IMDb Top 250
The top of the most voted-on list there is — thirty-two films, one bracket.
32 films
Tournaments
One list, one bracket, one film left standing. These are not your lists — nothing you pick here moves them.
131 brackets, in nine sections.
The canon
The lists everybody argues with: IMDb, Letterboxd, Sight and Sound, the AFI.
12 brackets
Letterboxd Top 250
The top of the list the film-diary crowd keeps: bolder, stranger, less Hollywood.
32 films
Sight and Sound: the critics
The critics’ once-a-decade poll, from Jeanne Dielman down.
32 films
Sight and Sound: the directors
The same poll, answered by the people who make the films.
16 films
The AFI 100
The American Film Institute’s greatest American films — the top of the hundred.
32 films
The BFI 100
The British Film Institute’s greatest British films.
16 films
They Shoot Pictures
The list that averages every other list: the head of the top thousand.
16 films
Criterion essentials
Sixteen films the Criterion Collection would hand a beginner first.
16 films
Cahiers du Cinéma picks
The film Cahiers du Cinéma called the year’s best, one year at a time.
16 films
1001 Movies to See
A sampler from the thousand and one films you are meant to see before you die.
16 films
Metacritic must-sees
The best reviewed films in the aggregator’s history.
16 films
Certified Fresh
Films the critics agreed on almost to a person.
16 films
Prize winners
What the juries chose at the Oscars, Cannes, Venice and Berlin — and what they missed.
10 brackets
Best Picture winners
Thirty-two films the Academy called the year’s best.
32 films
Palme d'Or winners
Thirty-two films that took the top prize at Cannes.
32 films
Golden Lion winners
Winners of the top prize at Venice.
16 films
Golden Bear winners
Winners of the top prize at Berlin.
16 films
International Feature winners
The Academy’s prize for the best film not in English.
16 films
BAFTA Best Film
What the British Academy called the year’s best.
16 films
Sundance Grand Jury
What the Sundance jury picked, from sex, lies, and videotape on.
16 films
Best Director winners
The films behind the Best Director Oscars.
16 films
The Oscar losers
Films that lost Best Picture and outlived whatever beat them.
16 films
Never won an Oscar
Masterpieces the Academy gave nothing at all.
16 films
Eras
One bracket per age of cinema, from the silents to the 2020s.
8 brackets
The silent era
Before sound: the films that invented the grammar.
16 films
Golden Age Hollywood
The studio years, when Hollywood made them like this.
16 films
New Hollywood
The seventies, when the directors took over.
16 films
Eighties cult
The eighties films that found their audience later, on tape.
16 films
The nineties
Ten years that gave us Pulp Fiction and Fargo.
16 films
The 2000s
The first decade of this century, argued down to one.
16 films
The 21st century
The best films since 2000 — thirty-two of them.
32 films
The 2020s
The new classics: everything from 2020 on that already looks like one.
16 films
Genres
Horror against horror, western against western: the best of each kind.
24 brackets
Horror
The ones people watch through their fingers.
16 films
Slashers
A killer, a knife, a body count.
16 films
Zombies
The dead get up, from Romero to Busan.
16 films
Science fiction
The genre that keeps asking what happens next.
16 films
Film noir
Shadows, cigarettes and bad decisions, in black and white.
16 films
Neo-noir
The same shadows, in colour, after 1970.
16 films
Westerns
Horses, dust and a long look before the draw.
16 films
Gangsters
Families, loyalty and the price of both.
16 films
Heists
One job, one crew, one thing that goes wrong.
16 films
Spies
Secrets, doubles and the cold war they never left.
16 films
Psychological thrillers
Films that get inside your head and stay there.
16 films
Black comedy
Films that make you laugh and then ask what at.
16 films
Romantic comedy
Two people who should obviously be together, eventually.
16 films
Musicals
The films where people burst into song and you let them.
16 films
War films
Sixteen films about what war does to the people in it.
16 films
Courtroom dramas
Verdicts, objections and a closing speech.
16 films
Animation
Drawn, rendered and painted — the best of it, all studios.
16 films
Stop-motion
Moved a frame at a time, by hand.
16 films
Documentaries
Real people, real stakes, and a camera in the room.
16 films
Superheroes
Capes, masks and the films that made them respectable.
16 films
Monsters
Godzilla, Kong and the things under the water.
16 films
Dystopias
Futures nobody wants and the films that made them look good.
16 films
Coming of age
Growing up, on film, one summer at a time.
16 films
Biopics
Real lives, in two and a half hours.
16 films
National cinemas
The great national cinemas, one field each.
13 brackets
Japan
From Ozu and Kurosawa to Kore-eda.
16 films
Korea
The films that made Korean cinema a household phrase.
16 films
The French New Wave
Paris, 1959 to 1969: cinema torn up and started again.
16 films
Italian neorealism
Postwar Italy, shot in the street with the people who lived there.
16 films
German Expressionism
Weimar Germany’s nightmares, in painted shadows.
16 films
Soviet cinema
Montage, mysticism and the films that survived the censors.
16 films
Iran
Kiarostami, Panahi, Farhadi and the cinema they built.
16 films
Hong Kong action
Kung fu, gunfights and the most inventive action ever shot.
16 films
India
Satyajit Ray to RRR: the biggest film country on earth.
