Pictures of the Movie Little
The greatest movies of all time endure for all kinds of reasons – they offer plots that twist and turn, give us characters that we fall in love with, depict experiences that change us, and thrill us with incredible filmmaking craft. The best films – from classic movies that have stood the test of time, to contemporary works that changed the game – offer heartwarming comfort, iconic scares, big laughs, and pulse-pounding suspense, becoming firm audience favourites and garnering critical acclaim. Empire asked readers to pick the best films ever made, combing through their personal collections and placing their votes for the 100 Greatest Movies – a list of cult classics, brilliant blockbusters, world cinema favourites, and everything in between. It's a selection packed with incredible action cinema, mind-bending sci-fi, heartwarming rom-coms, and the most affecting character dramas ever to grace the screen. Read the full list below, and head this way to subscribe to Empire. Looking for our list of The 100 Greatest TV Shows Of All Time? Read here.
1 of 100
1986
Rob Reiner's adaptation of Stephen King's novella The Body is a stirring, touching adventure film which knows the real world is exciting and scary enough just as it is. It's also a coming-of-age movie which celebrates the intensity of childhood friendship, while gently mourning the transience of such bonds. Which is why, unlike its central character, it'll never get old.
Read Empire's review of Stand By Me
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2 of 100
1980
Martin Scorsese and Robert De Niro have together made movies better than their boxing biopic, but it's hard to argue that any of those movies feature a more jaw-dropping performance than De Niro's here as self-destructive pugilist Jake La Motta. It also features some of cinema's best-shot fights; hard to believe that before Scorsese, no director thought to put the camera inside the ring...
Read Empire's review of Raging Bull
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3 of 100
CREDIT: StudioCanal
2001
Jean-Pierre Jeunet's beautifully whimsical Parisian rom-com succeeded not only because he found the perfect good-deed performing imp-girl lead in Audrey Tautou, but also because his numerous surreal touches truly gave a sense that there is always magic in the world around us — if we only know how to look for it.
Read Empire's review of Amelie
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4 of 100
CREDIT: Rex Features
1997
James Cameron doesn't do things by halves. His movie about the 1912 sinking of the world's biggest cruise liner was the most expensive ever made, suffered a difficult, overrunning shoot, and was predicted to be a career-ending flop. But it turned out to be one of the most successful films of all time (in terms of both box office and Awards), and made him King Of The World.
Read Empire's review of Titanic
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6 of 100
2016
Denis Villeneuve's empathic, perception-bending alien visitation drama is a delicately crafted modern rework of The Day The Earth Stood Still — except the extra-terrestrials are truly otherworldly and there's the sky-high obstacle that is the language barrier. With its message that open-minded communication enables us to realise the things we have in common with those who appear vastly different, it feels like genuinely compulsive viewing for these troubled times.
Read Empire's review of Arrival
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8 of 100
Director Rob Reiner and writer William Goldman's affectionate pastiche of romantic fairy-tale stories that also works as an adventure on its own. Great lines, superb sword fights and rodents of unusual size. What's not to love?
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11 of 100
2007
The Coen brothers' Cormac McCarthy adaptation is a tension-ratcheting, 1980 Texas-set chase movie, which also thoughtfully considers the question: how can good people ever possibly deal with a world going to shit? It also revealed that Javier Bardem makes an awesome villain; ever since he played No Country's cold-blooded assassin Anton Chigurh, Hollywood can't stop making him the bad guy.
Read Empire's review of No Country For Old Men
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13 of 100
1973
William Friedkin's horror masterwork — in which a 12-year-old girl is possessed by a demon — has a reputation as a shocker (in the good sense), with the pea-soup vomit, head-spin and crucifix abuse moments the most regularly cited. But the reason it chills so deeply is the way it sustains and builds its disquieting atmosphere so craftily and consistently throughout.
