The top 20 movies of all time, by any honest methodology, include: The Godfather, Citizen Kane, The Shawshank Redemption, Vertigo, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Pulp Fiction, Schindler's List, Casablanca, The Dark Knight, Rear Window, Seven Samurai, Apocalypse Now, Singin' in the Rain, 12 Angry Men, Sunset Boulevard, La Dolce Vita, 8½, Some Like It Hot, Goodfellas, and Mulholland Drive. These aren't arbitrary — they emerged from cross-referencing IMDb's 9M+ user ratings, Rotten Tomatoes' Tomatometer and Audience Score, the AFI Top 100, the Sight & Sound decennial critics' poll, and Empire's 2025 fan vote. Where those lists converge, you have something close to genuine consensus. If you're also managing where all these films live across your subscriptions, WatchDeck's guide to the best streaming platform in 2026 is a useful companion.
TL;DR
- Consensus #1: The Godfather (1972) — tops or near-tops every major list that blends critical and audience data
- Critical darling vs. audience pick: Citizen Kane leads critic polls; The Shawshank Redemption leads IMDb user ratings (9.3/10)
- Newest film in top 20: The Dark Knight (2008) — the only 21st-century film to consistently crack every major consensus list
- Hardest to stream: Several titles (Vertigo, 8½, Seven Samurai) rotate across platforms or sit behind rental paywalls — streaming availability noted for each entry
- Methodology: IMDb rating × Rotten Tomatoes consensus × AFI/Sight & Sound placement × cultural longevity weighting
- Where to find everything: Use a tracker like WatchDeck to monitor when these films move platforms — they do, frequently
What Actually Makes a Movie the 'Best of All Time'?
There is no neutral answer to this. The criteria matter enormously, and different institutions weight them differently.
IMDb's ranking is a pure democracy: 9+ million users rating films out of 10, with Bayesian weighting to prevent ballot-stuffing. The result is a list that skews English-language, skews male, and overrepresents films from the 1990s and 2000s. The Shawshank Redemption sitting at #1 with a 9.3 is a genuine data point about what a certain very large audience loves. It's not a flaw — it's just what the method produces.
Sight & Sound's decennial poll is the opposite. Around 1,600 critics and directors vote once every ten years. In 2012, Vertigo (1958) dethroned Citizen Kane after 50 years at the top. In 2022, Chantal Akerman's Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles took first place — a film many multiplex audiences have never heard of. That result reflects shifting critical values, particularly around whose cinema gets taken seriously.
AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movies is American cinema only, voted by 1,500 film artists and scholars in 1998 (updated 2007). Citizen Kane sits at #1. Box Office Mojo measures gross revenue adjusted (or not) for inflation — Avatar (2009) leads the nominal worldwide chart at roughly $2.9 billion, which tells you something about blockbuster economics and nothing about artistic merit.
This list synthesises all of the above. A film earns its place here by appearing consistently across at least three of those major sources. Cultural longevity — is it still taught, still referenced, still watched without obligation — acts as a tiebreaker.
The Top 20 Movies of All Time, Ranked and Explained
1. The Godfather (1972)
Francis Ford Coppola's adaptation of Mario Puzo's novel is the one film that consistently sits at or near the top of every blended list. IMDb users give it a 9.2, Rotten Tomatoes shows 98% critical approval, AFI ranks it #2 American film of all time, and it appears in the top five of nearly every Sight & Sound ballot. Three hours of succession, loyalty, and moral erosion — and it doesn't waste a single scene. Currently streaming on Paramount+.
Spanning the years 1945 to 1955, a chronicle of the fictional Italian-American Corleone crime family. When organized crime family patriarch, Vito Corleone barely survives an attempt on his life, his youngest son, Michael steps in to take care of the would-be killers, launching a campaign of bloody revenge.
2. Citizen Kane (1941)
Citizen Kane is the film critics have called the greatest American movie for most of cinema's recorded history — AFI's #1 since 1998, Sight & Sound's #1 from 1962 until 2012. Orson Welles was 25 when he made it. The non-linear narrative, the deep-focus cinematography, the unreliable narrators — all of it was radical in 1941 and remains technically impressive now. It's also a genuinely engaging film about the gap between public myth and private failure. Available to rent on most major platforms; not currently on a major subscription service in the US.
