RETROSPECT: "Greatest Films of All-Time" or, The 25 Highest-Rated Critical Picks From IMDb's "Top 250," 2nd Edition

On December 3, 2022, Sight & Sound magazine released their current poll of the Greatest Films of All-Time, in which they periodically--that is, every ten years--recognize and rank what many filmmakers, critics, and historians consider to be the greatest works of cinema from around the world. Topping their list this decade is a 1975 film from Belgium called, Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles, about a single mother and prostitute who goes through a daily routine of house work in her apartment, including taking care of her teenage son. 

In honor of this recent poll, here is an updated list of the 25 highest-rated critical films from the Internet Movie Database (IMDb)'s "Top 250," along with metascores, IMDb rankings and user ratings, synopses, excerpts of critical reviews, and where said films rank on the aforementioned poll if applicable. (You can read my first edition of this list here.) 

25. Modern Times (1936, dir. Charles Chaplin) (96) (IMDb Top 250: #47) (8.5/10) (Sight & Sound 2022: #78 TIE)

Synopsis: "The Tramp struggles to live in modern industrial society with the help of a young homeless woman." 

Chaplin's sentimental politics and peerless comic invention dovetailed more perfectly in this film than in any other he made.

~Ty Burr, Boston Globe 

24. Parasite (2019, dir. Bong Joon Ho) (96) (IMDb Top 250: #34) (8.5/10) (Sight & Sound 2022: #90 TIE) 

Synopsis: "Greed and class discrimination threaten the newly formed symbiotic relationship between the wealthy Park family and the destitute Kim clan." 

[A] furious and fiendishly well-crafted . . . film. ... Giddy one moment, unbearably tense the next, and always so entertaining and fine-tuned that you don’t even notice when it’s changing gears, Parasite takes all of the beats you expect to find in a Bong film and shrinks them down with clockwork precision.

~David Ehrlich, IndieWire

23. Spirited Away (2001, dir. Hayao Miyazaki) (96) (IMDb Top 250: #31) (8.6/10) (Sight & Sound 2022: #78 TIE) 

Synopsis: "During her family's move to the suburbs, a sullen 10-year-old girl wanders into a world ruled by gods, witches, and spirits, and where humans are changed into beasts."

Miyazaki's works . . . have a depth and complexity often missing in American animation. Not fond of computers, he draws thousand of frames himself, and there is a painterly richness in his work. He's famous for throwaway details at the edges of the screen (animation is so painstaking that few animators draw more than is necessary). And he permits himself silences and contemplation, providing punctuation for the exuberant action and the lovable or sometimes grotesque characters. 

~Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun Times (2002) 

22. 12 Angry Men (1957, dir. Sidney Lumet) (96) (IMDb Top 250: #5) (9.0/10) 

Synopsis: "The jury in a New York City murder trial is frustrated by a single member whose skeptical caution forces them to more carefully consider the evidence before jumping to a hasty verdict."

A penetrating, sensitive, and sometimes shocking dissection of the hearts and minds of men who obviously are something less than gods. It makes for taut, absorbing, and compelling drama that reaches far beyond the close confines of its jury room setting. 

~The New York Times

21. Rififi (1955, dir. Jules Dassin) (97) (IMDb Top 250: #250) (8.1/10) 

Synopsis: "Four men plan a technically perfect crime, but the human element intervenes..." 

One of the great crime thrillers, the benchmark all succeeding heist films have been measured against, it's no musty museum piece but a driving, compelling piece of work, redolent of the air of human frailty and fatalistic doom.

~Kenneth Turan, Los Angeles Times 

20. The Third Man (1949, dir. Carol Reed) (97) (IMDb Top 250: #186) (8.1/10) (Sight & Sound 2022: #63 TIE) 

Synopsis: "Pulp novelist Holly Martins travels to shadowy, postwar Vienna, only to find himself investigating the mysterious death of an old friend, Harry Lime."

