I always make a point of keeping an eye out for They Shoot Pictures, Don’t They’s annual update of its all-time film list. It’s become something of a ritual for me—one of those quiet moments of reflection where I’m reminded not just of what I love about movies, but of how vast and endlessly arguable film history really is.
TSPDT is, on the surface, a modest operation, but it has grown steadily into one of the most indispensable film resources on the internet. Its mission is refreshingly unflashy: to honor the art of motion picture filmmaking by aggregating critical opinion from across the globe. No hot takes —just data.
What they’ve done, more specifically, is devise a meticulous system that pulls from thousands of critics’ polls, directors’ lists, festival surveys, and historical rankings, assembling them into two towering reference points: The 1,000 Greatest Films and The 21st Century's Most Acclaimed Films. These lists don’t belong to any one publication, generation, or aesthetic movement— constantly being revised as the conversation around cinema evolves.
And so, once again, the long-awaited yearly update has arrived. Welles’ “Citizen Kane” maintains the #1 spot, followed closely by Hitchcock’s “Vertigo” and Kubrick’s “2001: A Space Odyssey.” In fact, the Top 10 hasn’t changed at all. It’s the same ten films. The only notable change in the Top 20 is Scorsese’s “Taxi Driver” climbing up a spot to #14.
The most recent film to make its way into the list is Celine Sciamma’s “Petite Maman,” which sits in 843rd place — that one was released in 2021. Otherwise, no other film this decade is part of the list, which might say something about the tame quality of the last five years, or it might as well just point to a lack of recency bias on the list.
As far as the 21st Century list goes, Wong’s “In the Mood For Love” and Lynch’s “Mulholland Drive” continue to the twin peaks of the last 25 years. Not too far behind them are Edward Yang’s “Yi Yi,” (#3), Hayao Miyazaki’s “Spirited Away” (#4) and Paul Thomas Anderson’s “There Will Be Blood” (#5).
TSPDT’s Top 10 Greatest Films
1. Citizen Kane (1)
2. Vertigo (2)
3. 2001: A Space Odyssey (3)
4. Tokyo Story (4)
5. The Rules of the Game (5)
6. The Godfather (6)
7. 8½ (7)
8. Sunrise (8)
9. The Searchers (9)
10. The Seven Samurai (10)
Listed below are the biggest climbers and sliders in this year’s edition:
Top Climbers within the 1,000
793 to 662 - Ferris Bueller's Day Off (John Hughes, 1986)
852 to 721 - Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood (Quentin Tarantino, 2019)
759 to 629 - Raising Arizona (Joel Coen & Ethan Coen, 1987)
983 to 878 - The Last Detail (Hal Ashby, 1973)
786 to 685 - An American Werewolf in London (John Landis, 1981)
895 to 794 - Airplane! (Jim Abrahams, David Zucker & Jerry Zucker, 1980)
Highest Entrants into the 1,000
833 - After Hours (Martin Scorsese, 1985) re-entry
882 - The Princess Bride (Rob Reiner, 1987) re-entry
915 - Sideways (Alexander Payne, 2004) re-entry
923 - The Blues Brothers (John Landis, 1980) re-entry
937 - La Flor (Mariano Llinás, 2018) new
Biggest Sliders within the 1,000
954 to 989 - The Ice Storm (Ang Lee, 1997)
455 to 488 - La Région centrale (Michael Snow, 1971)
730 to 759 - The Circus (Charles Chaplin, 1928)
731 to 760 - One Way or Another (Sara Gómez, 1977)
969 to 998 - Sawdust and Tinsel (Ingmar Bergman, 1953)
Biggest Sliders from the 1,000
Previously ranked 906 - Hôtel Terminus (Marcel Ophüls, 1988)
Previously ranked 924 - Cemetery of Splendour (Apichatpong Weerasethakul, 2015)
Previously ranked 947 - Dust in the Wind (Hou Hsiao-hsien, 1986)
Previously ranked 977 - Moi, un Noir (Jean Rouch, 1958)
Previously ranked 984 - Summer with Monika (Ingmar Bergman, 1953)
That $100M budget is a steep investment for a movie without conventional A-list headliners — unless Lily James and Pierce Brosnan fit that description for you.