To get an answer, we will turn to the IMDB website. The old site which serves as a sort of film and television encyclopedia, is also the most popular site for movie ratings. The surfers can rate each movie with a score between one and ten, and the website shows the average of the votes of all the surfers. So who are the highest rated movies, according to IMDB?
Fifth place: The Wonderful 12 (Director: Sidney Lumet, 1957, score: 8.9)
In fifth place is a film that is less known to the general public than the other films in the top five, but it is exemplary and deserves its place no less than them. This is the story of 12 jurors who have to decide on the question of the guilt of a poor boy in the murder of his father, when they have to reach a unanimous decision. When the jurors vote, they find that 11 of them are sure of the boy’s guilt and only one juror (played by Henry Fonda) is convinced of his innocence.
From here a brilliant little drama unfolds, which takes place entirely in the jury room. The opposing (and nameless) juror fights for his opinion and slowly manages to convince other jurors. leading to a stubborn and uncompromising battle for the truth.
Fourth place: The Godfather 2 (Director: Francis Ford Coppola, 1974, score: 9.0)
The common belief is that it is difficult to impossible to produce a sequel that will rise to the level of the original. Indeed, apart from exceptional cases like “Toy Story 3” or “Back to the Future 2”, most sequels crash into the level of mediocre imitation.
But not “The Godfather 2”. The film continues the story of the Corleone family, the mythological crime family. It follows Michael (Al Pacino) and his attempt to balance the life of crime with family life and at the same time and in flashback after his father, Vito Corleone (Robert De Niro) and his rise to crime in New York of the early 20th century.
As mentioned, the film manages to meet the impossible expectations set by the first film (which also appears on the list) and sometimes even surpasses it. Which cannot be said about “The Godfather 3” which came out about 20 years later and fell into the sad statistics of the sequels.
Third place: The Dark Knight (Director: Christopher Nolan, 2008, score: 9.0)
The newest film on the list, the one after which the superhero genre will not look the same. The second film in the “Dark Knight” trilogy tells the story of Batman (Christian Bale) in his fight against the Joker, the psychotic and iconic villain played by Heath Ledger. Ledger’s Joker, who won an Oscar posthumously, is a total character, fascinating and terrifying, who raises the film to divine heights. They say that a superhero movie is only as good as its villain, so with one of the greatest villains in cinema, it’s no wonder The Dark Knight easily ranks third on the list.
Second place: The Godfather (Director: Francis Ford Coppola, 1972, score: 9.2)
Succeeding in making a film on the “Big 5” list is very impressive in itself, but two out of 5? It is already unimaginable.
But it was impossible to expect anything else when it comes to such a classic, perhaps the greatest, most loved and quoted in the history of cinema, and certainly in the genre of crime films. A work that received countless tributes and embedded in culture and language quotes such as “Asleep with the fishes” and images such as a horse’s head in a bed. The young director Coppola directs each and every scene with spectacular originality and Marlon Brando’s performance as Don Corleone will surely be remembered forever.
Still, one film managed to overtake him on the list.
First place: Walls of Hope (Director: Frank Darbont, 1994, score: 9.3)
And in the first place, unsurprisingly, the masterpiece that has moved millions for 3 decades, a film that is human love. The story of the friendship of two prisoners (Tim Robbins and Morgan Freeman) in the harsh “Shoshank” prison over several decades. They face violent prisoners, brutality of the management and a number of dark events, but the film always maintains the optimistic tone and the stubborn belief that even if it’s hard now, it will be good in the end. Simply wonderful.
If you have seen all 5, it is recommended to continue and go through the rest of the IMDB list. An astronomical sequence of amazing movies awaits you and all that remains is to envy you.