This is the Top 100 Movies in our database. Several years back, we came up with an idea to create a mathematical equation that would create a numerical score for each movie. The first thing we had to come up with were factors for the equation. So we thought….if we were producing a movie what would we like to see our movie accomplish. The first thing we would want, would be for the movie to be successful at the box office. Secondly, we would like the critics and movie goers to enjoy our movie. And finally we would like our movie to receive award recognition through Golden Globe® and Oscar® ceremonies. So let’s look at the breakdown of the variables in the equation.
1. Box office results. We figure that box office is the most important factor, so it received the highest percentage (30%) of the equation. The ceiling was $200 million in adjusted box office dollars. Any movie that crossed $200 million maxed out the points in the category.
2. Critics and audience reception. We felt that critical reception was the second most important factor so it received the second highest percentage 45%) of the equation. So where do I find critics/audience reception? We use at least 6 different sources: RottenTomatoes, IMDB, Yahoo Movies, Roger Ebert, Leonard Maltin and Fandango. Put them all together and I get an average with 100% being the highest score possible.
3. Award Recognition. The final part of the equation is worth 25%. A movie gets points for Golden Globe® and Oscar® nominations and wins. The Golden Globes get 5% while the Oscars® get 13% of the equation. The last 7% goes to amount of Oscar® nominations and amount of Oscar® wins.
So far we have done Ultimate Movie Ranking Scores on 26,478 movies. Granted that is only a small percentage of films that were ever made but we have done all the big blockbusters and Oscar® winners. So the following table lists the current Top 100 movies that PERFORMED the best in ALL THREE CATEGORIES. In other words we are not saying these are the best movies just the ones that STATISTICALLY PERFORMED THE BEST.
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 Top 100 Movies by co-stars of the movies
- Sort Top 100 Movies by director or directors of the movies
- Sort Top 100 Movies by adjusted domestic box office grosses using current movie ticket cost
- Sort Top 100 Movies 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 movie received.
- Sort Top 100 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 sort and search buttons to make this table very interactive. For example if you want to see the 4 Marlon Brando movies to make the list…just type in Brando in the search box and up they pop.
| Rank | Movie (Year) | Star of Movie | Director of Movie | Domestic B.O. Adjusted (mils.) | Critic Audience Rating | Oscar Nom / Win | UMR Score |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| The Godfather (1972) | Marlon Brando & Al Pacino & James Caan | Francis Ford Coppola | $686.30 | 94.5% | 11 / 03 | 96.22 | |
| One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975) | Jack Nicholson | Milos Forman | $448.20 | 92.5% | 09 / 05 | 96.07 | |
| Lawrence of Arabia (1962) | Peter O''Toole & Anthony Quinn | David Lean | $482.00 | 91.5% | 10 / 07 | 96.00 | |
| Schindler's List (1993) | Liam Neeson & Steven Spielberg | Steven Spielberg | $195.60 | 94.3% | 12 / 07 | 95.85 | |
