100 of the Greatest Movies in History - A Greensleeves Page

What makes a great film? Everyone will, of course, have their own views, and no one view is definitive. I give my opinion during the course of compiling this list. At this stage, I would merely suggest that no one should be prejudiced by any one single criterion. Films can be great even if they star an unknown actor or actress. Films can be great even if they are written in a foreign language or screened in black and white. Films can be great even if they are all action with no dialogue, or all dialogue with no action. Conversely, the world's best directors have all made turkeys, and the world's best actors have starred in them. I trust that in my selection of great films there is little that this 100 have in common and no defining qualities - other than quality itself.

Links to my reviews of some of the films featured here are highlighted in blue.

Many people enjoy the old party game of compiling lists of 'favourites', and a popular topic for such lists is 'favourite movies'. This is my list, and for me it serves two purposes;

1. It satisfies the desire to put down in writing my feelings, and to promote these films so that others unfamiliar with all on this list, can be introduced to them. I hope anyone who chooses to watch any of these films for the first time, will enjoy the experience; that will be sufficient justification for the list.
2. The list also serves as a page of links to my reviews of these movies. Links to each of the films on this page will be highlighted as each new review is added. I hope you enjoy the reviews.

As with everyone, I suspect, my tastes change with time. Some films I watch for the twentieth time, and I find something new with each viewing. Other films wear a bit thin with repeated screenings, and I will eventually grow bored with a movie I once loved. Some date less well than others, and viewed ten or twenty or fifty years after first screening, they just do not seem so good anymore. And of course, there are always new movies coming along to add to the list. Consequently this list will be dynamic, and will be adjusted on a regular basis to reflect my current opinion.

Finally, I should point out something about the 100 movies on this list. They are my favourites, and I can defend the fact that they are all great films, but I cannot claim they are definitively the greatest ever. I should point out in advance I am not a professional film reviewer; I am a casual film viewer. I do not spend all my evenings at the local cinema, catching the latest offerings, and many of the most universally admired films from the past are works which I have never seen. I therefore make no claims for the movies on this list, except that they are my favourites, and they are all worth watching.

This then, is my list of 100 favourite films, with accompanying notes.

0 1) The Big Country

02) Apollo 13

03) Nottinghill

04) The Untouchables

05) Star Wars : Episode IV - A New Hope

06) In the Heat of the Night

07) Witness

08) The Terminator

09) Shenandoah

10) The Blue Max

1 1) Kingdom of Heaven

1 2) Dirty Rotten Scoundrels

1 3) Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
1 4) Charade
1 5) Master and Commander : The Far Side of the World

1 6) For a Few Dollars More

1 7) The Sting

1 8) The Fugitive

1 9) Die Hard
20) Zulu

For many people a list like this would be full of action packed entertainment movies with amazing special effects (yet in my opinion - ineptly stupid). For others the list would be full of serious-minded well directed movies, full of talent, and perhaps with a philosophical or moral message (yet in my opinion - mind-numbingly pretentious or boring). It's my belief that all of the movies on my list have both entertainment value and great quality of direction and production. Neither is enough by itself.

I am quite proud of the fact that every decade from the last sixty years is represented in just this top 20 ranging from 'The Big Country', made in 1958, to 'Kingdom of Heaven', in 2005. It's true there are no foreign language films or black and white films (though a few of these are featured further down), but the top 20 list does include almost every genre from comedy to period drama, and sci fi to westerns. Some are unashamedly fun ('Dirty Rotten Scoundrels') or fantasy ('Terminator'), while some portray real events ('Apollo 13' and 'Zulu').

The top 20 includes just two Best Picture Academy Award winners ('In the Heat of the Night' and 'The Sting') and these two films plus 'Star Wars' garnered a total of 18 awards between them. Half of the films in my top 20, however, didn't get a single Oscar between them; though whether that says something about my taste, or the tastes of Academy members, is for you to decide.

2 1) Jaws

22) Raiders of the Lost Ark
23) Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
24) The Day of the Jackal
25) The Apartment

26) The Battle of Britain
27) Jurassic Park

28) The Englishman Who Went Up a Hill .....
29) I Robot
30) Batteries Not Included
31) Dave
32) Starman
33) Genevieve
34) The Naked Gun
35) The Dam Busters
36) Falling Down
37) Red Corner
38) Sleepless in Seattle
39) Duel
40) The Man Who Never Was



Two names may already be standing out to readers of this list. Director Steven Spielberg collaborated with actor Harrison Ford in 'Raiders of the Lost Ark', and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade'. Spielberg directed no less than five movies in my top 40, the others being Jaws, Jurassic Park, and Duel (his early made-for-TV film). Harrison Ford meanwhile has appeared in five movies (the two Indiana films, Star Wars, Witness and The Fugitive).

Spielberg undoubtably knows how to make entertaining, box office hits, with a professional expertise. Some of his work could be criticised for being overly commercial, but I would nevertheless regard him as the greatest of directors for the continuing high standard of his work. I don't generally follow film stars - the movie is more important than any face which appears on screen - but Harrison Ford does seem to possess a happy knack of picking the big winners when it comes to selecting his movie roles.

In my full top 100 list, Spielberg has directed seven films (no other director has more than four to his credit). Ford has starred in six.