Read Empire's review of The Exorcist
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14 of 100
1987
A pumped-up men-on-a-mission movie with an ingenious science-fiction tweak. When you've got the world's baddest asses on the march, it'd be rude not to have them stalked by an intergalactic hunter with space-dreads and a shoulder-mounted laser cannon. "You're one ugly motherfu..." Never a truer word…
Read Empire's review of Predator
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16 of 100
1994
In some ways, Luc Besson's first English-language movie is a spiritual spin-off: after all, isn't Jean Reno's eponymous hitman just Nikita's Victor The Cleaner renamed and fleshed out? Of course, its greatest strength is in Natalie Portman, delivering a luminous, career-creating performance as vengeful 12-year-old Mathilda, whose relationship with the monosyllabic killer is truly affecting, and nimbly stays just on the right side of acceptable.
Read Empire's review of Léon
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17 of 100
1976
John G. Avildsen's boxing drama is the ne plus ultra of underdog sports movies. It not only proves that winning isn't the most important thing (you gotta go the distance), but also enabled Sylvester Stallone to craft a character so convincing and emotionally absorbing, he's still appearing in movies almost 40 years later.
Read Empire's review of Rocky
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19 of 100
1959
It says a lot about the magnitude of Billy Wilder's talent that he took a reportedly awful shooting experience with a pill-addled Marilyn Monroe and turned it into a movie that features what is arguably her best performance, not to mention one of his own finest features. This cross-dressing caper also has what must be the greatest last line in history: "Well, nobody's perfect"…
Read Empire's review of Some Like It Hot
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20 of 100
2010
Or, I'm Gonna Git You Zuckerberg. Portrayed as an über-ruthless ultra-nerd by Jesse Eisenberg, it's fair to say the Facebook founder came out of David Fincher's social-media drama smelling less of roses than the stuff you grow them in. But it is great drama, expertly wrought by screenwriter Aaron Sorkin, who exploits the story's central paradox (a guy who doesn't get people makes a fortune getting people together online) to supremely juicy effect.
Read Empire's review of The Social Network
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21 of 100
2001
For a Western world raised on Disney movies, Spirited Away was a bracing change of pace – pure, uncut Studio Ghibli. Taking in bathhouses, spirits of Shinto folklore, and morality without clear-cut distinctions of good and evil, Hayao Miyazaki's major crossover hit is distinctly Japanese. Its narrative arc and characters feel notably different to more conventional British and American animations – from the eerie, inscrutable No-Face, to sort-of-antagonist bathhouse owner Yubaba. But that's also a major reason why it connected – Spirited Away is accessible, but nothing about it feels watered down. It is, of course, utterly beautiful too – boundlessly imaginative, steeped in gorgeous colour, and stunningly scored by Joe Hisaishi. Among the cultural specificity is a coming-of-age universality in young hero Chihiro, forced to fend for herself when her parents are turned into pigs, using her resourcefulness and her friendship with boy-dragon-spirit Haku to earn her freedom from the spirit world. It's the film that brought Studio Ghibli – and anime at large – to mainstream Western audiences, an influence increasingly felt in the likes of Moana and Frozen II.
Read the Empire review.
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22 of 100
2016
The third "solo" Cap outing managed to be both intensely crowd-pleasing (with that whole airport battle, and the introduction of Tom Holland's Spider-Man) and also daringly intelligent, placing its superheroes in a believable geopolitical context that raised a valid moral issue: who should be responsible for the deployment of such great power?
Read Empire's review of Captain America: Civil War
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23 of 100
2003
Chan-wook Park's revenge drama does extremity with a capital Eeek. Torture through 15 years of solitary? Check. Hammer-wielding violence? Check. Incest? Check. Live octopus-eating? Check, check, chuck-up. But it never feels crowbarred-in. It's all part of the deliciously dark and stylishly executed journey.
Read Empire's review of Oldboy
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24 of 100
1995
It may have kicked off the whole CG-animation revolution (for better or worse), but it's not the once-novel visual medium which makes Pixar's first feature one of cinema's greatest treasures. The clue's in the title: it's a perfectly formed story, about friendship, love, fear of abandonment, workplace politics and self-identity. While its ability to make you laugh is undiminished.
Read Empire's review of Toy Story
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26 of 100
1996
Joel and Ethan Coen's snowy crime comedy is the best example of the 'crap criminal' subgenre, reminding us that wrongdoers are very rarely slick, professional types, and more usually people who are either inept or just winging it. But it has a very good heart, of course, in the form of Frances McDormand's Marge, whose brightness remains undimmed by the horrors she witnesses.