| The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003) | Orlando Bloom | Peter Jackson | $527.10 | 91.0% | 11 / 11 | 95.77 | |
| The Godfather: Part II (1974) | Al Pacino & Robert DeNiro & Robert Duvall | Francis Ford Coppola | $214.30 | 94.0% | 11 / 06 | 95.31 | |
| Casablanca (1942) | Humphrey Bogart & Ingrid Bergman | Michael Curtiz | $344.30 | 94.3% | 08 / 03 | 95.30 | |
| Gone with the Wind (1939) | Vivien Leigh & Clark Gable | Victor Fleming | $1758.30 | 90.0% | 13 / 08 | 95.30 | |
| The Best Years of Our Lives (1946) | Myrna Loy & William Wyler | William Wyler | $569.60 | 86.0% | 08 / 07 | 95.28 | |
| Ben-Hur (1959) | Charlton Heston | William Wyler | $852.00 | 88.7% | 12 / 11 | 94.67 | |
| On the Waterfront (1954) | Marlon Brando | Elia Kazan | $219.90 | 88.0% | 12 / 08 | 94.36 | |
| Rebecca (1940) | Laurence Olivier & Joan Fontaine | Alfred Hitchcock | $258.10 | 87.0% | 11 / 02 | 94.13 | |
| The Apartment (1960) | Jack Lemmon & Shirley MacLaine | Billy Wilder | $232.10 | 87.5% | 10 / 05 | 94.12 | |
| The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957) | William Holden | David Lean | $473.40 | 88.0% | 08 / 07 | 93.56 | |
| It Happened One Night (1934) | Clark Gable & Claudette Colbert | Frank Capra | $190.70 | 91.0% | 05 / 05 | 92.33 | |
| Unforgiven (1992) | Clint Eastwood & Gene Hackman | Clint Eastwood | $205.50 | 89.5% | 09 / 04 | 92.19 | |
| My Fair Lady (1964) | Audrey Hepburn | George Cukor | $521.20 | 83.0% | 12 / 08 | 92.01 | |
| Patton (1970) | George C. Scottt | Francis Ford Coppola | $335.80 | 86.5% | 10 / 07 | 91.79 | |
| The Silence of the Lambs (1991) | Anthony Hopkins & Jodie Foster | Jonathan Demme | $261.80 | 89.0% | 07 / 05 | 91.76 | |
| Gladiator (2000) | Russell Crowe | Ridley Scott | $293.60 | 82.0% | 12 / 05 | 91.70 | |
| The Sound of Music (1965) | Julie Andrews | Robert Wise | $1235.60 | 82.3% | 10 / 05 | 91.70 | |
| The French Connection (1971) | Gene Hackman & Roy Scheider | William Friedkin | $264.10 | 84.0% | 08 / 05 | 91.68 | |
| Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope (1977) | Harrison Ford | George Lucas | $1549.90 | 91.7% | 10 / 06 | 91.58 | |
| American Beauty (1999) | Kevin Spacey | Sam Mendes | $216.70 | 85.0% | 08 / 05 | 91.48 | |
| The Lost Weekend (1945) | Ray Milland | Billy Wilder | $234.60 | 85.5% | 07 / 04 | 91.38 | |
| How Green Was My Valley (1941) | Maureen O'Hara | John Ford | $291.40 | 81.5% | 10 / 05 | 91.30 | |
| Platoon (1986) | Charlie Sheen | Oliver Stone | $314.80 | 84.0% | 08 / 04 | 91.08 | |
| Mrs. Miniver (1942) | William Wyler | William Wyler | $344.70 | 81.0% | 12 / 06 | 91.07 | |
| Terms of Endearment (1983) | Jack Nicholson & Shirley MacLaine | James L. Brooks | $290.20 | 81.7% | 11 / 05 | 90.88 | |
| Kramer vs. Kramer (1979) | Dustin Hoffman & Meryl Streep | Robert Benton | $356.90 | 81.0% | 09 / 05 | 90.67 | |
| West Side Story (1961) | Natalie Wood | Robert Wise | $486.30 | 80.0% | 11 / 10 | 90.60 | |
| Rain Man (1988) | Dustin Hoffman & Tom Cruise | Barry Levinson | $354.50 | 84.0% | 08 / 04 | 90.58 | |
| A Man for All Seasons (1966) | Orson Welles | Fred Zinnemann | $244.30 | 81.5% | 08 / 06 | 90.50 | |
| Mutiny on the Bounty (1935) | Charles Laughton & Clark Gable | Frank Lloyd | $286.50 | 86.0% | 08 / 01 | 90.22 | |
| A Beautiful Mind (2001) | Russell Crowe & Ron Howard | Ron Howard | $254.80 | 82.7% | 08 / 04 | 89.95 | |
