) | 1990s | 6th | Liam Neeson & Ralph Fiennes | Steven Spielberg | 94.33 | |
| Casablanca (1942) | 1940s | 30th | Humphrey Bogart & Ingrid Bergman | Michael Curtiz | 94.25 | |
| The Godfather: Part II (1974) | 1970s | 3rd | Al Pacino & Robert Duvall | Francis Ford Coppola | 94.23 | |
| Rear Window (1954) | 1950s | 37th | James Stewart & Grace Kelly | Alfred Hitchcock | 94.22 | |
| Tokyo Story (1953) | 1950s | Not in Top 250 | Chishû Ryû | Yasujiro Ozu | 94.21 | |
| The Good the Bad and the Ugly (1966) | 1960s | 8th | Clint Eastwood & Eli Wallach | Sergio Leone | 93.66 | |
| 12 Angry Men (1957) | 1950s | 7th | Henry Fonda & Jack Warden | Sidney Lumet | 93.50 | |
| North by Northwest (1959) | 1950s | 63rd | Cary Grant & James Mason | Alfred Hitchcock | 93.45 | |
| Star Wars: Episode V - The Empire Strikes Back (1980) | 1980s | 12th | Harrison Ford & Mark Hamill | Irvin Kershner | 93.42 | |
| Pulp Fiction (1994) | 1990s | 5th | Bruce Willis & John Travlota | Quentin Tarantino | 93.41 | |
| Seven Samurai (1954) | 1950s | 20th | Toshiro Mifune | Akira Kurosawa | 93.25 | |
| All About Eve (1950) | 1950s | 98th | Bette Davis & George Sanders | Joseph L. Mankiewicz | 92.67 | |
| On the Waterfront (1954) | 1950s | 121st | Marlon Brando & Karl Malden | Elia Kazan | 92.66 | |
| Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964) | 1960s | 49th | Peter Sellers & George C. Scott | Stanley Kubrick | 92.54 | |
| Aliens (1986) | 1980s | 64th | Sigourney Weaver & Michael Biehn | James Cameron | 92.53 | |
| Once Upon a Time in the West (1968) | 1960s | 28th | Charles Bronson & Henry Fonda | Sergio Leone | 92.52 | |
| One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975) | 1970s | 15th | Jack Nicholson & Danny DeVito | Milos Foreman | 92.51 | |
| Goodfellas (1990) | 1990s | 17th | Robert DeNiro & Joe Pesci | Martin Scorsese | 92.50 | |
| Apocalypse Now (1979) | 1970s | 47th | Martin Sheen & Robert Duvall | Francis Ford Coppola | 92.33 | |
| Chinatown (1974) | 1970s | 117th | Jack Nicholson & Faye Dunaway | Roman Polanski | 92.15 | |
| Sunset Blvd. (1950) | 1950s | 48th | William Holden & Gloria Swanson | Billy Wilder | 92.10 | |
| Double Indemnity (1944) | 1940s | 80th | Barbara Stanwyck & Fred MacMurray | Billy Wilder | 92.08 | |
| Modern Times (1936) | 1930s | 40th | Charlie Chaplin | Charlie Chaplin | 92.03 | |
| It's a Wonderful Life (1946) | 1940s | 26th | James Stewart & Donna Reed | Frank Capra | 92.01 | |
| Psycho (1960) | 1960s | 36th | Anthony Perkins & Janet Leigh | Alfred Hitchcock | 92.00 | |
| Some Like It Hot (1959) | 1950s | 105th | Marilyn Monroe & Jack Lemmon | Billy Wilder | 91.70 | |
| Toy Story 3 (2010) | 2010s | 75th | Tom Hanks & Tim Allen | Lee Unkrich | 91.66 | |
| The Best Years of Our Lives (1946) | 1940s | 195th | Frederic March & Myrna Loy | William Wyler | 91.65 | |
| Vertigo (1958) | 1950s | 67th | James Stewart & Kim Novak | Alfred Hitchcock | 91.62 | |
| Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope (1977) | 1970s | 19th | Harrison Ford & Mark Hamill | George Lucas | 91.60 | |
| Lawrence of Arabia (1962) | 1960s | 84th | Peter O'Toole & Alec Guinness | David Lean | 91.55 | |
| Spirited Away (2001) | 2000s | 34th | James Marsden & Suzanne Pleshette | Hayao Miyazaki | 91.52 | |
| The Silence of the Lambs (1991) | 1990s | 25th | Jodie Foster & Anthony Hopkins | Jonathan Demme | 91.47 | |
| Taxi Driver (1976) | 1970s | 79th | Robert DeNiro & Jodie Foster | Martin Scorsese | 91.46 | |
| The Dark Knight (2008) | 2000s | 4th | Christian Bale & Michael Caine | Christopher Nolan | 91.44 | |
