Top 100 Movies of Last 50 Years….Statistically Speaking

On the radio this morning I was listening to the Dan Patrick show.  On that show, Nick Wright was talking about his recent Top 50 NBA players of the last 50 years list.  That got me thinking, we should do that at UltimateMovieRankings.com.  A quick look at our UMR database showed we had 18,359 movies ranked from 1973 to 2022.  The following table shows the Top 100 Movies of the Last 50 Years….statistically speaking.  Movies are ranked using adjusted box office grosses, reviews from professional critics, general audience voting and award recognition.

Interesting facts about our Top 100.  Steven Spielberg has the most movies in the Top 100, with 8 movies.  On the actor side, Tom Hanks, Leonardo DiCaprio and Harrison Ford lead the way with 6 movies. They were followed closely by Jack Nicholson, Matt Damon, and Dustin Hoffman with 5 movies.  On the actress side, Meryl Streep leads the way with 3 movies.  Only 3 comic book movies made the list.  Only 3 animated movies made the list.  Ghost, Seabiscuit and The Help just missed the Top 100.

The time frame 1973-2022:  We decided to include 2022 in the rankings.  By doing that, we had to knock out 1972, which meant The Godfather, Cabaret and Deliverance just missed making the list.  Currently, Top Gun: Maverick is the highest rated movie in 2022.  It is currently sitting in 159th place.  It will have wait until award season comes around, to see if it can crack the Top 100.  The first Top Gun picked up 4 Oscar® nominations, winning once.  We think the sequel will probably top those numbers and earn a spot on the Top 100.

These six movies got a perfect score of 100 in our ranking formula.

Top 100 Movies of Last 50 Years 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 by Top 100 Movies of Last 50 Years by stars of the movie
  • Sort Top 100 Movies of Last 50 Years by adjusted domestic box office grosses using current movie ticket cost (in millions)
  • Sort Top 100 Movies of Last 50 Years by adjusted worldwide box office grosses using current movie ticket cost (in millions)
  • Sort Top 100 Movies of Last 50 Years 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 Top 100 Movies of Last 50 Years movie received.
  • Sort Top 100 Movies of Last 50 Years movies by Ultimate Movie Rankings (UMR) Score.  UMR Score puts box office, reviews and awards into a mathematical equation and gives each movie a score.
  • Use the search and sort buttons to make this page very interactive.

Top 100 Movies of Last 50 Years Ranked In Chronological Order With Ultimate Movie Rankings Score (1 to 5 UMR Tickets) *Best combo of box office, reviews and awards.

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12 thoughts on “Top 100 Movies of Last 50 Years….Statistically Speaking”

    1. Hey Dan…I am shocked….shocked I tell ya…..that you have seen all of these movies…..lol. Of course I would actually been shocked if your tally was NOT 100.

      Reply

  2. I have seen 43 of these movies, and very few of the top films.

    I have seen 1 of the top 10, 5 in the top 20, and 11 in the top 30.

    Favourites;

    The Sting
    Tootsie
    Beauty and the Beast
    All the President’s Men
    Chicago
    Driving Miss Daisy
    Up
    The King’s Speech
    Rain Man
    Heaven Can Wait

    Reply

    1. Hey Flora….I have seen all 100 of these movies. 43 for you is actually pretty good. I now you have the “1976 rule”….so only a few movies were made before that one. I have so many favorites from the list…so I will just list my Top 3 – Raiders of the Lost Ark, Pulp Fiction and Jaws. Good feedback as always.

      Reply

  3. Ooh a new list… 50 years eh… well Bruce since you didn’t include any 2022 films on the chart that I could see, December 2021 should have been the cut off date and therefore 1972, and ‘Il Padrino’, should have been included. [Bruce fumes]

    There are 7 films on the chart I haven’t seen and they are – Kramer vs Kramer, Ordinary People, Moonstruck, Hidden Figures, The Goodbye Girl, The Coal Miner’s Daughter and A Star is Born (2018).

    Good to see Jaws and Star Wars in the top 10 critics chart, Godfather II fans might wince at third place behind Pulp Fiction and The Dark Knight.

    Good stuff Bruce. Vote Up!

    Reply

    1. The newest movie to make the list is 2017’s Get Out. That is probably because almost all the Best Picture nominated movies are small art house movies. I mean just look at some of the Best Picture winners lately…CODA (great movie…but nobody saw it), Moonlight (an ok movie….that nobody saw), Nomadland (an ok picture…that nobody saw), Parasite (good movie…a few people saw it).