| Dances with Wolves (1990) | Kevin Costner | Kevin Costner | $367.10 | 80.0% | 12 / 07 | 89.93 | |
| Saving Private Ryan (1998) | Tom Hanks & Matt Damon & Steven Spielberg | Steven Spielberg | $389.20 | 88.0% | 11 / 05 | 89.86 | |
| Forrest Gump (1994) | Tom Hanks | Robert Zemeckis | $681.20 | 78.0% | 13 / 06 | 89.66 | |
| Going My Way (1944) | Bing Crosby | Leo McCarey | $552.40 | 77.0% | 10 / 07 | 89.19 | |
| Titanic (1997) | Kate Winslet & Leonardo DiCaprio & Ja | James Cameron & Steven Spielberg | $1103.40 | 77.0% | 14 / 11 | 89.19 | |
| The Sting (1973) | Robert Redford & Paul Newman & George Ro | George Roy Hill | $776.40 | 87.5% | 10 / 03 | 89.17 | |
| Rocky (1976) | Sylvester Stallone | John G. Avildsen | $478.20 | 79.3% | 10 / 03 | 89.09 | |
| Amadeus (1984) | F. Murray Abraham | Milos Forman | $173.50 | 86.5% | 11 / 08 | 88.85 | |
| Oliver! (1968) | Oliver Reed | Carol Reed | $308.90 | 76.0% | 11 / 05 | 88.72 | |
| Slumdog Millionaire (2008) | Dev Patel | Danny Boyle | $165.90 | 88.5% | 10 / 08 | 88.68 | |
| An American in Paris (1951) | Gene Kelly | Vincente Minnelli | $202.90 | 77.5% | 08 / 06 | 88.62 | |
| The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001) | Orlando Bloom | Peter Jackson | $467.60 | 90.0% | 13 / 04 | 88.33 | |
| Driving Miss Daisy (1989) | Morgan Freeman | Bruce Beresford | $226.30 | 76.5% | 09 / 04 | 87.96 | |
| Chicago (2002) | Richard Gere | Rob Marshall | $248.10 | 76.0% | 13 / 06 | 87.84 | |
| All About Eve (1950) | Bette Davis & Marilyn Monroe | Joseph L. Mankiewicz | $155.60 | 92.7% | 14 / 06 | 87.80 | |
| Toy Story 3 (2010) | Tom Hanks | Lee Unkrich | $443.40 | 91.7% | 05 / 02 | 87.78 | |
| All Quiet on the Western Front (1930) | Lew Ayres | Lewis Milestone | $194.50 | 84.5% | 04 / 02 | 87.66 | |
| From Here to Eternity (1953) | Burt Lancaster & Montgomery Clift | Fred Zinnemann | $519.40 | 81.5% | 13 / 08 | 87.55 | |
| Midnight Cowboy (1969) | Dustin Hoffman | John Schlesinger | $347.70 | 82.5% | 07 / 03 | 87.51 | |
| Apocalypse Now (1979) | Martin Sheen & Marlon Brando | Francis Ford Coppola | $335.50 | 92.3% | 08 / 02 | 87.43 | |
| Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939) | James Stewart | Frank Capra | $289.00 | 91.0% | 11 / 01 | 87.37 | |
| Doctor Zhivago (1965) | Omar Sharif | David Lean | $1079.00 | 82.5% | 10 / 05 | 87.28 | |
| The Deer Hunter (1978) | Robert DeNiro & Christopher Walken & | Michael Cimino | $176.50 | 85.5% | 09 / 05 | 87.27 | |
| To Kill a Mockingbird (1962) | Gregory Peck & Robert Duvall | Robert Mulligan | $256.90 | 90.3% | 08 / 03 | 87.09 | |
| Inception (2010) | Leonardo DiCaprio & Michael Caine | Christopher Nolan | $312.60 | 88.5% | 08 / 04 | 86.83 | |
| Pulp Fiction (1994) | Bruce Willis & Samuel L. Jackson | Quentin Tarantino | $223.00 | 93.0% | 07 / 01 | 86.74 | |
| The Departed (2006) | Jack Nicholson & Leonardo DiCaprio | Martin Scorsese | $169.60 | 87.0% | 05 / 04 | 86.73 | |
| Annie Hall (1977) | Woody Allen & Christopher Walken | Woody Allen | $184.90 | 86.0% | 05 / 04 | 86.61 | |
| The Philadelphia Story (1940) | James Stewart & Katharine Hepburn | George Cukor | $215.10 | 91.0% | 06 / 02 | 86.37 | |
| E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial (1982) | Drew Barrymore | Steven Spielberg | $1220.60 | 82.7% | 09 / 04 | 86.35 | |
| Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966) | Richard Burton & Elizabeth Taylor | Mike Nichols | $214.60 | 84.5% | 13 / 05 | 86.34 | |
| Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) | Harrison Ford | Steven Spielberg | $770.70 | 91.3% | 08 / 04 | 86.28 | |
| Gentleman's Agreement (1947) | Gregory Peck & John Garfield | Elia Kazan | $240.20 | 75.0% | 08 / 03 | 86.25 | |
| In the Heat of the Night (1967) | Sidney Poitier & Warren Oates | Norman Jewison | $167.20 | 84.0% | 07 / 05 | 86.20 | |
| Ordinary People (1980) | Robert Redford | Robert Redford | $177.60 | 82.5% | 06 / 04 | 86.11 | |
| Wings (1928) | Gary Cooper | William A. Weldman | $314.10 | 81.0% | 02 / 02 | 86.07 | |
| Jaws (1975) | Roy Scheider | Steven Spielberg | $1114.40 | 91.5% | 04 / 03 | 86.03 | |
| A Streetcar Named Desire (1951) | Marlon Brando & Vivien Leigh | Elia Kazan | $231.20 | 85.0% | 12 / 04 | 85.98 | |
| Avatar (2009) | Zoe Saldana | James Cameron & Steven Spielberg | $842.70 | 82.3% | 09 / 03 | 85.60 | |
| Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969) | Paul Newman & Robert Redford | George Roy Hill | $613.50 | 86.5% | 07 / 04 | 85.49 | |
| The Exorcist (1973) | Linda Blair | William Friedkin | $919.20 | 82.5% | 10 / 02 | 85.48 | |
| The Martian (2015) | Matt Damon & Jessica Chastain | Ridley Scott | $228.30 | 87.5% | 07 / 00 | 85.42 | |
| Cabaret (1972) | Liza Minnelli | Bob Fosse | $304.30 | 82.5% | 10 / 08 | 85.41 | |
| Around the World in 80 Days (1956) | Shirley MacLaine & David Niven | Michael Anderson | $561.90 | 70.5% | 08 / 05 | 85.34 | |
| Gravity (2013) | George Clooney & Sandra Bullock | Alfonso Cuarón | $284.20 | 82.0% | 10 / 07 | 85.17 | |
| The Last Picture Show (1971) | Jeff Bridges | Peter Bogdanovich | $203.00 | 87.5% | 08 / 02 | 85.15 | |
| The Grapes of Wrath (1940) | Henry Fonda & John Ford | John Ford | $215.10 | 87.5% | 07 / 02 | 85.12 | |
| The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (2002) | Orlando Bloom | Peter Jackson | $493.90 | 89.0% | 06 / 02 | 85.06 | |
| Tom Jones (1963) | Albert Finney | Tony Richardson | $478.10 | 69.5% | 10 / 04 | 85.06 | |
| The Lion in Winter (1968) | Peter O''Toole & Katharine Hepburn | Anthony Harvey | $184.00 | 88.0% | 07 / 03 | 84.98 | |
| Shakespeare in Lovie (1998) | Gwyneth Paltrow & Ben Affleck | John Madden | $180.30 | 76.0% | 13 / 07 | 84.88 | |
| Fiddler on the Roof (1971) | Topol | Norman Jewison | $414.90 | 81.5% | 08 / 03 | 84.80 | |
| Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942) | James Cagney | Michael Curtiz | $392.00 | 84.5% | 08 / 03 | 84.71 | |
| Mary Poppins (1964) | Julie Andrews | Robert Stevenson | $887.80 | 81.0% | 13 / 05 | 84.70 | |
| On Golden Pond (1981) | Henry Fonda & Katharine Hepburn | Mark Rydell | $361.70 | 79.5% | 10 / 03 | 84.66 | |
| Giant (1956) | James Dean & Rock Hudson & Elizabeth Taylo | George Stevens | $481.70 | 86.0% | 10 / 01 | 84.65 | |
| Beauty and the Beast (1991) | Robbie Benson | Kirk Wise | $396.20 | 85.5% | 06 / 02 | 84.61 | |
| The Graduate (1967) | Dustin Hoffman | Mike Nichols | $767.90 | 84.5% | 07 / 01 | 84.61 | |
| The Great Dictator (1940) | Charles Chaplin | Charles Chaplin | $301.10 | 90.7% | 05 / 00 | 84.61 | |
| Gigi (1958) | Leslie Caron | Vincente Minnelli | $293.90 | 68.0% | 09 / 09 | 84.56 | |
| Apollo 13 (1995) | Tom Hanks | Ron Howard | $333.50 | 85.3% | 09 / 02 | 84.54 | |
| Bonnie and Clyde (1967) | Gene Hackman | Arthur Penn | $397.10 | 84.5% | 10 / 02 | 84.54 | |