Read Empire's review of Fargo
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29 of 100
1954
Photographer LB Jeffries (James Stewart) is on sick leave, with a broken leg. He's bored to tears, so he starts spying on his neighbours. Then he witnesses a murder. OR DOES HE? Alfred Hitchcock really knew how to take a corker of a premise and spin it into a peerless thriller (that's why they called him The Master Of Suspense), but Rear Window also deserves praise for an astonishing set build: that entire Greenwich Village courtyard was constructed at Paramount Studios, complete with a drainage system that could handle all the rain.
Read Empire's review of Rear Window
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30 of 100
2007
Wright, Pegg and Frost's tribute to big American cop movies isn't just a great fish-out-of-water comedy, sending high-achieving London policeman Nick Angel (Pegg) to the most boring place in the UK (or so it seems). It also manages to wring every last drip of funny out of executing spot-on bombastic, Bayhem-style action in a sleepy English small-town setting.
Read Empire's review of Hot Fuzz
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31 of 100
1994
It's the highest-ranking animated movie on this list, beating even Toy Story. Though we shouldn't be too surprised — it remains one of Disney's most beautifully rendered films, an epic tale of dynastic dastardliness in the Animal Kingdom, with catchy songs and still one of the most distressing death scenes in a kids' movie since… well… Bambi.
Read Empire's review of The Lion King
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32 of 100
1952
A joyous, vibrant Technicolor celebration of Da Moofies that's such an essential viewing experience there should perhaps be a law that it feature in every DVD and Blu-ray collection. It's no mere Hollywood self-love exercise, though. As star Don Lockwood, Gene Kelly brings a sense of exasperation at the film industry's diva-indulging daftness, making it a gentle piss-take, too.
Read Empire's review of Singin' In The Rain
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33 of 100
1984
As high-concept comedies go, Ghostbusters is positively stratospheric — a story of demonic incursion… with gags! And it manages to wring a fantastic supernatural adventure out of that concept, while never neglecting the opportunity to deliver a great laugh; or, on the flipside, ever allowing the zaniness to swallow up plot coherence. Ray Parker Jr was right. Bustin' did indeed make us feel good.
Read Empire's review of Ghostbusters
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34 of 100
2000
Christopher Nolan made the world sit up and pay attention to him by crafting (with his brother Jonah) a revenge-fuelled crime thriller that dared to demand that its audience sit up and pay attention to its every last detail. It's precision-engineered: apart from the carefully inserted Sammy Jankis subplot, every scene lasts as long as the span of damaged protagonist Leonard Shelby's short-term memory, as well as running in reverse order. And. It. Works.
Read Empire's review of Memento
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35 of 100
CREDIT: Disney
1983
In this post-Phantom Menace world, the Ewoks don't seem quite so egregious, do they? Endor's teddy-bear guerillas might have got sneered at, but they shouldn't blind us to Jedi's assets: the explosive team-re-gathering opening; the crazily high-speed forest chase; and that marvellously edited three-way climactic battle that dextrously flipped us between lightsabers, spaceships and a ferocious (albeit fuzzy) forest conflict.
Read Empire's review of Return Of The Jedi
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36 of 100
2012
With Marvel's 'Phase One'-concluding team-up movie, writer-director Joss Whedon not only pulled off a colossal character-juggling act, he also pushed the studio's commercial success to a much higher level. It's still one of the best-scripted Marvels, and we've yet to see a villain on more entertainingly nefarious form than Tom Hiddleston's Loki was here.
Read Empire's review of Avengers Assemble
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38 of 100
2001
Richard Kelly's time-looping, sci-fi-horror-blending high-school movie is the very definition of a cult movie. It was a struggle to get made, it flopped on release, then it found its crowd via word-of-mouth and a palpable sense that its creator really, you know, gets it. And let's not forget how goddamn funny it is, too.