      Tally count: 100 for me, 93 for you and 43 for Flora. Well the fans of The Godfather Part 2 can still take solace in getting the Top Spot. I really like this list….I am hoping it becomes a big view getter…but only time will tell.

      Reply

  4. For the record my fave TV actors nowadays are Dick Van Dyke/Jack Klugman/Raymond Burr/Peter Falk/David Suchet and perennial off-screen Cogerson favourite Andy Griffith along with his sidekick the great Don Knotts who is a kind of a clean-talking Joe Pesci ‘stooge’ to the lead in the Matlock crime series..

    Though the formal function of each of those heroes may differ -lawyer, coroner, surgeon – everyone of those is in reality a detective and none of them needs a little dog to help him solve his mysteries!

    I still retain a keen academic interest in material about the best films and the highest grossing films however and this jam-packed list bringing 100 spanning half a century of them under the one roof, reminding me as it does how popular each was in its day, is a treasure to me – so “Voted Up”. Well done Work Horse.

    POSTSCRIPT: Though it is not relevant to the above table The Godfather was given a limited re-release recently to celebrate its 50th anniversary and added a few more million dollars to its overall grosses. At the completion of its initial release way back half a century ago its actual domestic gross was $134.1 million (a figure that The Work Horse confirms in his tables).

    According to The Numbers box office site the small reissue brought that actual total up to $136.48 million. Paramount re-released it on 25 Feb 2022 under the title The Godfather: 50 Years. How time flies! I went to see it first time round in 1972 on my honeymoon in Dublin Ireland when I was about a quarter of a century younger than I think the Work Horse is now – though I was still smarter back then than he is now!!!

    Reply

    1. Re 2 of 2 of my posts yesterday in which I listed my fave TV actors all of whom played detectives. Quincy for example is a coroner but in the process of his lab examinations he solves the police’s cases for them – just as even though a mere viewer I try to keep The Work Horse right on this site. Tall order admittedly.

      The last time that I saw a television detective accompanied by a ‘nagging wife’ in solving his crimes was in McMillan and Wife [1971-1977] in which Brick Hudson was police commissioner Stewart MacMillan and Susan Saint James his wife Sally. Whilst they were all love-dovey on screen [albeit in tame bedroom scenes by today’s standards] apparently everbody found Susan a pain in the *** off-screen.

      That though should not deter Team Cogerson from changing the title of this site to Wife and Cogerson – as is known I’m a stickler for properly earned order of billing [instead of something like the apparently once-considered Ultimate Movie Wankers] if ever a title change is again being contemplated.

      By coincidence I have just watced a rerun of a Columbo episode and was reminded by it that a big gimmick is that whilst Columbo’s wife is frequently mentioned in the plots you never see or hear her. For example at a social gathering Columbo is asked “Where’s your wife tonight lieutenant?” and pointing across the room he says “Over there at the fruit bowl.” but the camera remains trained on Columbo and his questioner.

      Sadly the wonderful Bill Powell is no longer with us to make movies; but if he were I would ask him to quickly jot down notes on the screen-relationship formula that I have just described.

      Reply

  5. This is a very comprehensive list and it will take a couple of sittings to fully consider and for one to obtain maximum enjoyment and benefit from it.

    However for openers I have been looking at the Top 15 and it strikes me that there is not one that I would currently wish to watch again either because I feel I have watched it often enough or else I was never interested in it to begin with.

    To be clear I watch very few reruns of old movies these days-not even too many of those featuring my idols such as Jimmy Stewart, Duke Wayne, Brando and Greg Peck. In fact the only movie which off the top of my head occurs to me that I still like to watch reruns of is Patrick Swayze’s Road House which for some reason holds a strange fascination for me despite its heavy use of the Willis/DeNiro special vocabulary.

    Some people on this site seem to confuse- I don’t know why – Greg with Royal Dano and the irony is that I have actually seen Royal much more than I have Greg over the past few years because Greg made little for television whilst in later years Dano was on TV a lot – I have just watched him in 2 episodes of Jack Klugman’s medical-detective series Quincy ME [1976-83]

    You see these days rather than go to the cinema much or view old cinematic movie reruns I mostly watch TV movies, TV series and their reruns and general television programmes these days and have now built up a ‘stable’ of favourite television actors.

    Reply

    1. Hey Bob….thanks for the feedback on our Top 100 Movies of the Last 100 Years. Just based on the fact that the movies are only 50 years old or less….your big stars did not really have much of a chance to make the list. Funny point about Royal Dano Peck. Good stuff.

      Reply

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