| All the President's Men (1976) | Dustin Hoffman & Robert Redford | Alan J. Pakula | $359.80 | 83.5% | 08 / 04 | 84.47 | |
| The Wizard of Oz (1939) | Judy Garland | Victor Fleming | $225.40 | 86.5% | 06 / 02 | 84.26 | |
| Tootsie (1982) | Dustin Hoffman & Bill Murray | Sydney Pollack | $496.60 | 81.0% | 10 / 01 | 84.17 |
Our Top 100 Movie Snubs?
To make our Top 100 Movies list….a movie had to do well in three categories…box office glory, critical acclaim and award recognition. Let’s look at some movies that did do well in all three categories.1941’s Citizen Kane is considered one of the greatest films of all time. Citizen Kane got great reviews and picked up some major Oscar® nominations but was a flop at the box office. It’s poor showing at the box office puts Citizen Kane as the 898th best movie in our database.
1958’s Vertigo has great reviews….did below average for a Hitchcock movie at the box office and only picked up 2 minor Oscar® nominations…winning none…..that puts Vertigo in 877th place in our database. That is better than 20,000 movies in our database which is pretty good….just not good enough to crack the Top 250. If you want to see a movie page that gives these movies some love…check out our Top 100 Best Reviewed Movies.
Just making a boat load of money at the box office does not give you a spot in the Top 100. Let’s look at the biggest worldwide hit of 2014. Transformers: Age of Extinction (2014) made almost a quarter of a billion in North America and crossed the billion dollar mark in worldwide gross. Yet critics destroyed the movie and nobody older than 12 liked the movie. It’s critical rating is so low that it keeps Transformers: Age of Extinction from even cracking the Top 1000.
And finally let’s quickly look at the other end of our database. 26,478 movies ranked….some movie has to be at the bottom of the rankings. For awhile Nicolas Cage and his Deadfall (1993) movie held that honor. Well 2014 gave us a new worst ranked movie. Coming in with less 3 million in box office gross, some of the worst reviews of all time and the winner of the 2014 Razzie® Award as worst movie of the year….Kirk Cameron’s Saving Christmas. With a UMR Score of 5.56 Kirk’s movie is ranked as the 26,478th movie in my database.
For comments….all you need is a name and a comment….please ignore the rest.
Oh, I just have to talk about the top ten even though it is 1am. Yes! I am not going in the proper order. Too bad!
I have seen:
Bridge on the River Kwai several times
The French Connection (prefer this over the sequel big time)
Lawrence of Arabia – I saw this for the first time earlier this year. It is solely the length of the film that made me take too long to see it, not the genre
Gone With the Wind – I am shocked this isn’t in the top 5.
The Best Years Of Our lives – seen this several times too, though I must be in the right mood to see it
Casablanca – can’t ever tire of this film, although I remember the first time seeing it saying out loud “So this is where all those cliches come from”
As for the films I haven’t seen, I tried to see Ben-Hur this Christmas just for Steve, but it aired too early in the morning this year. I did see the 1925 version though. Anyways, Ben-Hur is the one that interests me the most of the ones I am missing in the top 10. I cannot see me ever watching lord of the Rings. Ask Steve why. 🙂
Same thing for The Godfather.
