If you felt that tremor in the #filmtwitter ground the other day, it’s because Empire Magazine released a list of the top 100 films of all time as voted on by their readers. Lists like these are subjective, but I can’t help but feel like they tried to soften the blow by releasing what is a decent, to be expected top 10 like last month. The full list however is quite a doozy, although not far from what I expected in a list voted on by those readers. In particular, the male skewing audience yielded a list that’s damn near bereft of films with leading female characters, let alone “strong” ones. I think nothing made me LOL harder than Interstellar (#47) and Guardians of the Galaxy (#34). Interstellar isn’t in the top 50 of movies from the year it came out, let alone of all time. Guardians is a wonderful film, but the MCU’s best is prob Winter Soldier or Avengers #1.
Naturally the best way to respond to a list is a list, so below I have listed the 100 greatest films of all time as of June 29. It’s not ranked (cause who has the time or strength) but I’d go up for any film on this list. I have a longer great movies list over on my Lettrboxd, but these are the final 100.
Metropolis (1927)
Scarface (1932)
Bringing Up Baby (1938)
The Wizard of Oz (1939)
Gone With the Wind (1939)
Fantasia (1940)
Casablanca (1943)
The Red Shoes (1948)
All About Eve (1950)
Rashomon (1951)
A Streetcar Named Desire (1951)
Sleeping Beauty (1959)
West Side Story (1961)
A Raisin in the Sun (1961)
Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf (1966)
8 1/2 (1962)
The Sound of Music (1965)
2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
Night of the Living Dead (1968)
Cabaret (1972)
Chinatown (1972)
The Godfather (1972)
The Exorcist (1973)
The Godfather II (1974)
Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1974)
Jaws (1975)
All The President’s Men (1976)
Carrie (1976)
The Omen (1976)
Close Encounters of the 3rd Kind (1977)
Killer of Sheep (1977)
Apocalypse Now (1978)
Superman (1978)
Alien (1979)
All That Jazz (1979)
Raging Bull (1980)
Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)
Poltergeist (1982)
The Thing (1982)
Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown (1982)
Amadeus (1984)
The Terminator (1984)
Kiss of the Spiderwoman (1984)
Terms of Endearment (1985)
Witness (1985)
Coming to America (1988)
Moonstruck (1988)
Steel Magnolias (1989)
The Silence of the Lambs (1991)
Terminator 2: Judgement Day (1991)
Aladdin (1992)
Jurassic Park (1993)
The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993)
Forrest Gump (1994)
The Lion King (1994)
The Shawshank Redemption (1994)
Independence Day (1996)
The English Patient (1996)
Scream (1996)
L.A. Confidential (1997)
Live Flesh (1997)
Titanic (1997)
Shakespeare in Love (1998)
Cruel Intentions (1999)
The Matrix (1999)
The Sixth Sense (1999)
Toy Story 2 (1999)
Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon (2000)
Moulin Rouge (2001)
Original Sin (2001)
Chicago (2002)
Y Tu Mama Tambien (2002)
Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003)
X-Men 2 (2003)
Spider-Man 2 (2004)
The Incredibles (2004)
Brokeback Mountain (2005)
Pride and Prejudice (2005)
Sin City (2005)
The Descent (2006)
Volver (2006)
No Country for Old Men (2007)
Cloverfield (2008)
The Strangers (2008)
Avatar (2009)
District 9 (2009)
Sin Nombre (2009)
Black Swan (2010)
The Social Network (2010)
A Separation (2011)
Weekend (2011)
Cloud Atlas (2012)
ParaNorman (2012)
The Conjuring (2013)
Boyhood (2014)
Foxcatcher (2014)
The Way He Looks (2014)
Ex Machina (2015)
Spotlight (2015)
Moonlight (2016)