16 films
The Nordics
Dreyer, Bergman and the long northern light.
16 films
Latin America
Mexico City to São Paulo: the films of a continent.
16 films
Yeşilçam
The golden age of Turkish cinema.
16 films
Eastern European new waves
The new waves behind the Iron Curtain.
16 films
Directors
One filmography at a time, ranked against itself.
19 brackets
Kubrick
Eight films, one perfectionist. Rank them.
8 films
Hitchcock
Sixteen films by the man who taught cinema suspense.
16 films
Kurosawa
Sixteen films by the emperor of Japanese cinema.
16 films
Tarkovsky
Eight films, each one a cathedral.
8 films
Bergman
Sixteen films about faith, marriage and the silence of God.
16 films
Fellini
Sixteen films from the circus master of Italian cinema.
16 films
Scorsese
Sixteen films by the great American chronicler of guilt.
16 films
The Coen brothers
Sixteen films from the brothers who never made the same one twice.
16 films
Tarantino
Eight films. Rank them, and defend it.
8 films
Nolan
Eight puzzles built to be seen on the biggest screen going.
8 films
Lynch
Eight films from the other side of the red curtain.
8 films
Wong Kar-wai
Eight films about time, longing and Hong Kong at night.
8 films
Paul Thomas Anderson
Eight films from the best American director of his generation.
8 films
Wes Anderson
Eight films, each one a diorama.
8 films
Spielberg
Sixteen films by the most successful director who ever lived.
16 films
Studio Ghibli
Every Ghibli film against every other Ghibli film.
16 films
Park Chan-wook vs Bong Joon-ho
Korea’s two masters, eight films each. Whose wins?
16 films
Debut films
Sixteen first films that announced a director.
16 films
Final films
Sixteen last films — what a master says on the way out.
16 films
The craft
The best-shot, best-scored, best-cut films — the work behind the work.
12 brackets
Cinematography
Sixteen films that are worth it for the pictures alone.
16 films
Film scores
Sixteen films you can hum.
16 films
Opening scenes
Sixteen films that had you in the first five minutes.
16 films
Final scenes
Sixteen films that saved the best for last.
16 films
Long takes
Sixteen films that never cut when they should have.
16 films
Editing
Sixteen films made in the cutting room.
16 films
Screenplays
Sixteen films where every line lands.
16 films
Costume and design
Sixteen films that are worth it for the clothes and the rooms.
16 films
Black and white
Sixteen films that never needed colour.
16 films
Visual effects
Sixteen films that showed something nobody had seen before.
16 films
Villains
Sixteen films carried by the one you are meant to hate.
16 films
Performances
Sixteen films remembered for one performance.
16 films
Themes
Films grouped by what they are about: prison, space, revenge, one long night.
13 brackets
One location
One room, one set, one address. That is all they needed.
16 films
Real time
Films that take exactly as long as the story.
16 films
One night
Dusk to dawn, and everything that can go wrong in between.
16 films
Road movies
A car, a horizon and somebody to argue with.
16 films
Prison films
Bars, yards and the plan to get out.
16 films
Survival
One person, one place that wants them dead.
16 films
Space
Rockets, silence and the view back at Earth.
16 films
Artificial intelligence
Machines that think, and the people who built them.
16 films
Time travel
Paradoxes, loops and second chances.
16 films
Revenge
Somebody did something. This is what happened next.
16 films
Fathers and sons
Sixteen films about the one relationship nobody gets to choose.
16 films
Friendship
Sixteen films about the people you would call at three in the morning.
16 films
New York, Tokyo, Paris
Three cities, sixteen films, and the streets that made them.
16 films
Crowd-pleasers
Cult favourites, box-office giants, guilty pleasures and the films you grew up on.
20 brackets
Cult classics
Films that failed, then found the people who would love them.
16 films
Box office champions
The biggest films of their years, against each other.
16 films
Sequels that beat the original
Sixteen sequels that improved on the original.
16 films
Remake vs original
Sixteen originals against their remakes. Round one settles each pair.
32 films
Book adaptations
Sixteen films that were books first.
16 films
Plot twists
Sixteen films that were not what you thought. No spoilers.
16 films
Mind-benders
Sixteen films you explain to each other in the car park.
16 films
Tearjerkers
Sixteen films that get you every time.
16 films
Feel-good films
Sixteen films for when the day has been a day.
16 films
Guilty pleasures
Sixteen films nobody admits to loving. Admit it.
16 films
So bad it is good
Sixteen films that are terrible, gloriously.
16 films
Bombs that became masterpieces
Sixteen films that lost money and won the argument.
16 films
Christmas films
Sixteen films for December. Yes, Die Hard is one of them.
16 films
Halloween marathon
Sixteen films for October, from Nosferatu to Hereditary.
16 films
Under ninety minutes
Sixteen perfect films that respect your evening.
16 films
Over three hours
Sixteen films that ask for the whole afternoon and earn it.
16 films
A24
The house that turned arthouse into a logo.
16 films
Pixar
Sixteen Pixar films, from the first Toy Story on.
16 films
Disney classics
Sixteen hand-drawn Disney classics.
16 films
Childhood films
Sixteen films you watched until the tape wore out.
16 films
Duels — Two films you have already judged. Pick the one you would rather watch — it changes nothing about your lists, and everything about the order they are in.