Director Carol Reed outdid himself with this noirish thriller set against a Europe physically and morally devastated by war. . . . The Third Man is a consummate production, from Graham Greene’s witty, disturbing screenplay to Robert Krasker’s evocatively skewed photography and Anton Karas’ unforgettable zither score. But, despite his minimal screen time, Orson Welles’ amoral Harry Lime steals the show . . .

~British Film Institute (2012) 

19. Gone With the Wind (1939, dir. Victor Fleming) (97) (IMDb Top 250: #159) (8.2/10) 

Synopsis: "The manipulative daughter of a Georgia plantation owner conducts a turbulent romance with a roguish profiteer during the American Civil War and Reconstruction periods."

Gone with the Wind's epic grandeur and romantic allure encapsulate an era of Hollywood filmmaking -- but that can't excuse a blinkered perspective that stands on the wrong side of history.

~Rotten Tomatoes

18. Dr. Strangelove or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964, dir. Stanley Kubrick) (97) (IMDb Top 250: #68) (8.4/10) 

Synopsis: "An insane American general orders a bombing attack on the Soviet Union, triggering a path to nuclear holocaust that a war room full of politicians and generals frantically tries to stop."

The film is a model of barely controlled hysteria in which the absurdity of hypermasculine Cold War posturing becomes devastatingly funny--and at the same time nightmarishly frightening in its accuracy.

~TV Guide Magazine

17. Psycho (1960, dir. Alfred Hitchcock) (97) (IMDb Top 250: #32) (8.5/10) (Sight & Sound 2022: #31 TIE) 

Synopsis: "A Phoenix secretary embezzles $40,000 from her employer's client, goes on the run, and checks into a remote motel run by a young man under the domination of his mother."

What makes Psycho immortal, when so many films are already half-forgotten as we leave the theater, is that it connects directly with our fears: Our fears that we might impulsively commit a crime, our fears of the police, our fears of becoming the victim of a madman, and of course our fears of disappointing our mothers.

~Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times (1998) 

16. Rashomon (1950, dir. Akira Kurosawa) (98) (IMDb Top 250: #150) (8.2/10) (Sight & Sound 2022: #41 TIE) 

Synopsis: "The rape of a bride and the murder of her samurai husband are recalled from the perspectives of a bandit, the bride, the samurai's ghost and a woodcutter."

The word ‘Rashomon’ has passed into the English language to signify a narrative told from various, unreliable viewpoints. In this case, the mystery relates to the murder of a samurai and the rape of his wife in 11th century Japan, events which are relayed in wildly differing versions by those present: the bandit, the treacherous wife, a passing woodcutter and the spirit of the dead samurai. . . . This radically non-linear structure, with its profound implications about the fallibility of perspective, impressed judges at the 1951 Venice Film Festival. They awarded Akira Kurosawa’s film the Golden Lion, helping to encourage a broader interest in Japanese film in the west. With its snaking bolero-like score and poetic use of dappled forest light, Rashomon is a work of enduring ambiguity.

~British Film Institute (2012) 

15. The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948, dir. John Huston) (98) (IMDb Top 250: #145) (8.2/10) 

Synopsis: "Two down-on-their-luck Americans searching for work in 1920s Mexico convince an old prospector to help them mine for gold in the Sierra Madre Mountains." 

Mr. Huston has shaped a searching drama of the collision of civilization's vicious greeds with the instinct for self-preservation in an environment where all the barriers are down. And, by charting the moods of his prospectors after they have hit a vein of gold, he has done a superb illumination of basic characteristics in men. One might almost reckon that he has filmed an intentional comment here upon the irony of avarice in individuals and in nations today...But don't let this note of intelligence distract your attention from the fact that Mr. Huston is putting it over in a most vivid and exciting action display.

~Bosley Crowther, The New York Times

14. Pan's Labyrinth (2006, dir. Guillermo del Toro) (98) (IMDb Top 250: #137) (8.2/10) 

Synopsis: "In the Falangist Spain of 1944, the bookish young stepdaughter of a sadistic army officer escapes into an eerie but captivating fantasy world." 

This is like no movie you've seen before, a haunting mixture of horror, history and fantasy that works simultaneously on every level.

