Here are the Top Ten of the 500 Greatest Movies according to Empire Online. I depend on this website to remind me of films I may wish to buy, rent, or stream. To check out the complete list and all the other resources (including bios, reviews and interviews) on which movie buffs feast shamelessly, please click here.
#10 Fight Club (1999)
Director: David Fincher
It could have just been pre-millennial angst, but Fincher’s grimly ironic epic of maladjusted masculinity shows no sign of fading.
#9 Pulp Fiction (1994)
Director: Quentin Tarantino
Perfectly encapsulating the absolute-zero cool of the ‘Indiewood’ scene. QT has yet to better its excessive appeal.
#8 Singin’ In The Rain (1952)
Director: Stanley Donen and Gene Kelly
Appropriately, the highest scoring Hollywood musical is a musical about Hollywood — an admirably self-mocking one at that.
#7 Apocalypse Now (1979)
Director: Francis Ford Coppola
A movie so lauded and debated it has a ‘making of’ story as well-known as the film itself. Brando and Coppola are surely cinema’s ultimate teaming.
#6 GoodFellas (1990)
Director: Martin Scorsese
Where The Godfather positioned itself in the dark corridors of Mafiosi management, GoodFellas rolls around in blood and sawdust on the shopfloor.
#5 Jaws (1975)
Director: Steven Spielberg
Ah, the big one. Jaws’ influence still bites deep (consider that “Jaws on a…’” pitch gag), its melding of populist shriek-baiting with finely nuanced, character-driven drama ensuring popularity with punter, filmmaker and critic alike.
#4 The Shawshank Redemption (1994)
Director: Frank Darabont
A perennial readers’ fave, Shawshank has clearly maintained its resounding emotional throb. It’s a rare one, alright: a bloke’s weepie. And also the movie that spawned a thousand Morgan Freeman voiceovers.
#3 Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back (1980)
Director: Irvin Kershner
The modern movie cliché is that a sequel should be ‘darker’. Blame The Empire Strikes Back, a crowdpleaser that dared to end with a devastating double-whammy (“I am your father”; “I love you”/ “I know”). Yet don’t forget it’s also the funniest entry, basing its finest action sequences on a spaceship that keeps breaking down..
#2 Raiders Of The Lost Ark (1981)
Director: Steven Spielberg
Of the Spielbergs, Jaws and Schindler’s List traditionally score more highly, but it appears this year’s final jaunt for the man in the hat has re-whetted appetites for the pre-gopher Indy. Quite right, too; no adventure movie is quite so efficiently entertaining as Steve ’n’ George’s B-inspired blockbuster.
#1: The Godfather (1972)
Director: Francis Ford Coppola
A wedding. A horse’s head. A gun in a restaurant toilet. Sicily. Another wedding. A car bomb. A toll-booth. Orange peel. A baptism. A closed door.