Empire's 500 Greatest Movies, Measured
In 2008 Empire polled 10,000 readers, 150 filmmakers and 50 critics to rank the 500 greatest movies of all time — a populist canon where blockbusters and arthouse share the ballot. Here is Empire's 500 measured against our composite score across 20+ lists, awards and polls.
496 films from this list are in our library; the top 30 by composite score are shown — the ranking is ours, not the list's own order.
- 1The Godfather1972 · Francis Ford Coppola · United States / Italy · crime, drama, thriller9.75
Empire 500 (2008) #1 · Oscar Best Picture winner 1972 · Sight & Sound 2022 directors' poll #3
- 2Citizen Kane1941 · Orson Welles · United States · drama, biography, mystery9.21
AFI 100 (2007) #1 · Sight & Sound 2022 directors' poll #2 · AFI 100 (1998) #1
- 32001: A Space Odyssey1968 · Stanley Kubrick · United States / United Kingdom · adventure, mystery, sci-fi7.43
Sight & Sound 2022 directors' poll #1 · Sight & Sound 2022 critics' poll #6 · AFI 100 (2007) #15
- 4Lawrence of Arabia1962 · David Lean · United Kingdom / United States · war, biography, drama7.40
Oscar Best Picture winner 1962 · BAFTA Best Film winner 1963 · Kinema Junpo Best Ten (International) 1963 #1
- 5Apocalypse Now1979 · Francis Ford Coppola · United States · war, action, drama6.84
Palme d'Or winner 1979 · Sight & Sound 2022 directors' poll #18 · Sight & Sound 2022 critics' poll #19
- 6Goodfellas1990 · Martin Scorsese · United States · biography, crime, thriller6.33
BAFTA Best Film winner 1991 · Sight & Sound 2022 directors' poll #28 · Empire 500 (2008) #6
- 7Taxi Driver1976 · Martin Scorsese · United States · film-noir, drama, crime6.25
Palme d'Or winner 1976 · Kinema Junpo Best Ten (International) 1976 #1 · Sight & Sound 2022 directors' poll #12
- 8Schindler's List1993 · Steven Spielberg · United States · war, biography, drama6.12
Oscar Best Picture winner 1993 · BAFTA Best Film winner 1994 · AFI 100 (2007) #8
- 9The Third Man1949 · Carol Reed · United Kingdom · film-noir, mystery, drama6.08
BFI Top 100 British films #1 · Palme d'Or winner 1949 · Cannes Grand Prix winner 1949
- 10All About Eve1950 · Joseph L. Mankiewicz · United States · drama, comedy5.87
Oscar Best Picture winner 1950 · BAFTA Best Film winner 1951 · Kinema Junpo Best Ten (International) 1951 #1
- 11Pulp Fiction1994 · Quentin Tarantino · United States · crime, drama, thriller5.76
Palme d'Or winner 1994 · Empire 500 (2008) #9 · Oscar Best Picture nominee 1994
- 12Raging Bull1980 · Martin Scorsese · United States · biography, drama, action5.71
AFI 100 (2007) #4 · Sight & Sound 2022 directors' poll #22 · Siskel's annual top 10 1980 #1
- 13Annie Hall1977 · Woody Allen · United States · comedy, romance, drama5.55
Oscar Best Picture winner 1977 · BAFTA Best Film winner 1978 · Siskel's annual top 10 1977 #1
- 14The Godfather Part II1974 · Francis Ford Coppola · United States · drama, crime, thriller5.37
Oscar Best Picture winner 1974 · Sight & Sound 2022 directors' poll #26 · Letterboxd Top 250 #8
- 15Casablanca1942 · Michael Curtiz · United States · romance, war, drama5.29
Oscar Best Picture winner 1943 · AFI 100 (2007) #3 · AFI 100 (1998) #2
- 1612 Angry Men1957 · Sidney Lumet · United States · drama5.25
Berlin Golden Bear winner 1957 · Kinema Junpo Best Ten (International) 1959 #1 · Letterboxd Top 250 #3
- 17Vertigo1958 · Alfred Hitchcock · United States · mystery, thriller, drama5.16
Sight & Sound 2022 critics' poll #2 · Sight & Sound 2022 directors' poll #6 · AFI 100 (2007) #9
- 18Spirited Away2001 · Hayao Miyazaki · Japan · fantasy, animation, drama4.98
Berlin Golden Bear winner 2002 · Japan Academy Prize winner 2002 · Kehr's annual top 10 2002 #1
- 19Unforgiven1992 · Clint Eastwood · United States · western, drama, crime4.96
Oscar Best Picture winner 1992 · Cahiers du Cinéma annual top 10 1992 #1 · Kinema Junpo Best Ten (International) 1993 #1
- 20Tokyo Story1953 · Yasujirō Ozu · Japan · drama4.91
Sight & Sound 2022 critics' poll #4 · Sight & Sound 2022 directors' poll #4 · Kinema Junpo Best Ten (Japanese) 1953 #2
- 21Bicycle Thieves1948 · Vittorio De Sica · Italy · drama4.78
BAFTA Best Film winner 1950 · Kinema Junpo Best Ten (International) 1950 #1 · Sight & Sound 2022 directors' poll #20
