I Watched the 100 Greatest Movies…

Now this was quite the endeavor for me. When I originally got this poster 5-6 years ago, I was just trying to expand my horizons a little bit. Now, all these years later, movies are like my thing. My mom gifted me a poster, made by Enno Vatti, that had the ‘Top 100’ movies that you scratched off as you went. Here’s the link if you’re interested: https://a.co/d/0EIgfWv After years, I finally completed this endeavor.

I just put out a YouTube video putting all the films in a tier list (you can check that out by clicking the YouTube logo at the bottom of this page) and, because I’m a mega nerd, I wanted to provide some statistics about the movies I watched.

Release Dates: The oldest movie on this poster was Charlie Chaplin’s ‘The Great Dictator,’ which was released in 1940, and the newest was ‘Logan,’ which came out in 2017 (the poster was released in 2018). Here’s the breakdown of movies per decade. 1940s (3), 1950s (3), 1960s (2), 1970s (10), 1980s (11), 1990s (29), 2000s (33), 2010s (9). The year that hade the most was 2001 with 6 films: ‘Monsters Inc.,’ ‘Donnie Darko,’ ‘Spirited Away,’ ‘Amélie,’ ‘A Beautiful Mind,’ and ‘Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone.’ As something else that debuted in 2001, I love this representation.

Runtime: The average runtime of the 100 films is 129 minutes (2 hrs, 9 min). There were 3 that clocked in at under an hour and a half: ‘Toy Story' (81 min), ‘Airplane!’ (87 min), and ‘The Lion King’ (88 min). There were 5 that clocked in at over 3 hours: ‘Seven Samurai’ (207 min), ‘The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King’ (201 min), ‘Titanic’ (195 min), Schindler’s List (195 min), and ‘The Green Mile’ (189 min).

Rotten Tomatoes: The average critic score on Rotten Tomatoes was an 88%. There were 6 films that scored a perfect 100%: ‘Seven Samurai,’ ‘12 Angry Men,’ ‘The Terminator,’ ‘Toy Story,’ ‘Before Sunrise,’ & ‘3 Idiots.’ There were 3 films that scored below a 70%: ‘Hachi: A Dog’s Tale’ (64%), ‘American Psycho’ (68%), and ‘Shutter Island’ (69%).

Gross: The average gross (which is not adjusted for inflation) is $298 million. There are 5 films that grossed less than $5 million: ‘Citizen Kane’ ($1.8m), ‘12 Angry Men' ($2m), ‘Reservoir Dogs’ ($2.9m), ‘Seven Samurai’ ($3.1m), & Casablanca ($3.7m). ‘Reservoir Dogs’ is the only of these films to be released post-1960, coming out in 1992. There were 5 films that grossed over $1 billion: ‘The Dark Knight’ ($1b), ‘Harry Potter & and the Sorcerer’s Stone’ ($1b), ‘The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King’ ($1.1b), ‘The Avengers’ ($1.5b), & ‘Titanic’ ($2.2b).

Genre: While the typical genres (drama, comedy, romance) are extremely common, I decided to look at some genres that are a little more niche:

Sci-Fi (10): ‘2001: A Space Odyssey,’ ‘Alien,’ ‘Back to the Future,’ ‘Blade Runner,’ ‘Donnie Darko,’ ‘Inception,’ ‘Interstellar,’ ‘The Matrix,’ ‘Star Wars,’ & ‘The Terminator’

Fantasy (6): ‘The Green Mile,’ ‘Groundhog Day,’ ‘Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone,’ ‘The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King’ ‘Pan’s Labyrinth,’ & ‘Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl’

Horror (5): ‘Alien,’ ‘American Psycho,’ ‘Jaws,’ ‘The Shining,’ & ‘The Silence of the Lambs’

Superhero (5): ‘The Avengers,’ ‘Batman Begins,’ ‘The Dark Knight,’ ‘Guardians of the Galaxy,’ & ‘Logan’

Western (3): ‘Django Unchained,’ ‘The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly,’ & ‘No Country for Old Men’

Sports (2): ‘Million Dollar Baby’ & ‘Rocky’ Boxing movies for the win!

Martial Arts (1): ‘Kill Bill’

Animation: There were also a total of 7 animated movies that appeared on this list. 5 of which were Disney-Pixar: ‘Finding Nemo,’ ‘Monsters Inc.’ ‘Toy Story,’ ‘Up,’ & ‘WALL-E.’ Disney Animation had 1 without Pixar ‘The Lion King’ and the last was Studio Ghibli’s ‘Spirited Away.’

Are Sequels: There were a few additions that had the franchise listed, not a specific film (Kill Bill & The Lord of the Rings), so I chose the entry that is typically considered the greatest, so as to not have 103 films. There were two movies that are direct sequels, but both of them had predecessors also on the list: ‘The Dark Knight’ with ‘Batman Begins’ & ‘Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade’ with ‘Raiders of the Lost Ark’ (no Temple of Doom love?). There’s also some that take place in a shared universe: ‘The Avengers’ & ‘Guardians of the Galaxy’ which both take place in the Marvel Cinematic Universe and ‘Pulp Fiction’ & ‘Reservoir Dogs’ taking place in Tarantino’s shared universe.

