TOP 100 BEST MOVIES OF ALL TIME THE WILL AMAZE YOU
An entirely subjective list of the greatest films in history that matter right now.
Dear reader, you’ve undoubtedly arrived at this article expecting a flawless, objective list of the 100 greatest movies of all time. We’re going to get this out of the way right now, and tell you that list doesn’t exist. You’re not going to find it on a review aggregation site, and you’re not going to find it here or anywhere else. Movies, and our opinions on them, are all subjective.
This is a list of 100 of the best movies of all time according to a group of Esquire editors. These are the movies we love and deem important and essential to the history of cinema. There will be movies you don’t think should be on here. There will be movies you think should be on this list. And that’s great! That’s okay! If we missed something, or if you think we made a mistake, tell us in the comments!
A list like this should be a living, evolving document that represents the time and tastes in which it was created. This specific list has been updated from a years-old Esquire list in which we substantially changed the entries in order to better reflect the movies we consider crucial right now. It will be updated again. It will be changed. Some will drop from this list while others are added. Culture is not a static thing—we’re constantly adding to it and reassessing it. So whether you agree with it or not, take a look at this list of movies, and if you see one you haven’t seen, we urge you to give it a watch. That experience alone might be enough to change your own personal list of best movies of all time. Also, another note to the reader: This list does not include documentaries, the best of which we’ve compiled in a separate list.
Without further ado, come on Toto, let’s go through the 100 best movies of all time.
In an era of CGI superheroes, George Miller reminded us how action movies ought to be made.
Best-written, best-acted, most beautiful film about the immigrant experience ever contemplated. It invented most modern clichés.
Too often, LGBTQ narratives are riddled with outright disaster, but Moonlight manages to examine the intersection of being a Black man from a difficult socioeconomic background, traversing the reality of being gay and closeted.
Fellini’s best film about a director who may or may not represent Fellini trying to make his best film.
Ang Lee’s film about two closeted cowboys who find and rekindle love on the ridge of a mountain was robbed the Best Picture Oscar, somehow losing to Crash.
The shark was a giant malfunctioning puppet with fake teeth, and it still scared the ever-loving shit out of you.
It is the superhero movie that launched the biggest Hollywood franchise of our lifetime.
Tina Fey’s beloved teen comedy is the definitive depiction of high school in the 2000s. The only thing it didn’t do was make fetch happen.
There’s no explanation of Parasitethat does the film justice—a psychological thriller, a family drama, a horror story about the evils of capitalism and the relentless pursuit of wealth.
The nominees for Best Actor, 1973: Brando, Nicholson, Redford, Pacino, Lemmon. And the Oscar goes to: Jack Lemmon.
Alfonso Cuarón’s evocative, black-and-white epic about a live-in housekeeper in Mexico City unspools an unforgettable story about class, family, and memory.
Aside from cementing Ava DuVernay as one of this century’s most important voices, Selma powerfully recounts the Selma to Montgomery marches—with the inimitable David Oyelowo as Martin Luther King Jr.
Man at elevator: What are you supposed to be, some kind of a cosmonaut? Dr. Venkman: No, we're exterminators. Somebody saw a cockroach up on twelve.
In Terrence Malick’s finest film, a story of love and murder unfolds in rural turn-of-the-century America, featuring painterly cinematography and a gloriously young Richard Gere.
A Civil War movie that not only holds up, but avoids what could have been a lazy white savior narrative.
Clint Eastwood throws on a poncho and is forged into an American icon on the Spanish plains. His theme music: the dark, jangling whistle of Ennio Morricone's score.
One of the most controversial, disturbing, and brilliant movies of all time—a movie so scary it has its own real life demonic lore.
Some people will argue this gangster twist isn't even the best Coen brothers movie, but those people need to get hit in the face with a shovel, like the Dane got.
This movie created the 1960s. Why? Because it's not about the Nazis; it's about the Man.
Polish director Krzysztof Kieślowski was tasked with creating a trilogy of films that embodied the colors of France’s national flag. What he made ended up somehow encompassing the totality of human experience.
A simple story about the need for careful planning. Happens to be Wes Anderson's best movie. And Owen Wilson's, too.
Widely considered the greatest film ever made—a distinction that is tough to argue with.
Because Stanley Kubrick turned a kid riding a tricycle into one of the most sinister images in all of film.
Ridley Scott’s 1982 cult classic was a box office bomb upon its initial release but decades later has become regarded as a groundbreaking achievement in the science fiction genre.
A movie so painfully profound that every year it tragically becomes more relevant in America.
Bloodthirsty mimes, clown-faced baseballers, and bare-chested men in leather vests — kind of makes you miss the gritty days of New York City.
Perhaps one of the most groundbreaking science fiction films of all time, directors are still trying to recreate the tension and atmosphere of this Ridley Scott masterpiece.
When your enemy captures you and orders you to help him, how hard do you try? And other questions about pride, honor, valor, and cowardice.
Not since The Wizard of Oz has a movie—and we’ll put all three LOTR movies in this camp—transported audiences so entirely to another world of fantasy.
Chadwick Boseman will be admired and cherished to the highest regard until the end of time for this one. Black Panther is an unforgettable, groundbreaking, and unifying experience.
It remains the formula for mystery and suspense—a gripping thriller that shows the twisted bounds of human greed.
Christopher Nolan’s space-and-time-bending epic is just as good sober as it is when you’re stoned. Plus, the science checks out! Also, the cast. We’ll all thank Nolan for the heads up when we’re safely off of earth.
Kids. Killing one another for reasons they can't understand and don't want to.
A kindhearted and beautiful film about a little bear that says more about humanity than many other films about real people.