- 22The Battle of Algiers1966 · Gillo Pontecorvo · Italy / Algeria · drama, war4.69
Kinema Junpo Best Ten (International) 1967 #1 · Venice Golden Lion winner 1966 · Sight & Sound 2022 directors' poll #22
- 23Dr. Strangelove1964 · Stanley Kubrick · United States / United Kingdom · comedy, war4.66
BAFTA Best Film winner 1965 · Sight & Sound 2022 directors' poll #46 · Oscar Best Picture nominee 1964
- 24One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest1975 · Miloš Forman · United States · comedy, drama4.63
Oscar Best Picture winner 1975 · BAFTA Best Film winner 1977 · Kinema Junpo Best Ten (International) 1976 #2
- 25Midnight Cowboy1969 · John Schlesinger · United States · drama4.62
Oscar Best Picture winner 1969 · BAFTA Best Film winner 1970 · Kinema Junpo Best Ten (International) 1969 #2
- 26The Bridge on the River Kwai1957 · David Lean · United Kingdom / United States · drama, war4.61
Oscar Best Picture winner 1957 · BAFTA Best Film winner 1958 · BFI Top 100 British films #11
- 27Mulholland Drive2001 · David Lynch · United States · mystery, thriller, crime4.61
Cahiers du Cinéma annual top 10 2001 #1 · Film Comment year-end poll 2001 #1 · Sight & Sound 2022 critics' poll #8
- 288½1963 · Federico Fellini · Italy / France · comedy, drama, fantasy4.58
Sight & Sound 2022 directors' poll #6 · Kinema Junpo Best Ten (International) 1965 #1 · Sight & Sound 2022 critics' poll #31
- 29Secrets & Lies1996 · Mike Leigh · United Kingdom · drama4.58
Palme d'Or winner 1996 · Kinema Junpo Best Ten (International) 1997 #1 · Oscar Best Picture nominee 1996
- 30Sunset Boulevard1950 · Billy Wilder · United States · drama, film-noir4.54
Kinema Junpo Best Ten (International) 1951 #2 · Sight & Sound 2022 directors' poll #62 · AFI 100 (2007) #16
A reader poll measures affection, not authority — and that is exactly what makes Empire's 2008 exercise worth re-weighing. In September of that year the British magazine tallied ballots from more than 10,000 of its readers, plus 150 filmmakers and 50 critics, into a single roll of 500 titles. The readers were the loudest voice by far, which is why blockbusters and arthouse ended up sharing the same ballot. Our list keeps Empire's membership but throws out Empire's order, re-ranking every film by a composite score drawn from more than 20 critical lists, awards and polls. The two orderings rarely agree — and the gap is the whole story.
Where affection and consensus meet
Empire's readers put The Godfather (1972) at the very top of their poll, and our composite, which listens to critics rather than fans, lands in the same place: Francis Ford Coppola's film is the highest-scoring Empire title on our list at #1, score 9.75. That agreement is the exception. Right behind it come the mid-century monuments the critical canon has never stopped honouring — Orson Welles's Citizen Kane (1941) at #2, David Lean's Lawrence of Arabia (1962) at #4, and Carol Reed's The Third Man (1949) at #9. None of those is a natural crowd-pleaser; all of them soar once you stop counting reader votes and start counting decades of critical weight.
What the crowd loved, and where it lands
The blockbusters that gave the poll its populist flavour do not vanish on our list, but they sink. Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003), a fan favourite, settles at #73 by score. The mainstream spectacle that fills the memory of any Empire subscriber is outranked by films that never sold a lunchbox — Vittorio De Sica's Bicycle Thieves (1948) soars to #25, and Henri-Georges Clouzot's white-knuckle The Wages of Fear (1953) at #78 runs neck-and-neck with Jackson's spectacle on accumulated prestige alone.
How to read our list
Steven Spielberg, the director Empire's voters named most often with eleven films across the 500, leads our re-ranking of his work with Schindler's List (1993) at #8. Look further and the list turns genuinely global: Hayao Miyazaki's Spirited Away (2001) reaches #22, proof that a populist British poll still let a hand-drawn Japanese fantasy onto the ballot. Read top to bottom, our order is a quiet argument that popularity and permanence are different measurements — and that Empire's readers, more often than the magazine's reputation suggests, guessed right.