A few lesser known pictures are now appearing in my top 100 list - movies like 'The Man who Never Was', 'Starman', 'Genevieve' and 'Red Corner', and an early Hugh Grant feature with the absurdly long title of 'The Englishman Who Went Up a Hill, But Came Down a Mountain'. (Hugh Grant in a romantic comedy would you believe?) I guess a particular pleasure would be to introduce a few visitors to this site to some of these slightly lesser known movies.

4 1) The Cincinnati Kid
42) Terminator II - Judgement Day
43) Rear Window (1954 version)
44) Predator
45) War of the Worlds (2005 version)
46) The Outlaw Josey Wales
47) Ghost
48) Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone
49) Key Largo
50) Downfall

5 1) Enemy at the Gates
52) Cellular
53) Pretty Woman
54) Aces High
55) Ice Station Zebra
56) Torn Curtain

57) A Fistful of Dollars
58) Quatermass and the Pit
59) Operation Crossbow
60) Housesitter

Franchises and sequels and remakes seem to have become the staple of an ultra-cautious film industry where fortunes can be made - or lost - on the box office success of a movie. Why risk capital on a new and untested story when you can repackage a formula which has been a proven success in the past, and which seemingly guarantees profits in the future?

It's something of a cliche to suggest that sequels are rarely as good as the original, and there is some truth in that (the reasons will be explored in a future page), but nonetheless there have been some extraordinarily good remakes of classic films, and many stories which are continuations of an original film idea, but which have stayed true to the qualities which marked the original for greatness.

In this list I include several films which have been remade, including 'Rear Window' and 'War of the Worlds'. Usually it is the older version which is favoured - the high standard of entertainment which decreed that a remake should eventually be made, inevitably makes the original a hard act to follow. However in the case of 'War of the Worlds', I believe the remake scores highly for the quality of acting and direction, the emotional pull, and of course for the vastly superior special effects which were not possible in the 1953 original.

Of course in this list, franchises such as Terminator, Predator and Harry Potter also figure prominantly. Indiana Jones has three entries in my top 100 list, and so does the never-ending sequence of James Bond movies.

In my list of films 41-60, I include the German movie 'Downfall' which explores the last days of Adolf Hitler in his Berlin bunker. Perhaps to my shame, it is the only foreign language movie in my top 100, but no doubt I - and all of us - should be less lazy about reading subtitles and should embrace such works; to ignore the vast majority of the world's cinema just because of language difficulties is surely to miss out on a treasure trove of great work.

6 1) The African Queen
62) Dances with Wolves

63) Ben Hur
64) Kind Hearts and Coronets
65) Eye of the Needle
66) Psycho

67) Big Deal at Dodge City
68) School for Scoundrels
69) The Quick and the Dead
70) Deep Impact
7 1) In the Line of Fire
72) The Last of the Mohicans
73) The Man with the Golden Gun
74) Westworld
75) Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
76) The Towering Inferno
77) Destry Rides Again
78) Blast from the Past
79) The Birds
80) Goldeneye

In my introduction I suggest that one should not be prejudiced by the age of a film and in this latest batch of movies, numbers 61 to 80, there is the oldest work on my list. 'Destry Rides Again' starred James Stewart and Marlene Dietrich and was made in 1939. Was there a 'Golden Age' of Hollywood? Perhaps yes, if one considers glitter and glamour, and the wealth and the power of the movie moguls as the key criteria, but in terms of quality, I think not.

If one can generalise grossly, I would say that films from the first half of the 20th century tend to characterised by beautifully simple plots (which even I can understand), clear dialogue and clear morality, with good guys wearing white hats and bad guys wearing black. Entertainment is the priority. But there is also some atrociously over-the-top acting, banal dialogue, and clichéd scripts.

Films from the second half of the 20th century have tended to be characterised by an ever increasing professionalism in presentation, as movie makers have learned how to use film to express themselves with greater realism. I would say that the general quality particularly of acting and script writing has improved immeasurably. But sometimes this has been at the expense of entertainment value, with blurred moralities, muffled incoherent conversations, and gimicky camera work.

These are generalisations, and there are plenty of classic movies from every decade since film was invented which stand out from the rest, and I just hope I have incluided some of these stand out films on this page.

81) Goldfinger

82) The Ipcress File

83) Alien

84) Invasion of the Bodysnatchers (1956 version)
85) Small Soldiers
86) Indiana Jones & the Temple of Doom
87) The Treasure of the Sierra Madre
88) Where Eagles Dare
89) North by Northwest
90) Monty Python's Life of Brian
91) Mrs Brown
92) The Day The Earth Stood Still (1951 version)

93) United 93
94) Monty Python and the Holy Grail
95) The Grissom Gang
96) Big
97) Titanic
98) The Great Escape
99) My Fair Lady
100)Dr Strangelove



So this is my list of 100 favourite films.

Already I can imagine the shakings of many heads in amazement, and the bursting of blood vessels as readers try to comprehend the selections, and even more so - some of the absences. For something so trivial, few subjects manage to raise temperatures so high as a person's list of favourite films.

if it's some comfort to such people, the list will change, so maybe some of your favourites will be added in due course when I see the light (or at least see the movie).

Anyway, we can't agree on politics, or religion. What would the world be coming to if we all agreed on movies?

If you read any of my reviews (links are in blue) I hope you enjoy them.