| Jaws (1975) | 1970s | 212th | Roy Scheider & Richard Dreyfuss | Steven Spielberg | 91.42 | |
| The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (12002) | 2000s | 16th | Viggio Mortensen & Orlando Bloom | Peter Jackson | 91.40 | |
| Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) | 1980s | 33rd | Harrison Ford & Karen Allen | Steven Spielberg | 91.35 | |
| Rebecca (1940) | 1940s | 147th | Laurence Olivier & Joan Fontaine | Alfred Hitchcock | 91.33 | |
| L.A. Confidential (1997) | 1990s | 97th | Russell Crowe & Kevin Spacey | Curtis Hanson | 91.15 | |
| The Philadelphia Story (1940) | 1940s | Not in Top 250 | Katharine Hepburn & Cary Grant & James Stewart | George Cukor | 91.14 | |
| White Heat (1949) | 1940s | Not in Top 250 | James Cagney & Virginia Mayo | Raoul Walsh | 91.10 | |
| Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939) | 1930s | 124th | James Stewart & Claude Rains | Frank Capra | 91.09 | |
| It Happened One Night (1934) | 1930s | 152nd | Clark Gable & Claudette Colbert | Frank Capra | 91.08 | |
| The Kid (1921) | 1920s | 94th | Charlie Chaplin | Charlie Chaplin | 91.05 | |
| Alien (1979) | 1970s | 51st | Sigournery Weaver & John Hurt | Ridley Scott | 91.02 | |
| The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003) | 2000s | 9th | Viggio Mortensen & Orlando Bloom | Peter Jackson | 91.00 | |
| Mad Max: Fury Road (2015) | 2010s | 84th | Charlize Theron & Tom Hardy | George Miller | 91.00 | |
| Raging Bull (1980) | 1980s | 113th | Robert DeNiro & Joe Pesci | Martin Scorsese | 90.99 | |
| Citizen Kane (1941) | 1940s | 65th | Orson Welles & Joseph Cotten | Orson Welles | 90.95 | |
| Toy Story (1995) | 1990s | 101st | Tom Hanks & Tim Allen | John Lasseter | 90.91 | |
| Annie Hall (1977) | 1970s | 180th | Woody Allen & Diane Keaton | Woody Allen | 90.68 | |
| Strangers on a Train (1951) | 1950s | 205th | Robert Walker & Farley Granger | Alfred Hitchcock | 90.67 | |
| The Great Dictator (1940) | 1940s | 53rd | Charlie Chaplin | Charlie Chaplin | 90.66 | |
| Up (2009) | 2010s | 115th | Ed Asner & Christopher Plummer | Pete Doctor & Bob Peterson | 90.60 | |
| Whiplash (2014) | 2010s | 38th | J.K. Simmons & Miles Teller | Damien Chazelle | 90.59 | |
| Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part Two (2011) | 2010s | 217th | Daniel Radcliffe & Ralph Fiennes | David Yates | 90.55 | |
| Yojimbo (1961) | 1960s | 106th | Toshiro Mifune | Akira Kurosawa | 90.53 | |
| The Terminator (1984) | 1980s | 215th | Arnold Schwarzenegger & Linda Hamilton & Michael Biehn | James Cameron | 90.51 | |
| The Wizard of Oz (1939) | 1930s | 194th | Judy Garland & Frank Morgan | Victor Fleming | 90.49 | |
| The Pianist (2002) | 2000s | 44th | Adrien Brody & Emilia Fox | Roman Polanski | 90.47 | |
| WALL·E (2008) | 2000s | 62nd | Jeff Garlin & Fred Willard | Andrew Stanton | 90.45 | |
| Roman Holiday (1953) | 1950s | 240th | Gregory Peck & Audrey Hepburn | William Wyler | 90.39 | |
| To Kill a Mockingbird (1962) | 1960s | 82nd | Gregory Peck & Robert Duvall | Robert Mulligan | 90.35 | |
| Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991) | 1990s | 41st | Arnold Schwarzenegger & Linda Hamilton | James Cameron | 90.33 | |
| The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001) | 2000s | 11th | Viggio Mortensen & Orlando Bloom | Peter Jackson | 90.10 | |
| 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) | 1960s | 93rd | Keir Dullea & & Gary Lockwood & H.A.L. | Stanley Kubrick | 90.08 | |