Newspaper magnate Charles Foster Kane is taken from his mother as a boy and made the ward of a rich industrialist. As a result, every well-meaning, tyrannical or self-destructive move he makes for the rest of his life appears in some way to be a reaction to that deeply wounding event.
3. The Shawshank Redemption (1994)
The Shawshank Redemption is the highest-rated film on IMDb, sitting at 9.3/10 across over 2.9 million votes as of early 2026 — which makes it the most-loved film by pure democratic measure. It flopped at the box office in 1994 (grossing $16 million against a $25 million budget), then found its audience on cable and home video. Frank Darabont's adaptation of Stephen King's novella is sometimes dismissed as sentimental. That's a lazy read. It's a film about institutional dehumanisation that happens to also be warm. On Netflix and available to rent elsewhere.
Imprisoned in the 1940s for the double murder of his wife and her lover, upstanding banker Andy Dufresne begins a new life at the Shawshank prison, where he puts his accounting skills to work for an amoral warden. During his long stretch in prison, Dufresne comes to be admired by the other inmates -- including an older prisoner named Red -- for his integrity and unquenchable sense of hope.
4. Vertigo (1958)
Vertigo is Alfred Hitchcock's most formally strange film — and the one that finally overtook Citizen Kane in the 2012 Sight & Sound poll, holding that position for ten years before Jeanne Dielman displaced it in 2022. It's a film about obsession, male fantasy, and the impossibility of recreating the past, built on a plot that reveals its own mechanics halfway through. Critics took decades to recognise it; it was withdrawn from circulation by Hitchcock for years. Currently on the Criterion Channel and available to rent.
A retired San Francisco detective suffering from acrophobia investigates the strange activities of an old friend's wife, all the while becoming dangerously obsessed with her.
5. 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
2001: A Space Odyssey is Stanley Kubrick's science-fiction film that remains, 58 years later, the benchmark for what the genre can do with scale and silence. It opened to mixed reviews — Pauline Kael was famously dismissive — but its reputation has only grown. The Sight & Sound 2022 poll placed it in the top ten. It poses questions about evolution, consciousness, and machine intelligence that feel more urgent in 2026 than they did in 1968. On Max.
Humanity finds a mysterious object buried beneath the lunar surface and sets off to find its origins with the help of HAL 9000, the world's most advanced super computer.
6. Pulp Fiction (1994)
Pulp Fiction is Quentin Tarantino's 1994 anthology film that reset what independent American cinema could be. It won the Palme d'Or at Cannes. It sits at 8.9 on IMDb. It appears on the AFI list and has placed in multiple Sight & Sound polls. The non-linear structure, the dialogue-as-performance, the refusal of conventional morality — all of it was shocking in context and remains distinctive now. On multiple platforms including Tubi (free, ad-supported) and available to rent.
A burger-loving hit man, his philosophical partner, a drug-addled gangster's moll and a washed-up boxer converge in this sprawling, comedic crime caper. Their adventures unfurl in three stories that ingeniously trip back and forth in time.
7. Schindler's List (1993)
Steven Spielberg's film about Oskar Schindler, a German industrialist who saved over 1,100 Jewish lives during the Holocaust, is three hours and fifteen minutes long and shot mostly in black and white. It won seven Academy Awards including Best Picture and Best Director. It holds a 9.0 on IMDb. It is not comfortable cinema — it's not meant to be. Its place on this list reflects both its artistic ambition and its historical weight. On Peacock.
The true story of how businessman Oskar Schindler saved over a thousand Jewish lives from the Nazis while they worked as slaves in his factory during World War II.
8. Casablanca (1942)
Casablanca is AFI's #2 American film, and it earned that ranking honestly. Michael Curtiz's wartime romance is a film that functions simultaneously as genre entertainment, political allegory, and character study. Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman's chemistry is real. The script — rewritten almost daily during production — somehow coheres. It's on Max.
In Casablanca, Morocco in December 1941, a cynical American expatriate meets a former lover, with unforeseen complications.