Read Empire's review of Donnie Darko
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39 of 100
2016
As much a technical marvel as it is an acting tour-de-force, Damien Chazelle's Los Angeles love letter proved a ridiculously easy movie to fall in love with, even for those who may have grumbled that they weren't really into musicals before sitting down to watch it. Go on, admit it: You're still humming "Another Day Of Sun", aren't you?
Read Empire's review of La La Land
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41 of 100
1999
Sam Mendes made his movie career with his directorial debut, the story of Lester Burman: a man who turned his midlife crisis into a midlife resolution — even if his self-liberating antics would ultimately prove disastrous. It announced a bold new filmmaker in Mendes, and also got writer Alan Ball (Six Feet Under, True Blood) rolling.
Read Empire's review of American Beauty
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42 of 100
1982
With the "Amblin" style so regularly referenced these days (most successfully in the Duffer brothers' Stranger Things), it's worth reminding ourselves that it was never more perfectly encapsulated than in E.T.: a children's adventure which carefully beds its supernatural elements in an utterly relatable everykid world, and tempers its cuter, more sentimental moments with a true sense of jeopardy.
Read Empire's review of E.T.
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43 of 100
2009
From its Sergio Leone-riffing opening to its insanely OTT, history-rewriting finale, Tarantino's World War II caper never once fails to surprise and entertain. As ever, though, QT's at his best in claustrophobic situations, with the tavern scene ramping up the tension to almost unbearable levels.
Read Empire's review of Inglourious Basterds
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44 of 100
2014
If Damien Chazelle's semi-autobiographical drama taught us anything, it's that jazz drumming is more hazardous to learn than base jumping. Especially when your mentor is J.K. Simmons' monstrous Fletcher: a raging bully who makes army drill instructors look like Care Bears. Though, of course, you could always argue that Fletcher's methods certainly got great results out of Miles Teller's battered but triumphant Andrew…
Read Empire's review of Whiplash
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45 of 100
1992
Quentin Tarantino's terrific twist on the heist-gone-wrong thriller, which ricochets the zing and fizz of its dialogue around a gloriously intense single setting (for the most part) and centres the majority of its action around one long and incredibly bloody death scene. Oh, and by the way: Nice Guy Eddie was shot by Mr. White. Who fired twice. Case closed.
Read Empire's review of Reservoir Dogs
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46 of 100
2006
Guillermo Del Toro's fairy tale for grown-ups, as pull-no-punches brutal as it is gorgeously, baroquely fantastical. There's an earthy, primal feel to his fairy-world here, alien and threatening rather than gasp-inducing and 'magical' — thanks in no small part to the truly cheese-dream nightmarish demon-things Del Toro conjures up, sans CGI, with the assistance of performer Doug Jones.
Read Empire's review of Pan's Labyrinth
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47 of 100
1958
If Psycho (see next entry) was Hitchcock's big shocker, then Vertigo is the one that gets properly under your skin. With James Stewart's detective stalking Kim Novak's mysterious woman, witnessing her suicide, then becoming obsessed with her double, it's certainly disturbing and most definitely (as the title suggests) disorientating. In the most artful and inventive way.
Read Empire's review of Vertigo
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48 of 100
1960
The movie Universal originally didn't want Hitchcock to make not only turned out to be a hands-down masterpiece but also effectively invented a genre: the psycho-killer slasher movie. No longer were movie monsters just big, hairy wolf-men, or vampires, or swampy fish-things. They could now look completely normal. They could be the guy sat right next to you, in fact...
Read Empire's review of Psycho
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50 of 100
1946
Frank Capra's Christmas fantasy was the movie that coaxed a war-battered James Stewart back to acting, and a good thing, too: as George Bailey, who's shown a mind-blowing parallel reality in which he never existed, Stewart was never more appealing. And he tempers any potential schmaltz, too, with a sense of underlying world-weariness — one that he no doubt brought back from the conflict in Europe.
Read Empire's review of It's A Wonderful Life
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51 of 100
1962
If you only ever see one David Lean movie… Well, don't. Watch as many as you can. But if you really insist on only seeing one David Lean movie, then make sure it's Lawrence Of Arabia, the movie that put both the "sweeping" and the "epic" into "sweeping epic" with its breath-taking depiction of T.E. Lawrence's (Peter O'Toole) Arab-uniting efforts against the German-allied Turks during World War I. It's a different world to the one we're in now, of course, but Lean's mastery of expansive storytelling does much to smooth out any elements (such as Alec Guinness playing an Arab) that may rankle modern sensibilities.
