In the following post, I systematically ranked every movie I have ever seen (with some caveats that I will explain here forth). The purpose of the ranking is to track the ever growing library of movies that I have seen. Too often, I stumble across a movie that I have literally forgotten about until some arbitrary random occurrence reminds me of it years later. The reality is that most movies, despite being fun or entertaining, fade into obscurity and are forgotten. I refuse to accept a movie’s fate as nothing more than a fleeting memory once beheld by yesterday’s preferences.
Regarding my system for ranking: This list is not objective in the slightest, there are no barometers like there were in my MCU ranking. This ranking is made from best to worst with no qualifying criteria other than my own self enjoyment. The list isn’t meant to hurt your feelings, either. Some of the movies I rank low, you may love or visa versa. This list is my list and mine alone, so a movie’s ranking is purely ranked on my instinct. Some movies with low quality are ranked much higher than movies with higher quality, meanwhile some movies of upmost quality I hold dear. The point of this list is not to rank them objectively from best to worst. The point is for me to organize my expanding repertoire of movies into favoritism. One movie may be held in higher regard than others for any number of reasons, but at the end of the day this list is not definite. It evolves. It changes. It’s heavily based on mood. Hell, maybe next year I could re-rank the whole damn thing completely different. For now, I stand by my choices.
While the purpose of this is not to infuriate, I welcome discussion. I want to debate. These are my favorite movies ranked in order by year. My hope is less that my opinion will change any one else’s and more that it will inspire me to write as my aspirations become clearer. Let’s talk some ground rules:
There are a LOT of movies in history and I am more than positive I have missed some movies that I have seen before. That’s ok, I will update the list as the days months and years go on. As an arbitrary rule, I vowed to limit my list to movies released theatrically in America and/or to major streaming services as “originals”. I almost did not include the latter, but avoiding it would be to avoid the future of movies since, especially in the last 5 years, many A list talent lend their services to streaming services. There are NO direct to TV movies, unless I felt strongly about including it. Foreign films are included but the loose rule is that it had to have a run in the American theatre system. There are no TV movies as well.
I primarily used wikipedia for my research but quickly found (no surprise) that it isn’t the most reliable source. Some release dates might be off, and again, that’s ok; I will update this as time goes on. The list will forever grow and become more refined.
I did not rank them numerically because it’s too much of a hassle to change the numbers up constantly since I watch movies on a weekly basis. Instead, they are ranked from worst to best (top to bottom). In addition, they are ranked by release year. Movies are essentially only competing with other movies released in the same year and not with the library as a whole. I will use this list as a jumping off point for more movie discussions.
Another noteworthy point of contention: Many of the movies released prior to about the year 2000 I have only seen once as a kid. Or, I haven’t seen them since I was kid. There are a lot of movies in this era that I have in fact seen but do not remember enough to rank properly and fairly, so you may see some famous movies left out. Some of them I have in fact not seen. Anything ranked, is ranked because I remember enough of the movie to do so.
This endeavor has proved to be quite tedious yet somehow more rewarding than I had initially thought it would be. After seeing the history of cinema in a year to year basis, I realized some things about Hollywood that I think a lot of people take for granted or don’t realize ( a post for another day). In the end, I learned a lot about Hollywood and myself and for that I don’t regret time spent on creating this list.
As always,
to be continued