Hey Flora…I think Ernest Goes To Jail was the 4th or 5th movie in the Ernest franchise. Ernest was a tv commercial character played by Jim Varney…who somehow turned Ernest into a movie star….his first two or three movies were actually pretty popular. Varney provided the voice for Slinky Dog in the first two Toy Story movies…he passed away before they made Toy Story 3….glad you got some humor from #20.
As for the Top Ten you have seen….I think most of the movies seem to get better with time…Return of the King, one of the ones you have not seen does not seem to be doing that….I think the 2nd part of that series The Two Towers is the best of the bunch….maybe one day when you have an extra 14 hours…you can knock out the trilogy of L.O.R. I will not bring up #1 and #3 as I know your reasoning for not watching them. Casablanca is a classic and I just bought a Blu-Ray copy that I am about to watch….as my wife has not seen the movie yet. Gone With The Wind failed to get to the Top 5 because of a lower critical rating compared to the other ones in the Top 10…..a 95% for The Godfather and 90% for Gone With The Wind….does not sound like much….but there is only a 1.57 difference between 1st and 7th. Thanks for talking about movies ranked 10th to 1st as I realize it was late when you found this page.
No fair I did not see this until after 12:30am. I saw two movies tonight on PBS, both of which I had already seen, so no time to alter my total. (By the way, they were To Have and Have Not and the original Oceans Eleven)
First thing: I have never even *heard* of the movie at the pretend spot of number 20. hahahahahahahahahahahaha!
For now, though, I will just tell you overall:
I have seen 32 of these films. That is 64 percent, lower than the other half of films for me, as I expected, but still not too bad all things considered..
For all groups of ten, the lowest number of films I saw listed was 6. In fact, with the exception of 50-41 where I saw 8 of the films, I saw 6 movies in each of the other ten. That leaves the grouping of 5 films in one of the groups of ten in the last page of 100-51 as the sole lowest showing for me. Great! I am thrilled that at no time did I go below the 50% mark of any group of ten films. 🙂
It also means that I have seen 68% of the top 100 films according to your movie score. I am satisfied with that total so far.
The highest ranking film I’ve seen is the number 2 movie. Casablanca.
Hey Flora….sorry I got this page out so late yesterday, I did not get much of a movie page window until very late in the day….but you found it. I have seen all 50 of these movies…and 98 of the 100 I ranked. So obviously I need to watch the remaining 2 movies very soon.
68 is pretty impressive especially since a good chunk of the movies were made after you were born. I look forward to your comments later today.
Spirited Away: $274,925,095 worldwide,4/4 from Ebert 97% RT critical (96% audience), 8.6 IMDB, 1/1 oscar for animated, 3.5/4 from Maltin. 🙂
@Rocco…thanks for the suggestion..Spirited Away did not crack this list…but it is now on my Top Top 100 Best Reviewed Movies….coming in at #35. I appreciated that suggestion as it was a movie that was not in my database. Spirited Away did not do very well over…so its overall score could not crack this list. Although it is a great movie….it is ranked at 3,186th
the big counrty is one of my favorite films of all time
Hey Jacob…I love the Big Country too….it did not do great at the box office…and that lowered its score. …currently it sits in 1,200 place….that beats over 21,000 movies….and puts it in the Top 5% of all of the movies I have ranked.
Fascinating list Bruce, The Godfather no.1, no arguements there. And it’s good to see Ben-Hur in the top 10.
But I’m still shocked to see Driving Miss Daisy rated higher than Schindler’s List, Star Wars, Jaws etc etc How did that happen? 🙂
Hey Steve…Driving Miss Daisy had it all….box office glory, loved by critics and audinences and Oscar glory…hard to beat that.
Hey Steve….I figured if Ben-Hur was not in the Top 10….you would fly over the big pond and kick my butt…lol.