Read Empire's review of Lawrence Of Arabia
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52 of 100
For their follow up to the superb Shallow Grave, Danny Boyle (director), Andrew Macdonald (producer) and John Hodge (screenwriter) foolhardily elected to film the supposedly unfilmable: Irvine Welsh's scrappy, episodic, multi-perspective novel about Edinburgh low-lives. The result couldn't have been more triumphant: the cinematic incarnation of 'Cool Britannia' came with a kick-ass soundtrack, and despite some dark subject matter, came with a punch-the-air uplifting pay-off.
Buy the book at Amazon
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Read Empire's review of Trainspotting
53 of 100
1991
Not only the first horror to win a Best Picture Oscar, it's also only the third movie to score in all four main categories: Picture, Director (the late, great Jonathan Demme), Actress (Jodie Foster) and Actor (Anthony Hopkins) — the latter managing that despite technically being a supporting performer, with a mere 25-ish minutes of screen time. Even so, it feels like Foster's movie more than anybody's: her vulnerable-but-steely Clarice Starling is defined by her ability, not her gender.
Read Empire's review of The Silence Of The Lambs
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55 of 100
1941
Orson Welles' game-changing fictional biopic, that managed to both launch his film career and ruin it at the same time (turns out it's not a good idea to piss off powerful newspaper magnates by viciously satirising them to a mass audience). Not only did he use impressive new film-making techniques that make it feel like a movie far younger than its 76 years, but its power-corrupts story still resonates loudly. Now more than ever, in fact.
Read Empire's review of Citizen Kane
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56 of 100
2011
Somehow simultaneously glossy and gritty, Nicolas Winding Refn's '80s-infused vehicular noir was an easy movie to fall in love with — despite a few outbursts of spectacularly horrific violence. It was aided no end by a toweringly charismatic central performance (with very few lines of dialogue spoken) from Ryan Gosling, who improbably rocked a silver, quilted silk jacket with a gold scorpion on the back. We all still want one.
Read Empire's review of Drive
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59 of 100
2007
If America were a person, then oil man Daniel Plainview (Daniel Day-Lewis) is a vampire. (A milkshake-drinking vampire, if you feel like mixing our metaphor with his own.) Which is why it's appropriate that Paul Thomas Anderson gives the film a bit of a horror-movie vibe throughout and Day-Lewis delivers such a deliciously monstrous performance — right up to the point where he spills literal blood in an empty mansion, haunted only by himself.
Read Empire's review of There Will Be Blood
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61 of 100
1957
Juries most often amount to little more than set dressing in courtroom dramas. But Sidney Lumet's film finds all its drama outside the courtroom itself and inside a jury deliberation room packed with fantastic character actors, who are forced to re-examine a seemingly straightforward case by lone-voice juror Henry Fonda. It's all about the value of looking at things differently, and a reminder that nothing is more important than great dialogue.
Read Empire's review of 12 Angry Men
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62 of 100
1998
The sheer bludgeoning, blood-spilling, visceral power of its Omaha Beach, D-Day-landing opening act ensured that Spielberg's fourth World War II movie set the standard for all future battle depictions. Its shaky-staccato-desaturated style (courtesy of Janusz Kaminski's ingenious cinematography) — newsreel made cinema — has been oft-copied, but rarely bettered.
Read Empire's review of Saving Private Ryan
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63 of 100
2015
In which old dog George Miller taught Hollywood some new tricks. Stripping the chase movie down to its raw essentials (the plot is basically: run away… then run back again!), Miller expertly built the narrative through some of the most astonishing and gloriously operatic action scenes we'd seen in yonks. While also ensuring his female characters are the film's strongest; Charlize Theron's Furiosa and Immortan Joe's ex-brides are inheriting a world "killed" by men…
Read Empire's review of Mad Max: Fury Road
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64 of 100
1982
Any argument about whether or not modern remakes can ever be better than the 'classic' originals should be ended pretty quickly by mentioning this movie. With the help of SFX genius Rob Bottin, John Carpenter took the bones of Howard Hawks' 1951 The Thing From Another World and crafted an intense, frosty sci-fi thriller featuring Hollywood's ultimate movie monster: one that could be any of us at any time, before contorting into a genuine biological nightmare.