~Liam Lacey, The Globe and Mail (Toronto) 

13. All About Eve (1950, dir. Joseph L. Mankiewicz) (98) (IMDb Top 250: #131) (8.2/10) 

Synopsis: "A seemingly timid but secretly ruthless ingénue insinuates herself into the lives of an aging Broadway star and her circle of theater friends."

Set in the Broadway jungle rather than among the ‘sun-burnt eager beavers’ of Hollywood, Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s film dissects the narcissism and hypocrisy of the spotlight as sharply as [Billy] Wilder’s [Sunset Blvd], but pays equal attention to the challenges of enacting womanhood.

~Time Out

12. Some Like It Hot (1959, dir. Billy Wilder) (98) (IMDb Top 250: #129) (8.2/10) (Sight & Sound 2022: #38 TIE) 

Synopsis: "After two male musicians witness a mob hit, they flee the state in an all-female band disguised as women, but further complications set in."

Both the gangster story and the screwball antics hark back to Hollywood films of the 1930s, but Wilder’s outrageous and subversive play with gender was truly boundary pushing and helped lead to a loosening of censorship after United Artists released the film without certification.

~British Film Institute (2012) 

11. Metropolis (1927, dir. Fritz Lang) (98) (IMDb Top 250: #116) (8.3/10) (Sight & Sound 2022: #67 TIE) 

Synopsis: "In a futuristic city sharply divided between the working class and the city planners, the son of the city's mastermind falls in love with a working-class prophet who predicts the coming of a savior to mediate their differences."

Fritz Lang claimed to have been inspired to make Metropolis by his first glimpse of the New York skyline. The result is the grandest science fiction film of the silent era (and for many years to come), a seminal prediction of a megacity where the masses work as slaves for the good of a ruling elite.

~British Film Institute (2012) 

10. North By Northwest (1959, dir. Alfred Hitchcock) (98) (IMDb Top 250: #99) (8.3/10) (Sight & Sound 2022: #45 TIE) 

Synopsis: "A New York City advertising executive goes on the run after being mistaken for a government agent by a group of foreign spies, and falls for a woman whose loyalties he begins to doubt."

This is Hitchcock's longest film and also his most self-referential. Little jokes abound about art and artifice, role play and reality, duty and duplicity and each viewing reveals something new to enhance the pleasure of watching the Master of Suspense at his most mischievous and assured.

~David Parkinson, Empire 

9. Seven Samurai (1954, dir. Akira Kurosawa) (98) (IMDb Top 250: #20) (8.6/10) (Sight & Sound 2022: #20) 

Synopsis: "Farmers from a village exploited by bandits hire a veteran samurai for protection, who gathers six other samurai to join him."

Strongly influenced by the poetic westerns of John Ford, Kurosawa’s story of farmers recruiting a motley troupe of samurai to help them fend off bandits in turn had a huge impact on subsequent westerns and action films . . . The early section’s gathering together of the diversely talented fighters is a trope in action movies to this day, while the restrained use of slow-motion in the frenzied final faceoff has since been abused to far less subtle ends. Kurosawa expertly sustains the suspense over a lengthy duration, instilling the story with an almost Shakespearian grandeur.

~British Film Institute (2012) 

8. Singin' in the Rain (1952, dir. Stanley Donan & Gene Kelly) (99) (IMDb Top 250: #84) (8.3/10) (Sight & Sound 2022: #10) 

Synopsis: "A silent film star falls for a chorus girl just as he and his delusionally jealous screen partner are trying to make the difficult transition to talking pictures in 1920s Hollywood."

There is no movie musical more fun than Singin' in the Rain, and few that remain as fresh over the years. Its originality is all the more startling if you reflect that only one of its songs was written new for the film, that the producers plundered MGM's storage vaults for sets and props, and that the movie was originally ranked below An American in Paris, which won a best picture Oscar. The verdict of the years knows better than Oscar: Singin' in the Rain is a transcendent experience, and no one who loves movies can afford to miss it.

~Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times (1999) 

7. City Lights (1931, dir. Charles Chaplin) (99) (IMDb Top 250: #52) (8.5/10) (Sight & Sound 2022: #36 TIE) 

Synopsis: "With the aid of a wealthy erratic tippler, a dewy-eyed tramp who has fallen in love with a sightless flower girl accumulates money to be able to help her medically."

By 1931 talkies were the industry norm, but Chaplin was autonomous enough to be able to make City Lights silent, preferring the purity of mute pantomime for the antics of his iconic Tramp character. Despite this anachronism, the result was a huge success with audiences, who responded to the film’s exquisitely poised balancing act between humour and pathos. . . . Earnestly sentimental in its story of the downtrodden Tramp being mistaken for a wealthy benefactor by a blind and impoverished flower girl, the film nonetheless yields some of Chaplin’s most ingenious comic set-pieces, including a classic sequence in which the Tramp becomes an unwilling contestant in the boxing ring. The closing shot, after it dawns on the girl who her sponsor really was, counts among the cinema’s most moving.

~British Film Institute (2012) 

6. Vertigo (1958, dir. Alfred Hitchcock) (100) (IMDb Top 250: #100) (8.3/10) (Sight & Sound 2022: #2) 

Synopsis: "A former San Francisco police detective juggles wrestling with his personal demons and becoming obsessed with the hauntingly beautiful woman he has been hired to trail, who may be deeply disturbed." 

This classic from the master of suspense was so poorly received upon release that Alfred Hitchcock later withdrew it from distribution for several years. Its reputation has since grown and it is now widely regarded as Hitchcock’s finest film, a haunting examination of male desire memorably filmed in real San Francisco locations. . . . The story of acrophobic Scottie Ferguson (brilliantly played by James Stewart), who compulsively remodels Judy Barton (Kim Novak) in the image of his dead love Madeleine Elster (also Novak), is unflinchingly dark and tragic. Though Hitchcock was originally deemed to have erred in giving away the film’s plot twist halfway through, Vertigo succeeds as a hallucinatory fable about the traps of desire. A thriller of dreamlike allure, it’s whipped to dizzying heights by Bernard Herrmann’s Wagner-influenced score.

~British Film Institute (2012) 

5. Lawrence of Arabia (1962, dir. David Lean) (100) (IMDb Top 250: #98) (8.3/10) 

Synopsis: "The story of T.E. Lawrence, the English officer who successfully united and led the diverse, often warring, Arab tribes during World War I in order to fight the Turks."

It was a miracle that picture... And maybe the greatest screenplay ever written for the motion-picture medium.

~Steven Spielberg

4. Citizen Kane (1941, dir. Orson Welles) (100) (IMDb Top 250: #96) (8.3/10) (Sight & Sound 2022: #3) 

Synopsis: "Following the death of publishing tycoon Charles Foster Kane, reporters scramble to uncover the meaning of his final utterance; 'Rosebud'." 

Pauline Kael claims that Welles’ debut film – the wonder boy was just twenty-five – is “more fun than any other great movie.” You can still sense Welles’ enthusiasm for film as “the biggest toy-train set any boy ever had.” The techniques he used to tell the story of a tycoon destroyed by ambition and childhood neglect revolutionized movies in ways that are still being felt.

~Peter Travers, Rolling Stone (1999) 

3. Rear Window (1954, dir. Alfred Hitchcock) (100) (IMDb Top 250: #49) (8.5/10) (Sight & Sound 2022: #38 TIE) 

Synopsis: "A wheelchair-bound photographer spies on his neighbors from his Greenwich Village courtyard apartment window, and becomes convinced one of them has committed murder, despite the skepticism of his fashion-model girlfriend."

Simply put, Rear Window is a great film, perhaps one of the finest ever committed to celluloid. All of the elements are perfect (or nearly so), including the acting, script, camerawork, music (by Franz Waxman), and, of course, direction. The brilliance of the movie is that, in addition to keeping viewers on the edges of their seats, it involves us in the lives of all of the characters, from Jefferies and Lisa to Miss Torso. There isn't a moment of waste in 113 minutes of screen time.

