The greatest film ever made began with the meeting of two brilliant minds: Stanley Kubrick and sci-fi seer Arthur C Clarke. ‘I understand he’s a nut who lives in a tree in India somewhere,’ noted Kubrick when Clarke’s name came up – along with those of Isaac Asimov, Robert A Heinlein and Ray Bradbury – as a possible writer for his planned sci-fi epic. Clarke was actually living in Ceylon (not in India, or a tree), but the pair met, hit it off, and forged a story of technological progress and disaster (hello, HAL) that’s steeped in humanity, in all its brilliance, weakness, courage and mad ambition. An audience of stoners, wowed by its eye-candy Star Gate sequence and pioneering visuals, adopted it as a pet movie. Were it not for them, 2001 might have faded into obscurity, but it’s hard to imagine it would have stayed there. Kubrick’s frighteningly clinical vision of the future – AI and all – still feels prophetic, more than 50 years on.—Phil de Semlyen
In case you couldn’t tell, we love movies – and if you’re reading this, presumably you do, too. Who doesn’t, really? That’s not a controversial statement. The controversy happens when you start talking about the greatest movies of all-time. Because while everyone loves getting lost in a film for two-plus hours, not everyone loves the same films. Tastes in cinema vary wildly, of course: one person’s Citizen Kane is another’s Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo, or vice versa. (Hey, it’s possible.)
That can make ranking the best movies ever made a fraught process. But the point of the list you’re about to peruse isn’t to solidify any sort of canon. It’s better to think of it as a roadmap. If you’re just beginning to fill in the gaps of your movie knowledge, this is the perfect way to identify the holes. And if you’re enough of a cinephile to have seen every movie on here already, it might cause you to rethink your own personal rankings. It’s a list that covers a lot of ground: over 100 years, multiple countries, and just about every genre you can imagine, from monolithic blockbusters to treasured cult classics, ridiculous comedies to freaky horror, sweaty-palmed thrillers to eye-popping action flicks. So get exploring – you may not like everything you see, but we’re confident you’ll find something that surprises you.
Written by Abbey Bender, Dave Calhoun, Phil de Semlyen, Bilge Ebiri, Ian Freer, Stephen Garrett, Tomris Laffly, Joshua Rothkopf, Anna Smith and Matthew Singer
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