Reader asks which films are the greatest of all time
Anyone who searches for the greatest films of all time is really asking a question that has no single answer, because the lists that claim to answer it are built from different rules. The AFI's 100 Years…100 Movies list draws on a panel of over 1,500 film artists, historians and critics voting on American movies within a fixed eligibility window, as described in the AFI's own methodology. Empire Magazine's ranking, by contrast, is not restricted to American cinema and pulls from a broader mix of critic and reader input, which is why its 100 Best Movies Of All Time ranking includes titles the AFI list omits entirely.
Neither approach is wrong; they are measuring different things. AFI is voting on American film history specifically. Empire is voting on a wider, less nationally bounded canon. A ranking that includes only English-language studio pictures and one that includes subtitled or regionally produced work will disagree even when their voters have excellent taste, simply because the eligible pool differs.
Before treating any "greatest films" list as authoritative, check three things: who voted (a fixed panel, an open readers' poll, or a single editorial team), what era or nationality the list is restricted to, and whether it was last revised or is a static snapshot. A list that discloses none of this is not necessarily worthless, but it should be read as one curator's taste rather than a settled ranking.
A film premieres at a film festival
A film's public life typically starts at a festival, not in a multiplex. Festivals like Cannes, Sundance or Venice screen a film for the first time in front of critics, buyers and a competition jury, and that premiere is where distributors decide whether to acquire it.
The sequence from there runs roughly as follows:
- The film screens in a festival section — competition, a sidebar, or an out-of-competition slot — and either wins a prize or simply generates critical notice.
- A distributor, watching audience and critic reaction, negotiates rights and sets a release strategy.
- The distributor schedules a theatrical release date, sometimes months after the festival premiere, to build press coverage around reviews.
- After the theatrical window closes, the film moves to a streaming platform or disc release, often coordinated with the distributor's existing output deals.
- A viewer wanting to watch it checks a where-to-watch listing, such as the availability information collected on films101.com, to find which platform currently carries it.
That last step matters because availability changes: a title that streamed on one service can move or disappear entirely once a licensing window ends, so any "where to watch" answer is only accurate as of the date it was checked.
Critics publish individual reviews of a release
A critic's review is one person's written judgment of a single film, published around its release date in outlets like the New York Times or trade coverage from Deadline. Individually, a review is an argument, not a score.
Those individual reviews get aggregated. A site like Rotten Tomatoes collects a large number of critic reviews, classifies each as positive or negative, and reports the percentage that were positive — a "Tomatometer" score that measures how many critics liked a film at all, not how much they liked it or how a general audience responded. Rotten Tomatoes separately reports an audience score, which is often the more useful comparison: a high critic score paired with a much lower audience score (or the reverse) tells a viewer that critical and popular reaction diverged, and that divergence is itself information.
When reading an aggregate score, treat it as a filter rather than a verdict:
| What to check | What it tells you |
|---|---|
| Number of reviews counted | Whether the score is based on a handful of early reviews or a wide sample |
| Critic score vs audience score | Whether professional and popular reaction agree |
| Date of the score | Whether it reflects opening-weekend reviews only or has settled over time |
A single-digit review count with a 100% score means something different from a hundred-review sample at the same percentage, even though the headline number looks identical.
Reader asks why they are called 'films'
Films are called films because the medium was originally recorded on a strip of light-sensitive celluloid, and the material's name transferred to the work made on it. Early cinema stock was literally photographic film, and the word stuck to the finished work long after the technology moved on.
"Movie" arose separately, as informal shorthand for "moving picture," and became the everyday word for the same object, especially in American usage. "Film" kept its more formal, artistic connotation — critics, festivals and academic writing tend to say "film," while casual conversation defaults to "movie." Both refer to the same thing; the difference is register, not category. A "feature" is a further distinction within that: a feature-length film runs long enough to be programmed as a standalone theatrical presentation, as opposed to a short film, while multi-episode series are generally classified separately from either.
Director
The director is the credited figure films are organized around across archives, retrospectives and best-of lists, because a director's name is the most consistent index point across a body of work. When a "greatest films" list groups entries or a streaming catalogue lets a viewer browse by filmmaker, it is following the same convention: the director is treated as the author whose sensibility unifies writing, cinematography, editing and performance into one attributable body of work, even though all of those crafts are separately credited and separately awarded.
Award
An award is a prize conferred by an academy, guild or festival jury, and it functions in practice as one of the most common inputs into best-of rankings. Festival prizes (a Palme d'Or, a Golden Lion) are awarded by a jury during the event itself, while national academy awards are voted on by a wider membership after a theatrical qualifying run. Because award wins get folded into aggregate reputation — cited in reviews, repeated in marketing, and referenced when a film is later called canonical — a film's award history often shapes its later standing more than its box-office performance does.
Drama
Drama is the genre most frequently attached to films in best-of and now-playing contexts, largely because it functions as a default label for character-driven, non-comic, non-fantastical narrative work rather than a narrow stylistic category. A film can be a courtroom drama, a family drama or a historical drama, and each of those compound labels narrows the term considerably; "drama" alone is closer to a catch-all than a precise descriptor.
Thriller
Thriller is the second most common genre label attached to films in list contexts, describing work built around suspense and stakes rather than a fixed setting or era. Like drama, thriller is frequently compounded — political thriller, psychological thriller, erotic thriller — and the compound term usually carries more useful information than "thriller" on its own, since the base label covers everything from spy fiction to domestic suspense.
What is the top 10 best film?
There is no single top 10, because "best" depends entirely on which list's criteria a viewer accepts. The AFI's 100 Years…100 Movies ranking and Empire's 100 Best Movies Of All Time ranking both produce a top ten, and they do not match, because one is voted by a fixed American-industry panel within a set eligibility window and the other draws from a broader, less nationally restricted pool. A viewer asking this question gets a more useful answer by picking a list whose stated scope matches what they want — American studio history, or a wider international canon — rather than expecting one number to settle it.
What are the top 10 films now?
"Top films now" is a different question from "greatest of all time," and it means the current theatrical or streaming slate rather than the historical canon. That answer changes on a rolling basis and depends on what is newly released, so it is better tracked through a dated source — current box-office and release coverage such as Deadline's film section — than through a static ranking, since any list published without a date attached is already out of date by the time it is read.
What are the 100 greatest movies of all time?
There isn't one fixed 100 — there are several competing lists that use that phrase, each built on a different voter pool and scope. The AFI's 100 Years…100 Movies restricts itself to American films voted on by an industry-and-historian panel, while Empire's 100 Best Movies Of All Time ranking casts a wider net that is not nationally bounded. The lists overlap on some titles and diverge sharply on others, and that divergence is the direct result of differing eligibility rules rather than disagreement about quality.
Why are they called films?
They're called films because the physical recording medium — a strip of celluloid film stock — gave its name to the finished work made on it, a naming pattern that survived the shift to digital capture. "Movie," the more casual term for the same object, comes from "moving picture" and dominates everyday speech, while "film" retained the more formal register used in criticism, festivals and archival contexts. Neither term is more correct; they simply carry different weight depending on where the word is used.
Start with one list whose criteria actually match what you're looking for — AFI's if you want American film history, Empire's if you want a broader canon — and use a dated where-to-watch source before assuming any title is available where you expect it to be.