| How To Train Your Dragon (2010) | 2010s | 149th | Jay Baruchel & Gerard Butler | Dean DeBlois | 90.07 | |
| The Shawshank Redemption (1994) | 1990s | 1st | Tim Robbins & Morgan Freeman | Frank Darabont | 90.06 | |
| The Shop Around the Corner (1940) | 1940s | Not in Top 250 | James Stewart & Magaret Sullavan | Ernst Lubitsch | 90.04 | |
| Manhattan (1979) | 1970s | Not in Top 250 | Woody Allen & Meryl Streep | Woody Allen | 90.03 | |
| Toy Story 2 (1999) | 1990s | Not in Top 250 | Tom Hanks & Tim Allen | John Lasseter & Ash Brannon | 90.02 | |
| The Third Man (1949) | 1940s | 107th | Joseph Cotten & Orson Welles | Carol Reed | 90.01 | |
| Finding Nemo (2003) | 2000s | 167th | Albert Brooks & Ellen DeGeneres | Andrew Stanton & Lee Unkrich | 90.00 | |
| A Seperation (2011) | 2010s | 104th | Leila Hatami & Peyman Moadi | Asghar Farhadi | 89.99 | |
| The Night of the Hunter (1955) | 1950s | 228th | Robert Mitchum & Lillian Gish | Charles Laughton | 89.97 | |
| Full Metal Jacket (1987) | 1980s | 86th | Matthew Modine & R. Lee Emery | Stanley Kubrick | 89.95 | |
| The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948) | 1940s | 102nd | Humphrey Bogart & Walter Huston | John Huston | 89.94 | |
| Amadeus (1984) | 1980s | 90th | F. Murray Abraham & Tom Hulce | Milos Foreman | 89.93 | |
| Patton (1970) | 1970s | Not in Top 250 | George C. Scott & Karl Malden | Frank J. Schaffner | 89.92 | |
| The King's Speech (2010) | 2010s | 220th | Colin Firth & Geoffrey Rush | Tom Hopper | 89.90 | |
| Gone with the Wind (1939) | 1930s | 156th | Clark Gable & Vivien Leigh | Victor Fleming | 89.89 | |
| Reservoir Dogs (1992) | 1990s | 76th | Steve Buscemi & Harvey Keitel | Quentin Tarantino | 89.88 | |
| Rio Bravo (1959) | 1950s | Not in Top 250 | John Wayne & Dean Martin | Howard Hawks | 89.87 | |
| Notorious (1946) | 1940s | 221st | Cary Grant & Ingrid Bergman | Alfred Hitchcock | 89.86 | |
| Shadow of a Doubt (1943) | 1940s | Not in Top 250 | Teresa Wright & Joseph Cotten | Alfred Hitchcock | 89.85 | |
| Anatomy of a Murder (1959) | 1950s | Not in Top 250 | James Stewart & George C. Scott | Otto Preminger | 89.83 | |
| Cool Hand Luke (1967) | 1960s | 151st | Paul Newman & George Kennedy | Stuart Rosenberg | 89.59 | |
| Angels with Dirty Faces (1938) | 1930s | Not in Top 250 | James Cagney & Humphrey Bogart | Michael Curtiz | 89.55 | |
| Unforgiven (1992) | 1990s | 110th | Clint Eastwood & Gene Hackman & Morgan Freeman | Clint Eastwood | 89.53 | |
| The Maltese Falcon (1941) | 1940s | 160th | Humphrey Bogart & Peter Lorre | John Huston | 89.52 | |
| The Gold Rush (1925) | 1920s | 128th | Charlie Chaplin | Charlie Chaplin | 89.51 | |
| Manchurian Candidate (1962) | 1960s | Not in Top 250 | Frank Sinatra & Angela Lansbury | John Frankenheimer | 89.50 | |
| Paths of Glory (1957) | 1950s | 60th | Kirk Douglas & Adolphe Menjou | Stanley Kubrick | 89.49 | |
| Singin' In The Rain (1952) | 1950s | 88th | Gene Kelly & Debbie Reynolds | Stanley Donen & Gene Kelly | 89.48 | |
| The Great Escape (1963) | 1960s | 118th | Steve McQueen & James Garner & Charles Bronson | John Sturges | 89.47 | |
| Touch of Evil (1958) | 1950s | 177th | Charlton Heston & Orson Welles | Orson Welles | 89.46 | |
| No Country For Old Men (2007) | 2000s | 171st | Tommy Lee Jones & Josh Brolin | Coen Brothers | 89.44 | |
| Groundhog Day (1993) | 1990s | 216th | Bill Murray & Andie MacDowell | Harold Ramis | 89.40 | |
| Good Will Hunting (1997) | 1990s | 125th | Matt Damon & Ben Affleck & Robin Williams | Gus Van Sant | 89.49 |
Biggest discrepancies between IMDb and my Audience/Critic Rating?