9. The Dark Knight (2008)
The Dark Knight is the only film made after 2000 that appears consistently on blended consensus lists, sitting at 9.0 on IMDb across over 2.8 million votes. Christopher Nolan's superhero film is really a crime procedural about what happens when institutional order meets pure chaos — Heath Ledger's Joker won a posthumous Oscar. That it's a Batman film is almost incidental to what it's actually doing. On Max.
Batman raises the stakes in his war on crime. With the help of Lt. Jim Gordon and District Attorney Harvey Dent, Batman sets out to dismantle the remaining criminal organizations that plague the streets. The partnership proves to be effective, but they soon find themselves prey to a reign of chaos unleashed by a rising criminal mastermind known to the terrified citizens of Gotham as the Joker.
10. Rear Window (1954)
Rear Window is Hitchcock's locked-room thriller set almost entirely in a single apartment — a photographer with a broken leg watches his neighbours through a courtyard and becomes convinced he's witnessed a murder. It's a film about voyeurism that makes you complicit in it. It's also just a very efficient thriller. On the Criterion Channel and Peacock.
A wheelchair-bound photographer spies on his neighbors from his apartment window and becomes convinced one of them has committed murder.
11. Seven Samurai (1954)
Seven Samurai is Akira Kurosawa's 207-minute film about a group of masterless samurai hired to defend a village — and it remains the template for ensemble action cinema. The Magnificent Seven is a direct remake. Three Amigos is a parody of the same structure. It appears in every serious international cinema poll. On the Criterion Channel.
As villages perish under the thumb of a cruel race of warriors, a young priestess named Kirara travels the countryside gathering stray samurais.
12. Apocalypse Now (1979)
Francis Ford Coppola's Vietnam War film, based loosely on Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, was a production disaster that became a masterpiece. The documentary Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse covers the collapse in detail. The film holds a 8.4 on IMDb and features in both the AFI list and multiple Sight & Sound polls. Available on Max.
At the height of the Vietnam war, Captain Benjamin Willard is sent on a dangerous mission that, officially, "does not exist, nor will it ever exist." His goal is to locate - and eliminate - a mysterious Green Beret Colonel named Walter Kurtz, who has been leading his personal army on illegal guerrilla missions into enemy territory.
13. Singin' in the Rain (1952)
Singin' in the Rain is the best American musical, and that's not a close call. AFI ranks it #5 on its updated 2007 list. It's also a sharp satire of Hollywood's transition from silent films to talkies — the comedy has teeth. The title sequence in the rain has been referenced, parodied, and paid tribute to more times than anyone has counted. On Max.
In 1927 Hollywood, a silent film star falls for a chorus girl just as he and his paranoid screen partner struggle to make the difficult transition to talking pictures.
14. 12 Angry Men (1957)
12 Angry Men is Sidney Lumet's debut feature, shot almost entirely in a jury room, and it's one of the most sustained arguments for the value of reasonable doubt ever committed to film. It holds a 9.0 on IMDb across 860,000+ votes — high for a black-and-white procedural from 1957. On Tubi (free) and available to rent.
The defense and the prosecution have rested and the jury is filing into the jury room to decide if a young Spanish-American is guilty or innocent of murdering his father. What begins as an open and shut case soon becomes a mini-drama of each of the jurors' prejudices and preconceptions about the trial, the accused, and each other.
15. Sunset Boulevard (1950)
Billy Wilder's Hollywood gothic is narrated by a dead man floating in a swimming pool, and it goes downhill from there — in the best way. Gloria Swanson's Norma Desmond is one of cinema's great characters: delusional, terrifying, and genuinely tragic. AFI ranks it #12. Available to rent on major platforms.
A hack screenwriter writes a screenplay for a former silent film star who has faded into Hollywood obscurity.
16. La Dolce Vita (1960)
Federico Fellini's three-hour portrait of Rome's celebrity culture, moral vacancy, and beautiful emptiness gave us the word "paparazzi." It placed in multiple Sight & Sound top tens across decades. It is not a film with a plot in any conventional sense — it's a series of episodes that accumulate into something devastating. On the Criterion Channel.
Episodic journey of journalist Marcello who struggles to find his place in the world, torn between the allure of Rome's elite social scene and the stifling domesticity offered by his girlfriend, all the while searching for a way to become a serious writer.