Olivia Colman might have bagged her first Oscar for playing a high maintenance queen with some serious temper tantrums, but it’s all three leading women’s (Rachel Weisz, Emma Stone, and Colman) performances that bring this dark and bizarre period film to life.
In all its beauty and horror, Guillermo del Toro’s finest film (sorry Shape of Water) is a fairy tale that shows the fear and wonder of the childhood imagination.
The 2017 coming-of-age romantic drama directed by Luca Guadagnino and based on the 2007 novel of the same name by André Aciman is an emotional story of young love and heartbreak. Set in the lush Italian countryside, the gorgeously shot film forever changed the symbolic implication of a peach.
Studio Ghibli is a gentle force to be reckoned with, and Spirited Away is a shining example of the studio’s animation at its finest.
Simply put, Signin’ In the Rain is the best movie musical of all time. All you need to do is watch Donald O'Connor's “Make ‘Em Laugh” dance.
City Lights is the ’stache at his finest. Charlie Chaplin’s masterpiece (he produced, directed, wrote, and starred in City Lights) is a hilarious, beautiful tale of love and wonder, cementing Chaplin as the silent-film legend we know him as today.
Still the finest movie ever made about the ways in which greed corrupts the soul.
Yes, this is a movie musical, but it’s also a perfect balance of seduction, temptation, cynicism, and hopelessness. It redefined the form for an entire generation.
Bold, hilarious, and groundbreaking—Marilyn Monroe, Tony Curtis, and Jack Lemmon star in one of the greatest comedies of all time.
A slick satire of the thespian ego, All About Eve remains the only film in history to receive four actress nominations—if only they all could have won.
A perfect example of the bafflingly stupid men who have the ability to destroy the earth.
This profile of an evil, ruthless man with immense wealth, offers an excellent parallel to an era of Bezos and Zuckerberg.
In the new age of Pixar, Disney has made moves to tell important stories that branch outside the white, nuclear family. In Coco, the studio manages to bring Día de Muertos to life (literally!) by following a boy whose love of music leads him into a precarious position with his family in the afterlife. If you’re not cry sobbing “Remember Me” by the end, you weren’t paying attention.
If you want a full understanding of the tao of Martin Scorsese, look back to the Robert De Niro and Harvey Keitel-led Mean Streets—which is perfectly messy, bloody, and more than a little drunk.
The story left untold of the bluest and gold corners of romance under imperfect circumstances. Two women beautifully centered around the delicate rules of falling in love.
You’d be hard-pressed to find a more powerful revival of an iconic franchise than Creed. Director Ryan Coogler moves Rocky Balboa to the background and Adonis Creed to the front, for one of this century’s greatest sports movies. Cue the “Lord Knows” training montage.
Love & Basketball welds together two of film’s most feel-good genres—the romantic drama and the sports film. Monica and Quincy’s coming-of-ages— both separately and together—are still just as moving to watch, all these years later.
The brutal, unrelenting, and shocking realities of racism in the United States that need to be digested and remembered.
The mob film to end all mob films. Based on the evil crime syndicates that rule over Naples, Italy, you’ll never want to watch another mafia movie after seeing this one.
It’s perhaps not the most well-known film, but Jean Renoir’s zany ensemble comedy actually established many of the rules of filmmaking that we have come to accept as industry standard today.
A village overrun with bandits. The seven warriors sworn to protect it. This 1954 film inspired Star Wars, so it goes without saying that it changed the whole damn world.
A devastating portrait of poverty–and love–in the face of a once-prosperous Rome that has since been blown apart by fascism.
We may never again see such an elegant portrayal of love in cinema. This one just so happens to take place around the unspeakable destruction of World War II Japan.
It’s frequently cited as the #1 movie of all time, and for good reason–Francois Truffaut’s story of rebellious youth has resonated across generations.
Fritz Lang’s thriller about a serial killer on the loose was made in 1931, yet it still feels every bit as vivid and chilling as any crime movie today.
You might not expect a film about a pickpocket in France to be positively transcendent, yet Robert Bresson’s 1959 landmark may be one of the most spiritual movies ever made.
Chaplin. Hitler (or, Hynkel). An inflatable globe. The Great Dictator is said to be among the best satires ever put to screen. It also happens to be Chaplin’s first true talkie.
One of only two fantasy movies (along with Return of the King) to win Best Picture at the Oscars. Ever.
In 1994, Quentin Tarantino redefined the indie movie—and our concept of cinematic cool.
It’s rare you get to see Black love so delightfully charming and natural—a film with nuances that lead with fascination and wonder.
At once the most ambitious disaster movie ever made and the most ambitious romantic drama ever made.
David Lynch arrived on the scene with Eraserhead in 1977 but he didn’t fully achieve his vision for his strange and beautiful way of storytelling until Blue Velvet, which he made 9 years later.
Ron Shelton’s 1992 sports drama starts as a raucous buddy comedy and then ends up becoming a sharply insightful meditation on systemic racism and class prejudice.
The finest film made about the Iraq war—one that shows the physical and mental toll of human brutality.
Few films feel as thunderous and horrifying as this one. It exists as a monument to one of America’s darkest genocides.
The music. The hat. The whip. The adventures. And, most importantly, Harrison Ford’s effortless charm.
John Singleton formed his legend in the unflinching Boyz n the Hood—which features one of the most devastating endings in cinema history.
An honest portrait of a young woman’s coming of age full of astonishing detail, heart, and sympathy for the challenges of adolescence.
A prophetic depiction of the cruel men who ushered in our social media era—one that hinted at the damage they’d wrought within a few short years.
Reviewed by Dominion Olopele
on
January 06, 2021
Rating: 5
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