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Movies: Top 100

Movies: Top 100

All-Time Greatest: Movies

By EW Staff

Updated July 11, 2013 at 04:00 PM EDT

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1. Citizen Kane (1941)

Credit: Everett Collection

Directed by Orson Welles

One word: Rosebud. It's still the greatest movie of all time. Telling the story of a newspaper tycoon based on William Randolph Hearst, the 25-year-old genius Orson Welles poured his own swaggering, larger-than-life soul into a tragic and exuberant American saga of journalism, power, celebrity, idealism, betrayal, and lost love. No matter how many times you've seen Kane, it always feels like the first time. That's because Welles' filmmaking remains spectacularly alive: The thrill of invention is there in every shot, every performance, every breathless narrative surge.

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2. The Godfather (1972)

Directed by Francis Ford Coppola

Coppola's tale of crime and family is the most mythic cinematic landmark of the past half century. It heightens Mafia violence into a metaphor for American corporate ruthlessness, presenting Marlon Brando's Don Corleone as the grandest of movie criminals — a monster we revere for his courtly loyalty.

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3. Casablanca (1942)

Credit: Everett Collection

Directed by Michael Curtiz

WWII movie perfection. Hollywood's most celebrated love story was made as just an average studio pic but now exemplifies old-movie magic. Story, lighting, music, craftsmanship, and every glance between Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman resonate with a magnificence that even the brashest studio mogul couldn't have predicted.

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4. Bonnie and Clyde (1967)

Credit: Everett Collection

Directed by Arthur Penn

A touchstone of screen violence, the exhilarating account of '30s bank robbers Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker kicked open the door to the cinematic freedom of the post-studio-system era.

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5. Psycho (1960)

Credit: Everett Collection

Directed by Alfred Hitchcock

The granddaddy of all slasher films (as well as the most profound horror movie ever made), Hitchcock's famous thriller takes the revolutionary step of killing off its heroine (Janet Leigh) halfway through, all as a way of placing the audience in the mind of a madman (Anthony Perkins).

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6. It's a Wonderful Life (1946)

Directed by Frank Capra

In Capra's eternal holiday classic, James Stewart gives one of the best big-screen performances as a small-town good guy who learns what life would have been like without him. The movie is really about how hard it is for us to see the magic of life as we're living it.

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7. Mean Streets (1973)

Credit: Everett Collection

Directed by Martin Scorsese

Scorsese's film about low-level New York Mob hoods is still the director's greatest exploration of crime, rock & roll, Italian-American manhood, and the wages of sin. The ''Be My Baby'' opening credits may be the single most electrifying use of pop music in Hollywood history.

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8. The Gold Rush (1925)

Credit: Everett Collection

Directed by Charles Chaplin

Divine slapstick and social commentary from a silent-film genius, as Chaplin's Little Tramp prospects for gold in the Yukon. It's the most iconic performance by Hollywood's most indelible movie star.

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9. Nashville (1975)

Credit: Everett Collection

Directed by Robert Altman

Altman's organically structured masterpiece turns the stories of 24 linked characters in the country & western music capital into a crazy quilt of politics, celebrity, and American life in the '70s.

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10. Gone with the Wind (1939)

Credit: Everett Collection

Directed by Victor Fleming

The sweeping tale of the Civil War, a plantation named Tara, and a girl named Scarlett O'Hara was long thought of as the ultimate ''women's picture.'' But it's really Hollywood's most tragic romance.

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11. King Kong (1933)

Credit: Everett Collection

Directed by Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack

The stop-motion effects retain every bit of their magic as Kong the giant gorilla awes, terrifies, and breaks your heart.

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NOT RATED

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12. The Searchers (1956)

Credit: Everett Collection

Directed by John Ford

Ford's darkest Western stars John Wayne as a Civil War veteran who becomes obsessed with finding his niece, who's been captured by Indians. This one has a closing shot for the ages.

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NOT RATED

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13. Annie Hall (1977)

Credit: Everett Collection

Directed by Woody Allen

Allen's matchless autobiographical ode to New York City, neurosis, and former sweetheart Diane Keaton has some of the most quoted dialogue in movie history. The template for the perfect smart romantic comedy.

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14. Bambi (1942)

Credit: Everett Collection

Directed by David Hand

It's gorgeous and touching. When hunters kill Bambi's mother, it's a sentimental shock that sends the young deer on a primal journey.

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15. Blue Velvet (1986)

Credit: Everett Collection

Directed by David Lynch

Lynch's masterpiece of erotic obsession is a hallucinatory thriller that turns into a surrealist nightmare. Dennis Hopper plays the most outrageous psycho villain ever.

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16. Singin' in the Rain (1952)

Credit: Everett Collection

Directed by Gene Kelly and Stanley Donen

The greatest of all movie musicals is a glittering MGM gem set in the days when Hollywood was transitioning from silents to talkies. It boasts sublime singin' (and dancin') in glorious Technicolor.

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17. Seven Samurai (1954)

Credit: Everett Collection

Directed by Akira Kurosawa

Unemployed samurai defend a village against bandits in Kurosawa's thrilling Japanese period Western, which towers over all action films.

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NOT RATED

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18. Jaws (1975)

Directed by Steven Spielberg

It's what we don't see that makes us scream in Spielberg's terrifying tale of what happens When Sharks Attack. Hollywood's blockbuster era began here.