17. 8½ (1963)
Fellini's follow-up to La Dolce Vita is a filmmaker's self-portrait disguised as a film about a filmmaker unable to make a film. It's the most influential movie about creative paralysis ever made. Woody Allen has made approximately the same film four times as tribute. On the Criterion Channel.
In a world plagued by creatures known as Kaiju, Kafka Hibino aspired to enlist in The Defense Force. He makes a promise to enlist with his childhood friend, Mina Ashiro. Soon, life takes them in separate ways. While employed cleaning up after Kaiju battles, Kafka meets Reno Ichikawa. Reno's determination to join The Defense Force reawakens Kafka's promise to join Mina and protect humanity.
18. Some Like It Hot (1959)
Some Like It Hot topped AFI's list of the 100 funniest American films. Billy Wilder again. Two musicians witness the St. Valentine's Day Massacre and flee disguised as women. It moves at a speed that modern comedies rarely attempt. Marilyn Monroe, Tony Curtis, Jack Lemmon — nobody is performing below their best. On Peacock and the Criterion Channel.
In Prohibition-era Chicago, musicians Joe and Jerry witness a mob hit, and flee the state in an all-female band disguised as Josephine and Daphne, but further complications set in.
19. Goodfellas (1990)
Martin Scorsese's true-crime film about the rise and fall of Henry Hill is the most technically dazzling film on this list — the Copacabana tracking shot alone earns its place. It sits at 8.7 on IMDb across 1.2 million votes and features in the Sight & Sound poll. On Max.
The true story of Henry Hill, a half-Irish, half-Sicilian Brooklyn kid who is adopted by neighbourhood gangsters at an early age and climbs the ranks of a Mafia family under the guidance of Jimmy Conway.
20. Mulholland Drive (2001)
David Lynch's 2001 neo-noir is the youngest film here and the most deliberately opaque. It topped the BBC's 2016 poll of the greatest films of the 21st century, voted on by 177 film critics from 36 countries. It's a film about Hollywood, identity, and the destruction of dreams — assembled as a dream logic puzzle with no clean solution. Also appeared in Sight & Sound 2022's top 10. On Max and the Criterion Channel.
Blonde Betty Elms has only just arrived in Hollywood to become a movie star when she meets an enigmatic brunette with amnesia. Meanwhile, as the two set off to solve the second woman's identity, filmmaker Adam Kesher runs into ominous trouble while casting his latest project.
Where to Stream Every Film Right Now
Streaming availability shifts constantly — this reflects the state of US catalogs in April 2026, but these films move. A few patterns worth noting:
Max is the single best subscription for this list. The Godfather, Casablanca, 2001, The Dark Knight, Rear Window (shared), Apocalypse Now, Singin' in the Rain, Goodfellas, and Mulholland Drive are all there as of now. That's nine of the top 20 on a single platform.
The Criterion Channel covers the international and art-house end: Seven Samurai, Vertigo (rotating), La Dolce Vita, 8½, Some Like It Hot. If you care about any of the non-American films on this list, Criterion is worth the $10.99/month.
Tubi has Pulp Fiction and 12 Angry Men for free with ads — genuinely good value.
Citizen Kane, Sunset Boulevard, and a few others currently require renting ($3.99–$5.99) on Prime Video, Apple TV+, or Vudu. That's annoying, but they're not locked behind paywalls — just not free.
For a broader look at what's worth paying for right now — and what's not — the WatchDeck guide to best things to stream right now covers current picks across every major service.
If you're tracking which of these films are leaving platforms soon, that's exactly the kind of expiration alert WatchDeck is built for. (Schindler's List, in particular, has moved between Peacock and rental-only status three times in the past two years.)
A Minor Complaint About 'Best Movie' Lists
Most ranked lists treat the question as settled and the methodology as obvious. It isn't. Sight & Sound's 2022 poll shifted dramatically because the voter pool expanded and diversified — Jeanne Dielman at #1 would have been unthinkable in 2012. That's not a scandal. It's evidence that "best" is a moving target shaped by who's doing the ranking.
This list uses a blended methodology precisely because no single source is right. IMDb's democracy overcounts recent English-language films. Sight & Sound's expert panel undercounts popular cinema. AFI only covers American films. The synthesis is imperfect, but it's more honest than pretending one of those approaches is definitive.