Read Empire's review of The Thing
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65 of 100
2006
And any argument about whether or not American remakes can ever be better than the foreign-language originals should be ended pretty quickly by mentioning this movie. Martin Scorsese's Boston-based reinterpretation of Wai-Keung Lau and Alan Mak's Hong Kong-set double-infiltrator crime drama Infernal Affairs is both respectful and unafraid to layer on extra detail. It's also perfectly cast: DiCaprio and Damon as the facing-off moles, Nicholson as the Whitey Bulger-esque Mob boss and (arguably best of all), Mark Wahlberg as America's sweariest cop.
Read Empire's review of The Departed
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66 of 100
1980
Stanley Kubrick's elegant adaptation of Stephen King's haunted-hotel story — starring a wonderfully deranged Jack Nicholson — is often cited as The Scariest Horror Movie Ever Made (perhaps tied with The Exorcist), but it's also the Least Suitable Movie To Watch On Father's Day Ever. Unless you're the kind of Dad who thinks obsessively typing the same sentence over and over then chasing after your wife and kid with an axe constitutes good parenting…
Read Empire's review of The Shining
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67 of 100
2014
It's official, then. The Marvel Studios movie most-beloved by Empire readers is the one which featured the MCU's freakiest and least-known characters (a talking racoon, a walking tree, a green assassin lady, a muscleman named after a Bond villain and Star-who!?), starred that schlubby fellah from Parks And Rec, and was directed by the guy who turned Michael Rooker into a giant slug-monster in Slither. Which is pretty cool, when you think about it.
Read Empire's review of Guardians Of The Galaxy
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68 of 100
1993
Spielberg's masterpiece, hands down. You might say the shark looks fakey in Jaws. You may wonder how Indy clung to the German sub in Raiders. But there's no flaws to be found in his harrowing, (mostly) monochromatic depiction of Nazi persecution of the Jewish community in Kraków. Unless you're the kind of shallow person who only watches movies that are 'entertaining'. In which case, you're missing out.
Read Empire's review of Schindler's List
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71 of 100
1995
Aka David Fincher's second debut movie. What sounded like a daft, novelty serial-killer thriller turned out to be a deeply rattling proper-shocker, which had the guts to throw down its biggest narrative twist halfway through, as warped murderer-moralist John Doe gives himself up. A twist made all the more effective thanks to Kevin Spacey's insistence he wasn't billed until the end credits.
Read Empire's review of Seven
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72 of 100
1998
You've got to hand it to the Coen brothers. Not only did they make arguably the funniest movie of the '90s — which has since spawned a genuine film cult — they also managed to construct a kidnap mystery in which the detective isn't a detective and nobody was actually kidnapped. With bowling, marmots and a urine-stained rug.
Read Empire's review of The Big Lebowski
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73 of 100
1942
When you've got such a clear-cut good-vs-evil scenario as World War II, it takes guts to put out a film which lets its (anti-) hero lurk for so long in a grey area of that conflict — while said War was still raging, no less. Of course, Rick (Humphrey Bogart) eventually does the right thing, but watching him make both the Resistance and the Nazis squirm right up to the final scene is truly joyous.
Read Empire's review of Casablanca
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74 of 100
1966
Sergio Leone sets three renegades against each other in a treasure hunt backdropped against the chaos and madness of the American Civil War. The result is the movie on his CV which best balances art and entertainment. Clint Eastwood and Lee Van Cleef are great value as Blondie and Angel Eyes, but it's Eli Wallach's Tuco who steals this Wild West show: "When you have to shoot, shoot. Don't talk."
Read Empire's review of The Good, The Bad And The Ugly
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75 of 100
1995
Michael Mann's starry upgrade of his TV movie LA Takedown squeezed every last drop of icon-juice out of its heavyweight double-billing, bringing Pacino and De Niro together on screen, sharing scenes for the very first time. The trick was to only do it twice during the entire running time, with that first diner meeting virtually fizzing with alpha-star electricity.