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19. Pulp Fiction (1994)

Credit: Linda R. Chen

Directed by Quentin Tarantino

Tarantino seemed to be reinventing the pleasures of movies with this ingeniously time-bent yarn of bad behavior, surf rock, and outlaws who talk like pop culture junkies.

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20. The Sorrow and the Pity (1969)

Credit: Everett Collection

Directed by Marcel Ophüls

In documenting the history of the Nazi occupation of France with exhaustive patience, Ophüls' film plumbs vital questions of truth and memory.

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21. Some Like It Hot (1959)

Credit: Everett Collection

Directed by Billy Wilder

One of the most perfect of all farcical comedies, about two musicians who dress in drag to join an all-girl band because...well, nobody's perfect.

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NOT RATED

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22. Toy Story (1995)

Directed by John Lasseter

The first, and still the best, of Pixar's films, this tale of a bedroom full of quirky, quarrelsome toys is a witty miracle of plastic come to life.

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23. Notorious (1946)

Credit: Everett Collection

Directed by Alfred Hitchcock

Hitchcock's hypnotically suspenseful saga of love and espionage, starring Cary Grant as a supersuave secret agent and Ingrid Bergman as the woman who engages him in one of the longest kisses in screen history.

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NOT RATED

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24. The Sound of Music (1965)

Credit: Everett Collection

Directed by Robert Wise

The Rodgers and Hammerstein musical about the von Trapp family singers gets turned into a famously square movie. But it's remarkably, wholesomely impassioned, with an incandescent Julie Andrews as the would-be nun who finds herself as a choral den mother.

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25. 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)

Credit: Everett Collection

Directed by Stanley Kubrick

Kubrick's science-fiction masterpiece is a cosmic jaw-dropper of unearthly beauty, whether we're watching ships glide through space to ''The Blue Danube'' or charting the showdown between two astronauts and a computer that seems to have feelings. The ending can still blow your mind.

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26. Bicycle Thieves (1948)

Credit: Everett Collection

Directed by Vittorio De Sica

A workingman and his son look for the father's stolen bicycle in De Sica's gloriously simple story, the essential specimen of Italian neorealist style.

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NOT RATED

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27. The Maltese Falcon (1941)

Credit: Everett Collection

Directed by John Huston

Film-noir perfection and the stuff that dreams are made of: Humphrey Bogart is Sam Spade, a detective entangled with a valuable carved bird, unsavory types who covet it, and a divinely shady dame. It was the amazing directorial debut of Huston, who went on to form a beautiful professional friendship with Bogart.

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NOT RATED

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28. The Wizard of Oz (1939)

Directed by Victor Fleming

The most powerfully odd and enchanting fairy tale to come out of Hollywood, the adventure of Dorothy in Oz has the enduring magic of a backlot daydream, with a shivery touch of nightmare in Margaret Hamilton's performance as the Wicked Witch of the West.

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29. North by Northwest (1959)

Credit: Everett Collection

Directed by Alfred Hitchcock

Hitchcock's globe-trotting suspense classic, starring Cary Grant as an innocent man mistaken for a spy. It's the first true contemporary thriller, with an out-of-the-frying-pan existential wildness typified by the famous crop-dusting sequence.

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NOT RATED

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30. Sunrise (1927)

Credit: Everett Collection

Directed by F.W. Murnau

The most heart-wrenching and lyrical of all silent films, Murnau's rapturous tale uses breathtakingly advanced cinematographic techniques to tell the story of a couple who must fall apart in order to come together.

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NOT RATED

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31. Chinatown (1974)

Credit: Everett Collection

Directed by Roman Polanski

Polanski's moody, labyrinthine thriller about the dark side of 1930s Los Angeles is the richest of all of Hollywood's political-corruption mazes.

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32. Duck Soup (1933)

Credit: Everett Collection

Directed by Leo McCarey

The Marx Brothers hit their uproarious, looney-tunes peak in this madcap vision of a political empire gone gleefully berserk.

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NOT RATED

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33. The Graduate (1967)

Credit: Everett Collection

Directed by Mike Nichols

The story of a boy, a girl, and a Mrs. Robinson is one of the most revolutionary movies of the '60s. As Benjamin Braddock, a lad torn between respectability and dropping out (and as confused about it as Hamlet), Dustin Hoffman redefined movie stardom.

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34. Adam's Rib (1949)

Credit: Everett Collection

Directed by George Cukor

Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy play married lawyers arguing the opposite sides of a case — a perfect metaphor for marriage itself.

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NOT RATED

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Movies: Top 100

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1. Citizen Kane (1941)

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2. The Godfather (1972)

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3. Casablanca (1942)

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4. Bonnie and Clyde (1967)

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5. Psycho (1960)

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6. It's a Wonderful Life (1946)

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7. Mean Streets (1973)

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8. The Gold Rush (1925)

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9. Nashville (1975)

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10. Gone with the Wind (1939)

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11. King Kong (1933)

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12. The Searchers (1956)

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13. Annie Hall (1977)

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14. Bambi (1942)

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15. Blue Velvet (1986)

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16. Singin' in the Rain (1952)

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17. Seven Samurai (1954)

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18. Jaws (1975)

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19. Pulp Fiction (1994)

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20. The Sorrow and the Pity (1969)

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21. Some Like It Hot (1959)

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22. Toy Story (1995)

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23. Notorious (1946)

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24. The Sound of Music (1965)

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25. 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)

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26. Bicycle Thieves (1948)

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