For TV equivalents — because great serialised storytelling deserves the same scrutiny — the WatchDeck rankings of best series streaming now and best TV seasons to watch apply similar logic to episodic television.
Honorable Mentions (Films That Nearly Made It)
A top 20 necessarily cuts things that belong in the conversation. Films that appear on multiple major lists but didn't quite break through the consensus threshold here:
- Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1975) — Sight & Sound's current #1 critics' pick, but too specialist to make a blended list
- Tokyo Story (1953) — Ozu's quiet masterpiece; #4 in Sight & Sound 2022
- The Godfather Part II (1974) — almost as strong as the first film; some argue it's better
- Boyhood (2014) — Metacritic's highest-rated film ever at 100, but recent enough that longevity remains unproven
- Jaws (1975) — Empire's 2025 fan vote winner; a genuinely great film that invented the summer blockbuster
As you build or refine your watchlist from films like these, managing where they live across subscriptions becomes its own headache. If you're also paying for niche services like the Criterion Channel alongside the major platforms, the WatchDeck overview of streaming services free and paid in 2026 breaks down the real cost picture. And for tracking films across your entire subscription stack — especially for titles that disappear from catalogs without warning — the best JustWatch alternative and best Trakt alternative guides cover what your options actually are.
Back to the broader streaming picture: if horror is your preferred corner of cinema history, the pillar guide to the best streaming service for horror movies is a thorough ranking of where the genre lives in 2026.
FAQ
What are the top 20 movies of all time?
The top 20 movies of all time, based on a consensus of IMDb user ratings, Rotten Tomatoes critical scores, AFI rankings, and Sight & Sound polls, are: The Godfather, Citizen Kane, The Shawshank Redemption, Vertigo, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Pulp Fiction, Schindler's List, Casablanca, The Dark Knight, Rear Window, Seven Samurai, Apocalypse Now, Singin' in the Rain, 12 Angry Men, Sunset Boulevard, La Dolce Vita, 8½, Some Like It Hot, Goodfellas, and Mulholland Drive.
What is the #1 movie of all time by audience vote?
The #1 movie of all time by audience vote is The Shawshank Redemption (1994), which holds a 9.3/10 rating on IMDb across nearly 3 million votes as of early 2026 — the highest user rating of any film on the platform.
What is the #1 movie of all time by critical consensus?
Citizen Kane (1941) held the top spot in the Sight & Sound critics' poll from 1962 to 2012, when Vertigo (1958) displaced it. In 2022, Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1975) became Sight & Sound's #1 film. Among blended critical and audience lists, The Godfather (1972) most consistently occupies the top position.
What are the top 50 classic movies of all time?
Lists of top classic movies typically draw from the AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movies (last updated 2007), the Sight & Sound decennial poll, and Rotten Tomatoes' curated editorial lists. The AFI's full 100-film list includes titles like Casablanca, Gone with the Wind, Singin' in the Rain, 12 Angry Men, Lawrence of Arabia, and Rear Window, spanning films from the 1920s through the early 2000s.
What are the top 20 funniest movies of all time?
The AFI's 100 Years... 100 Laughs list ranks Some Like It Hot at #1. Other consistently cited comedy classics include Tootsie, Dr. Strangelove, Annie Hall, Duck Soup, Airplane!, Blazing Saddles, MAS*H, It Happened One Night, and Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Critically, these films score on the durability of their humor rather than box office performance.
Where can I stream classic movies like The Godfather and Casablanca?
As of April 2026, The Godfather and Casablanca are both streaming on Max. The Shawshank Redemption is on Netflix. 2001: A Space Odyssey and The Dark Knight are on Max. Several international classics — Seven Samurai, La Dolce Vita, 8½ — are on the Criterion Channel. Citizen Kane and Sunset Boulevard require renting on platforms like Prime Video or Apple TV+.
How do critics and audiences disagree on the best movies?
Critics and audiences tend to disagree on two main axes: accessibility and recency. Audience-driven rankings (IMDb) favour emotionally accessible films and recent releases. Critic-driven rankings (Sight & Sound) favour formal innovation and international cinema, sometimes prioritising films that changed what cinema could do over films that are simply enjoyable to watch. The Shawshank Redemption is the clearest example: #1 on IMDb, absent from Sight & Sound's top ten entirely.
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