Read Empire's review of Heat
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76 of 100
1991
Making Arnie's T-800 a protector rather than killer for part two could have been a shark-jump moment for the Terminator series, but we're talking about James Cameron here. So it paid off — especially as this Terminator was just as much a student in human behaviour (with John Connor his teacher) as guardian, with some darkly comical results ("He'll live"). Is it really better than the original? In terms of scale and sheer, balls-out action spectacle, yes.
Read Empire's review of Terminator 2: Judgment Day
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77 of 100
1999
How two sibling indie film-makers with only a slick, sexy little crime film to their name (Bound) created their own blockbuster sci-fi franchise. And opened up western audiences to the truth that kung-fu acrobatics are so much more fun than watching American or European muscle-men waving guns around. While also making everyone examine some fundamental philosophical questions about reality. Thanks to the Wachowskis, we all took the red pill, and we've never regretted it.
Read Empire's review of The Matrix
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78 of 100
2002
Aside from Boromir, Aragorn and the small-town denizens of Bree, there's not a huge amount of human representation in The Fellowship Of The Ring. So one of the pleasures of The Two Towers is seeing Middle-earth truly open out after the arrival at Rohan, where the series takes on more of a sweeping, Nordic feel... Building up, of course, to Helm's Deep, a ferocious action crescendo which features gratuitous scenes of dwarf-tossing.
Read Empire's review of The Two Towers
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80 of 100
1968
You've voted it your favourite Kubrick movie, which makes sense to us. It is arguably his greatest gift to cinema, an infinitely ambitious vision of a space-faring future whose narrative centres on the most pivotal moment in human evolution since some ape-man first bashed another ape-man with an old bone. Graceful, gorgeous, unwearied by time's passing. Rather like that monolith.
Read Empire's review of 2001: A Space Odyssey
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81 of 100
1988
One man using only his wits and whatever he can extract from his environment. A gang of bad guys terrorising the locals. If Die Hard wasn't set in a skyscraper during the 1980s, it could easily be a Western. A Western which, in the form of Bruce Willis, not only convinced the world a TV-comedy star could be an action-hero, but also gave us one of our most seethingly charismatic big-screen villain-players: Alan Rickman.
Read Empire's review of Die Hard
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82 of 100
1993
When dinosaurs first ruled the movie-Earth, they did so in a herky-jerky stop-motion manner that while charmingly effective, required a fair dose of disbelief-suspension. When Steven Spielberg brought them back on Isla Nublar, we felt for the first time they could be real, breathing animals (as opposed to monsters). And that's as much thanks to Stan Winston's astonishing animatronics work as to ILM's groundbreaking CGI.
Read Empire's review of Jurassic Park
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83 of 100
2010
Will Christopher Nolan ever make a Bond movie? Well, with Inception he kind of already has. Except, instead of a British secret agent, we get a freelance corporate dream-thief. And the big climactic action sequence is so huge it takes up almost half the movie and is actually three big action sequences temporally nested inside each other around a surreal, metaphysical-conflict core.
Read Empire's review of Inception
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84 of 100
1999
After all the pre-release hype about how dark and brutal Fight Club was, one of the most surprising things to discover on seeing it was just how funny it actually was. And just as well; if you weren't laughing at Bob's "bitch-tits" or Tyler Durden's human-fat soap-making antics, it would be pretty hard to process David Fincher's bravura take on Chuck Palahniuk's tale of modern masculinity running insanely rampant.
Read Empire's review of Fight Club
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85 of 100
2003
Anyone who bangs on about all those endings is missing the many joys of Peter Jackson's Academy Award-laden trilogy-closer. It has some of the most colossal and entertaining battle scenes ever mounted; it has an awesome giant spider; it has that fantastic dramatic-ironic twist when Gollum saves the day through his own treachery; and it has that bit where Eowyn says, "I am no man". Deserves. Every. Oscar.