1. My rankings have 1953’s Tokyo Story as the 6th highest rated movie in my database. Tokyo Story is not listed in IMDb’s Top 250 list…..but it has a 8.3 IMDb rating. That is a high enough rating to make IMDb’s Top 250….but probably does not have enough reviews to be considered on the Top 250.
2. My rankings have 1940’s The Philadelphia Story as the 42nd highest rated movie in my database. The Philadelphia Story has a 8.1 IMDb rating….which probably just misses the IMDb Top 250.
3. The 10th highest rated movie on IMDb is 1999’s Fight Club. Fight Club has a 8.9 IMDb rating. In my database Fight Club is ranked in 482nd place. That is higher than more than 20,000 movies but not good enough to crack my Top 100.
4. And now the biggest discrepancy! IMDb has 1994’s Forrest Gump rated as the 13th highest movie. Forrest Gump is ranked 1,244th in my database. The 1,234 difference is easily the largest in my database.
If you do a comment….please ignore the email address and website section.
WOW WOW WOW That is a lot of great movies. I agree that Ben Hur was a great movie. I have seen a great many of the movies listed. It takes a lot of work to get all the interesting facts. Thank you once again for a great Web Site. When do we get to see Burt Reynolds???
Interesting list, lots of favorites here. No problem with The Godfather at no.1. I’ve never seen Tokyo Story is it really rated higher than all of Akira Kurosawa’s movies? And Jimmy Stewart’s The Shop Around the Corner rated higher than some bonafide classics like Gone With the Wind, The Third Man and Singin’ in the Rain etc? hmmm. And where’s Ben-Hur, the greatest epic of them all, and my favorite movie? tsk tsk 🙂 Okay I’ve seen nearly all the films listed here, I’ve missed… 6, including Whiplash, the highest rated movie of recent years? Why? Good to see Hitchcock hasn’t been forgotten. Like I said an interesting list and debatable too, Citizen Kane just about made the top 50…
Hey Steve. I have seen 99 of the 100 movies listed. The Shop Around The Corner is the only one that I have not seen. I doubled checked the reviews for The Shop Around The Corner and the numbers still stand. The difference between 70 and 100 is pretty slim. As for Ben-Hur….it is ranked 140th out of all of the movies in my database….which is pretty high….just not high enough to crack this list. I had a feeling you might mention the absence of Ben-Hur…I was glad when Heston’s Touch of Evil cracked the Top 100….so it least one Heston movie made it.
Why is there such a huge difference in your rating and IMDb’s? Forrest Gump is one of the greatest movies ever made. It is one of the biggest box office hits of all time. It won the Best Picture Academy Award. Not way that there are 1200 plus movies better than Forrest Gump. Don’t make Sgt. Dan come over there and kick your ass!
Hey BubbaGump…..well looking at the stats…Forrest got killed by the consensus critics…on MetaCritics Forrest is at 82%….while at Rottentomatoes…Forrest is all the way down to 72%. Those numbers are good….but this list is looking at great. When looking at the other factors you mentioned…Forrest excels. I have another list that looks at the Top 100 based on my scoring system….and on that list Forrest does very well…coming in 31st place of all the movies in my database. So hopefully you will call off Lt. Dan.
@Henry. I did not even notice that Hitch had so many movies on the list. But he has some classics.
A loaded list for sure. Nice to see my favorite director with 7 movies in the 100. I of course mean Alfred Hitchcock.