Greatest Movies of All Time?

(popular culture)

Just sent an email to a friend and asked, " If you were taking an extended trip to Beta Pictoris, what five movies would you take?"

Then I ran into some trouble when I tried choosing which five I'd take with me so I checked The Top 250 Movies of All Time, as selected by IMDB.com users ... and realized it was time to get my eyes checked because I couldn't believe what I saw.

"The Shawshank Redemption" is the greatest movie of all time ... and "The Dark Knight" is number 3?  Like dude, is that seriously right?

Are IMDB users voting with a straight face, or with a crack pipe?

I mean, "Citizen Kane" is languishing at #29 (!) but "The Magnificent Ambersons," "The Rules of the Game" ... and "Battleship Potemkin" didn't even make the list ... although "Mystic River" and "The Nightmare before Christmas" did?

The first mention of any movie from the 1930s is Fritz Lang's "M" (hiding in the shadows at #34), and the oldest film included is "The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari" (1920) at #225.

Shoot.  I'm closing the curtains, turning off my phone and plugging "L'Atalante" into the DVD player right away.

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At IMDB "Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed" pegged a mere 3.6/10-star rating.  So far "Fireproof" has earned a 4.3/10-star rating ... and only 845 votes.

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Here's the top ten from the IMDB users' top 250 films of all time:

Rank Rating Title Votes

1. 9.1 The Shawshank Redemption (1994) 377,643

2. 9.1 The Godfather (1972) 321,343

3. 9.0 The Dark Knight (2008) 284,759

4. 9.0 The Godfather: Part II (1974) 182,372

5. 8.9 Buono, il brutto, il cattivo., Il (1966) 107,712

6. 8.9 Pulp Fiction (1994) 314,645

7. 8.8 Schindler's List (1993) 208,239

8. 8.8 One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975) 158,664

9. 8.8 Star Wars: Episode V - The Empire Strikes Back (1980) 219,068

10. 8.8 12 Angry Men (1957) 77,633

For comparison, in 2004 The Village Voice asked a group of "distinguished film critics" to choose their Top Ten Films of the Past Century: 

Title              Released        Director

1. Citizen Kane (1941, Orson Welles)

2. The Rules of the Game (1939, Jean Renoir)

3. Vertigo (1958, Alfred Hitchcock)

4. The Searchers (1956, John Ford)

5. The Man With a Movie Camera (1929, Dziga Vertov)

6.  Sunrise (1927, F.W. Murnau)

7. L'Atalante (1934, Jean Vigo)

8. The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928, Carl Theodor Dreyer)

9. Au Hasard Balthazar (1966, Robert Bresson)

10. Rashomon (1950, Akira Kurosawa)