Production Companies: Warner Bros. leads the pack here with 15 films, followed by Paramount with 12, Disney with 9, and Universal with 6. Interestingly there are also 9 Indie films.

Foreign Language: There are 9 non-English language films in a total of 6 different languages. Those are ‘The Intouchables’ & ‘Amélie,’ both French, ‘Life is Beautiful’ & ‘Cinema Paradiso,’ both Italian, ‘Seven Samurai’ & ‘Spirited Away,’ both Japanese (and both from Toho Co.) and ‘3 Idiots,’ ‘City of God,’ & ‘Pan’s Labyrinth’ which are in Hindi, Portuguese, & Spanish, respectively.

Directors: There are 15 directors who have more than one film on this list. The following 8 directors have 2 films each that appear: Andrew Stanton (‘Finding Nemo’ & ‘WALL-E’), Francis Ford Coppola (‘The Godfather’ & ‘Apocalypse Now’), Frank Daranbot (‘The Green Mile’ & ‘The Shawshank Redemption’), Guy Ritchie (‘Snatch’ & ‘Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels’), James Cameron (‘Titanic’ & ‘The Terminator’), Miloš Forman (‘Amadeus’ & ‘One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest), Pete Docter (‘Monsters Inc.’ & ‘Up’), and Robert Zemeckis (‘Back to the Future’ & Forrest Gump).

The following 3 (sets of) directors had 3 films a piece: Ridley Scott (‘Alien,’ ‘Blade Runner,’ & ‘Gladiator’), Stanley Kubrick (‘2001: A Space Odyssey,’ ‘A Clockwork Orange,’ & ‘The Shining’), & The Coen Brothers (‘No Country for Old Men,’ ‘The Big Lebowski,’ & ‘Fargo’) though the later two were directed solely by Joel, the brothers co-wrote all 3.

Martin Scorsese takes the 3rd place spot with 4 films on this list: ‘The Departed,’ ‘Goodfellas,’ ‘Shutter Island,’ & ‘Taxi Driver.’

There are two directors with 5 films a piece: Quentin Tarantino (‘Django Unchained,’ ‘Inglorious Basterds,’ ‘Kill Bill,’ ‘Pulp Fiction,’ & ‘Reservoir Dogs) & Steven Spielberg (‘Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade,’ ‘Jaws,’ ‘Raiders of the Lost Ark,’ ‘Saving Private Ryan,’ & ‘Schindler’s List).

Taking the top spot with 6 films is 2024 Best Director winner: Christopher Nolan with ‘Batman Begins,’ ‘The Dark Knight,’ ‘Inception,’ ‘Interstellar,’ ‘Memento,’ & ‘The Prestige.’ I’m sure if this posted was up-to-date, ‘Oppenheimer’ would’ve made an appearance as well!

Adaptations: 54 films on this list were original works, while 46 were adaptations. 29 are based on books, 6 (the 5 superhero films & ‘V for Vendetta’) are based on comics, 4 are remakes of other movies: ‘Airplane!,’ ‘The Departed,’ ‘Hachi: A Dog’s Tale,’ and ‘Scarface,’ which itself was also based on a book. ‘Casablanca’ and ‘The Lion King’ are both based on plays, ‘Braveheart’ is based on a poem, ‘Memento’ and ‘Million Dollar Baby’ are both based on short stories, ‘12 Angry Men’ is based on a teleplay, and ‘Pirates of the Caribbean’ is based on a theme park ride.

World War II: 8 of these films take place either during World War II or the Holocaust, a trend I noticed when I watched ‘The Pianist,’ ‘Schindler’s List,’ & ‘Inglorious Basterds’ back-to-back-to-back. Other movies that take place during this time are ‘The Great Dictator,’ ‘Life is Beautiful,’ ‘Saving Private Ryan,’ and both of the ‘Indiana Jones’ films.

Oscars: Total, these 100 movies were nominated for 416 Oscars and won 169! There were 50 that didn’t win an Academy Award and 23 that didn’t even receive a nomination. On the other end, 10 films had 10 or more nominations and two of these films (‘Titanic' & ‘LOTR: Return of the King’) won 11 Oscars each! In the history of the Academy Awards there have been 3 films that have won ‘The Big 5’ (Best Picture, Director, Actor, Actress, Adapted or Original Screenplay) and 2 of them made this list, ‘The Silence of the Lambs’ & ‘One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest’ (the other is ‘It Happened One Night’).

Composition: If I asked you who the greatest film composer ever was, I’m sure your answer is either Hans Zimmer or John Williams, if not, you really need to do some self reflection. They combined for 13 movies on this list with Hans Zimmer’s 6 being ‘Batman Begins,’ ‘The Lion King,’ ‘Interstellar,’ ‘The Dark Knight,’ ‘Inception,’ & ‘Gladiator,’ and John Williams’s 7: ‘Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone,’ ‘Jaws,’ ‘Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade,’ ‘Raiders of the Lost Ark,’ ‘Star Wars,’ ‘Saving Private Ryan,’ & ‘Schindler’s List.’

Thanks so much for reading! I put a lot of work into this so if you made it all the way through let me know! See you soon!