~James Berardinelli, ReelViews

2. Casablanca (1942, dir. Michael Curtiz) (100) (IMDb Top 250: #43) (8.5/10) (Sight & Sound 2022: #63 TIE) 

Synopsis: "A cynical expatriate American cafe owner struggles to decide whether or not to help his former lover and her fugitive husband escape the Nazis in French Morocco."

Directed by Hungarian refugee Michael Curtiz, Casablanca exemplifies the consummately crafted Hollywood drama, in which all the elements seem to have fallen alchemically into place. The screenplay sparkles with memorable lines, the supporting cast overflows with indelible performances, and the whole is given an urgent, topical edge by being made on the cusp of America’s involvement in the war.

~British Film Institute (2012) 

1. The Godfather (1972, dir. Francis Ford Coppola) (100) (IMDb Top 250: #2) (9.2/10) (Sight & Sound 2022: #12) 

Synopsis: "The aging patriarch of an organized crime dynasty in postwar New York City transfers control of his clandestine empire to his reluctant youngest son."

Overflowing with life, rich with all the grand emotions and vital juices of existence, up to and including blood. And its deaths, like that of Hotspur in Henry IV, Part I, continue to shock no matter how often we've watched them coming.

~Kenneth Turan, Los Angeles Times 

***

BONUS LIST: IMDb's Top 250, based on User Scores. The following are films ranked in the aforementioned list that currently don't have metascores. (Read my first edition post from 2022 here). 

Sunset Blvd. (1950; dir. Billy Wilder) (IMDb #59) (8.4/10) (Sight & Sound 2022: #78 TIE) 

The Great Dictator (1940, dir. Charles Chaplin) (IMDb #62) (8.4/10) 

Come and See (1985, dir. Elem Klimov) (IMDb #95) (8.4/10) 

M (1931, dir. Fritz Lang) (IMDb #97) (8.3/10) (Sight & Sound 2022: #36 TIE) 

Bicycle Thieves (1948, dir. Vittorio De Sica) (IMDb #121) (8.3/10) (Sight & Sound 2022: #41 TIE) 

Like Stars on Earth (2007, dir. Aamir Khan & Amole Gupte) (IMDb #122) (8.4/10) 

Dangal (2016, dir. Nitesh Tiwari) (IMDb #126) (8.3/10) 

The Kid (1921, dir. Charles Chaplin) (IMDb #128) (8.3/10) 

The Gold Rush (1925, dir. Charles Chaplin) (IMDb #177) (8.2/10) 

The General (1926; dir. Clyde Bruckman & Buster Keaton) (IMDb #187) (8.1/10) (Sight & Sound 2022: #95 TIE) 

Sherlock Jr. (1924; dir. Buster Keaton) (IMDb #194) (8.2/10) (Sight & Sound 2022: #54 TIE) 

Mary and Max (2009, dir. Adam Elliot) (IMDb #201) (8.1/10) 

The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928, dir. Carl Theodor Dreyer) (IMDb #207) (8.2/10) (Sight & Sound 2022: #21 TIE) 

Tokyo Story (1953; dir. Yasujiro Ozu) (IMDb #208) (8.2/10) (Sight & Sound 2022: #4) 

Pather Panchali (1955, dir. Satyajit Ray) (IMDb #220) (8.3/10) (Sight & Sound 2022: #35)

La Haine (1995, dir. Mathieu Kassovitz) (IMDb #230) (8.1/10) 

Hachi: A Dog's Tale (2009, dir. Lasse Hallström) (IMDb #231) (8.1/10) 

Jai Bhim (2021, dir. T.J. Gnanavel) (IMDb #232) (8.8/10) 

My Father and My Son (2005, dir. Çagan Irmak) (IMDb #233) (8.2/10) 

The 400 Blows (1959, dir. François Truffaut) (IMDb #239) (8.1/10) (Sight & Sound 2022: #50 TIE) 

Dersu Uzala (1975, dir. Akira Kurosawa) (IMDb #245) (8.2/10)