Read Empire's review of The Return Of The King
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86 of 100
1986
The genius of James Cameron's self-penned Alien follow-up was to not try to top the original as one of the greatest ever horror movies. Instead, he transplanted the Alien (and, significantly, Ripley) to a different genre, and created one of the greatest ever action movies. That's also a Vietnam metaphor. And also one of the most enduringly quotable films.
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87 of 100
1979
On the one hand, re-watching Ridley Scott's deep-space monster-slasher (and it's a movie which can handle as many re-watches as you can throw at it) makes you appreciate why he keeps coming back to that universe: it's so intoxicatingly atmospheric and deeply compelling, it sticks to you like a parasite. On the other hand, it really does make you wonder why he feels the need to keep tinkering with new cuts. After all, he got it perfectly right the first time around.
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88 of 100
1982
Rain-lashed, noodle-bar-packed streets shrouded in perpetual night, with giant adverts and neon signs doing the job you'd usually expect of the sun itself... The not-too-distant future had never looked cooler than in Ridley Scott's sci-fi gumshoe noir, and we're not sure it ever will.
Read Empire's review of Blade Runner
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89 of 100
1974
Often cited as the greatest-ever sequel (though you've voted The Empire Strikes Back into that position here), TGPII, as no-one's ever called it, is more accurately described as a seprequel. In a narrative masterstroke, it parallels Michael's (Al Pacino) consolidation of power with the ascendance of his Dad, Vito (Robert De Niro); the triumph of one paving the way to the utter corruption of the other.
Read Empire's review of The Godfather Part II
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90 of 100
1985
Part science-fiction caper, part generational culture-clash movie, part weirdo family drama (in which the hero has to rescue his own existence after his mother falls in lust with him, eww), Back To The Future still manages to be timeless despite being so rooted in, well, time. And it might just have the best title of anything on this entire list.
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91 of 100
2001
It may feature monsters, wizards and plucky little fellas with furry feet, but The Lord Of The Rings isn't a fairy tale. Which is why Peter Jackson's adaptation worked so well; from this note-perfect first instalment, it was treated exactly as Tolkien intended — as a historical epic which just happens to be set in an alternative world.
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93 of 100
1975
Forty-five years young, and Spielberg's breakthrough remains the touchstone for event-movie cinema. Not that any studio these days would dare put out a summer blockbuster that's half monster-on-the-rampage disaster, half guys-bonding-on-a-fishing-trip adventure. Maybe that's why it's never been rebooted. Or just because it's genuinely unsurpassable.
Read Empire's review of Jaws
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94 of 100
1981
In '81, it must have sounded like the ultimate pitch: the creator of Star Wars teams up with the director of Jaws to make a rip-roaring, Bond-style adventure starring the guy who played Han Solo, in which the bad guys are the evillest ever (the Nazis) and the MacGuffin is a big, gold box which unleashes the power of God. It still sounds like the ultimate pitch.
Read Empire's review of Raiders Of The Lost Ark
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95 of 100
1990
Where Coppola embroiled us in the politics of the Mafia elite, Martin Scorsese drew us into the treacherous but seductive world of the Mob's foot soldiers. And its honesty was as impactful as its sudden outbursts of (usually Joe Pesci-instigated) violence. Not merely via Henry Hill's (Ray Liotta) narrative, but also Karen's (Lorraine Bracco) perspective: when Henry gives her a gun to hide, she admits, "It turned me on."
Read Empire's review of Goodfellas
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96 of 100
1994
If Reservoir Dogs was a blood-spattered calling card, Pulp Fiction saw Quentin Tarantino kick our front door off its hinges — and then get applauded for doing it with such goddamn panache. It wore its numerous influences on its sleeve and yet felt utterly, invigoratingly fresh and new. We happy? Yeah, we happy.
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99 of 100
The original "this one's darker" sequel, and by far the strongest of the saga. Not just because the baddies win (temporarily), or because it Force-slammed us with that twist ("No, I am your father"). Empire super-stardestroys thanks to the way it deepens the core relationships — none more effectively than Han and Leia's. She loves him. He knows. And it still hurts.
Read Empire's review of The Empire Strikes Back
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Source: https://www.empireonline.com/movies/features/best-movies-2/