{"id":775,"date":"2025-02-23T15:08:40","date_gmt":"2025-02-23T21:08:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/paoprod.com\/blog\/?p=775"},"modified":"2025-02-23T15:18:29","modified_gmt":"2025-02-23T21:18:29","slug":"updated-top-tier-movies-list","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/paoprod.com\/blog\/2025\/02\/23\/updated-top-tier-movies-list\/","title":{"rendered":"Updated top tier movies list"},"content":{"rendered":"A long, long time ago, when this site was in its earliest days, I decided to spotlight some of my favorite people, organizations, and things. Alongside descriptions of individual creators and supporters in the local arts scenes and notifications of upcoming local shows, I presented an overly long list of movies deemed to be personal favorites, organized chronologically by decade. This, along with a ton of other early material, eventually got the axe years later, casualties of a major website redesign which deemed them irrelevant. But a while back, a conversation with a friend about old movies and which ones would make it onto our individual top ten lists got the gears turning in my mind. Which titles on my earlier list really deserved a spot, given my current tastes and the changes in my perspective that have taken place over the last decade? This reappraisal is what has resulted in the list presented below.\r\n\r\n

\r\n\r\nIn 2008, I was extremely lenient in terms of how much I had like a film to justify its inclusion, and the final tally of titles was an absurd 503 entries. I've since adjusted my criteria and put together a collection of titles that more accurately reflects what I consider to be the \"top tier\" of everything I've seen over the years. While most of these are films I would rate 4.5 to 5 stars out of five, sprinkled in amongst them are some personal favorites that would rate lower but which nevertheless have strong appeal to me. This is not an exhaustive listing of every movie I think is good or at least entertaining. It's just a list of what I see as the cream of the crop.\r\n<\/p>\r\n\r\n

1900-1919<\/h3>\r\nThe Cheat (1915)
\r\nBroken Blossoms (1919)
\r\n\r\n

1920-1929<\/h3>\r\nThe Kid (1921)
\r\nFlesh and the Devil (1926)
\r\nMy Best Girl (1927)
\r\nSunrise: A Song of Two Humans (1927)
\r\nThe Kid Brother (1927)
\r\nLa Passion de Jeanne d'Arc [The Passion of Joan of Arc]<\/i> (1928)
\r\nOur Dancing Daughters (1928)
\r\nShow People (1928)
\r\nThe Crowd (1928)
\r\nThe Last Command (1928)
\r\nThe Wind (1928)
\r\n\r\n

1930-1939<\/h3>\r\nAll Quiet on the Western Front (1930)
\r\nHell's Heroes (1930)
\r\nCity Lights (1931)
\r\nFive Star Final (1931)
\r\nFrankenstein (1931)
\r\nThe Champ (1931)
\r\nScarface, the Shame of the Nation (1932)
\r\n42nd Street (1933)
\r\nThe Bitter Tea of General Yen (1933)
\r\nThe Invisible Man (1933)
\r\nModern Times (1936)
\r\nShow Boat (1936)
\r\nP\u00e9p\u00e9 le Moko (1937)
\r\nThe Adventures of Robin Hood (1938)
\r\nDestry Rides Again (1939)
\r\nThe Wizard of Oz (1939)
\r\n\r\n

1940-1949<\/h3>\r\nThe Philadelphia Story (1940)
\r\nCitizen Kane (1941)
\r\nCasablanca (1942)
\r\nVredens dag [Day of Wrath]<\/i> (1943)
\r\nDouble Indemnity (1944)
\r\nDetour (1945)
\r\nLadri di biciclette [The Bicycle Thief]<\/i> (1948)
\r\nXiao cheng zhi chun [Spring in a Small Town]<\/i> (1948)
\r\nAll the King's Men (1949)
\r\nWhite Heat (1949)
\r\n\r\n

1950-1959<\/h3>\r\nSunset Boulevard (1950)
\r\nA Streetcar Named Desire (1951)
\r\nFr\u00f6ken Julie [Miss Julie]<\/i> (1951)
\r\nThe African Queen (1951)
\r\nHigh Noon (1952)
\r\nThe Bad and the Beautiful (1952)
\r\nShichinin no samurai [Seven Samurai]<\/i> (1954)
\r\nThe Night of the Hunter (1955)
\r\n12 Angry Men (1957)
\r\nDet Sjunde inseglet [The Seventh Seal]<\/i> (1957)
\r\nThe Defiant Ones (1958)
\r\nTouch of Evil (1958)
\r\nVertigo (1958)
\r\nLes Quatre cents coups [The 400 Blows]<\/i> (1959)
\r\nNorth by Northwest (1959)
\r\n\r\n

1960-1969<\/h3>\r\nInherit the Wind (1960)
\r\nJules et Jim [Jules and Jim]<\/i> (1962)
\r\nThe Miracle Worker (1962)
\r\nTo Kill a Mockingbird (1962)
\r\nPersona (1966)
\r\nIn the Heat of the Night (1967)
\r\nNight of the Living Dead (1968)
\r\n\r\n

1970-1979<\/h3>\r\nViskningar och rop [Cries and Whispers]<\/i> (1970)
\r\nPaper Moon (1973)
\r\nRocky (1976)
\r\n\r\n

1980-1989<\/h3>\r\nBack to the Future (1985)
\r\nThe Return of the Living Dead (1985)
\r\nRobocop (1987)
\r\nBeetlejuice (1988)
\r\nWho Framed Roger Rabbit (1988)
\r\n\r\n

1990-1999<\/h3>\r\nCyrano de Bergerac (1990)
\r\nDances With Wolves (Director's Cut) (1990)
\r\nTerminator 2 (1991)
\r\nThe Silence of the Lambs (1991)
\r\nThe Crying Game (1992)
\r\nSchindler's List (1993)
\r\nThe Piano (1993)
\r\nBoogie Nights (1997)
\r\n\r\n

2000-present<\/h3>\r\nSpider-Man 2 (2004)
\r\n\r\n\r\n
\r\n
\r\nAll original material on this page is © 2024 Peter Orozco (all rights reserved).
\r\nHistorical photo of Blind Lemon Jefferson is in the public domain.<\/span>\r\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A long, long time ago, when this site was in its earliest days, I decided to spotlight some of my favorite people, organizations, and things. 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