🏆 The Exemplary Films Rankings

#1

⭐ 18.5

The Godfather

1972 • Francis Ford Coppola

📊 9.2/10 ⏱️ 175 min 📝 8 lists

Appears on: Sight & Sound Critics Poll, AFI Top 100, Academy Award Best Picture, National Film Registry, NY Times Best 1000, Rotten Tomatoes Top 100, IMDB Top 250, Box Office All Time

The Godfather "Don" Vito Corleone is the head of the Corleone mafia family in New York. He is at the...

#2

⭐ 11.0

The Godfather Part II

1974 • Francis Ford Coppola

📊 0.0/10 ⏱️ 202 min 📝 6 lists

Appears on: AFI Top 100, Academy Award Best Picture, National Film Registry, NY Times Best 1000, Rotten Tomatoes Top 100, IMDB Top 250

The continuing saga of the Corleone crime family tells the story of a young Vito Corleone growing up...

#3

⭐ 10.9

Apocalypse Now

1979 • Francis Ford Coppola

📊 0.0/10 ⏱️ 147 min 📝 6 lists

Appears on: Sight & Sound Critics Poll, AFI Top 100, Cannes Palme d'Or Winners, NY Times Best 1000, Rotten Tomatoes Top 100, IMDB Top 250

It is the height of the war in Vietnam, and U.S. Army Captain Willard is sent by Colonel Lucas and a...

#4

⭐ 7.4

Star Wars

1977 • George Lucas

📊 8.6/10 ⏱️ 121 min 📝 4 lists

Appears on: AFI Top 100, National Film Registry, NY Times Best 1000, Box Office All Time

The Imperial Forces, under orders from cruel Darth Vader, hold Princess Leia hostage in their effort...

#5

⭐ 7.2

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

1975 • Miloš Forman

📊 0.0/10 ⏱️ 133 min 📝 4 lists

Appears on: AFI Top 100, Academy Award Best Picture, Rotten Tomatoes Top 100, IMDB Top 250

McMurphy has a criminal past and has once again gotten himself into trouble and is sentenced by the ...

#6

⭐ 4.9

Annie Hall

1977 • Woody Allen

📊 0.0/10 ⏱️ 93 min 📝 3 lists

Appears on: AFI Top 100, Academy Award Best Picture, IMDB Top 250

Alvy Singer, a forty year old twice divorced, neurotic, intellectual Jewish New York City stand-up c...

#7

⭐ 4.2

Chinatown

1974 • Roman Polanski

📊 8.1/10 ⏱️ 130 min 📝 3 lists

Appears on: AFI Top 100, NY Times Best 1000, IMDB Top 250

In 1937 Los Angeles, private investigator Jake 'J.J.' Gittes specializes in cheating-spouse cases. H...

#8

⭐ 4.2

Jaws

1975 • Steven Spielberg

📊 0.0/10 ⏱️ 124 min 📝 3 lists

Appears on: AFI Top 100, National Film Registry, Box Office All Time

It's a hot summer on Amity Island, a small community whose main business is its beaches. When new Sh...

#9

⭐ 4.0

Taxi Driver

1976 • Martin Scorsese

📊 8.2/10 ⏱️ 114 min 📝 4 lists

Appears on: Sight & Sound Critics Poll, AFI Top 100, Cannes Palme d'Or Winners, NY Times Best 1000

Travis Bickle is an ex-Marine and Vietnam War veteran living in New York City. As he suffers from in...

#10

⭐ 3.6

The Deer Hunter

1979 • Michael Cimino

📊 0.0/10 ⏱️ 183 min 📝 3 lists

Appears on: AFI Top 100, Academy Award Best Picture, IMDB Top 250

Michael, Steven, and Nick are three best friends who enjoy going deer hunting quite often. They get ...

#11

⭐ 3.2

The Sting

1973 • George Roy Hill

📊 0.0/10 ⏱️ 129 min 📝 2 lists

Appears on: Academy Award Best Picture, National Film Registry

Johnny Hooker, a small time grifter, unknowingly steals from Doyle Lonnegan, a big time crime boss, ...

#12

⭐ 2.7

The French Connection

1971 • William Friedkin

📊 7.7/10 ⏱️ 104 min 📝 2 lists

Appears on: AFI Top 100, Academy Award Best Picture

William Friedkin's gritty police drama portrays two tough New York City cops trying to intercept a h...

#13

⭐ 2.4

Rocky

1976 • John G. Avildsen

📊 8.1/10 ⏱️ 120 min 📝 2 lists

Appears on: AFI Top 100, Academy Award Best Picture

Rocky Balboa is a struggling boxer trying to make the big time, working as a debt collector for a pi...

#14

⭐ 2.3

Patton

1970 • Franklin J. Schaffner

📊 7.9/10 ⏱️ 172 min 📝 2 lists

Appears on: AFI Top 100, Academy Award Best Picture

"Patton" tells the tale of General George S. Patton, famous tank commander of World War II. The film...

#15

⭐ 2.3

Network

1976 • Sidney Lumet

📊 8.1/10 ⏱️ 121 min 📝 3 lists

Appears on: Sight & Sound Critics Poll, AFI Top 100, NY Times Best 1000

In the 1970s, terrorist violence is the stuff of networks' nightly news programming and the corporat...

#16

⭐ 2.2

Nashville

1975 • Robert Altman

📊 7.6/10 ⏱️ 160 min 📝 3 lists

Appears on: Sight & Sound Critics Poll, NY Times Best 1000, IMDB Top 250

Over the course of a few hectic days, numerous interrelated people prepare for a political conventio...

#17

⭐ 1.6

Mirror

1975 • Andrei Tarkovsky

📊 7.9/10 ⏱️ 107 min 📝 1 lists

Appears on: Sight & Sound Critics Poll

A dying man in his forties remembers his past. His childhood, his mother, the war, personal moments ...

#18

⭐ 1.5

Kramer vs. Kramer

1979 • Robert Benton

📊 7.8/10 ⏱️ 105 min 📝 1 lists

Appears on: Academy Award Best Picture

Ted Kramer is a career man for whom his work comes before his family. His wife Joanna cannot take th...

#19

⭐ 1.3

The Conversation

1974 • Francis Ford Coppola

📊 7.7/10 ⏱️ 113 min 📝 1 lists

Appears on: Cannes Palme d'Or Winners

A paranoid, secretive surveillance expert has a crisis of conscience when he suspects that the coupl...

#20

⭐ 1.1

A Clockwork Orange

1971 • Stanley Kubrick

📊 8.2/10 ⏱️ 136 min 📝 1 lists

Appears on: AFI Top 100

Protagonist Alex DeLarge is an "ultraviolent" youth in futuristic Britain. As with all luck, his eve...

#21

⭐ 1.1

Stalker

1979 • Andrei Tarkovsky

📊 8.0/10 ⏱️ 162 min 📝 1 lists

Appears on: Sight & Sound Critics Poll

A guide leads two men through an area known as the Zone to find a room that grants wishes.

#22

⭐ 0.9

M*A*S*H

1970 • Robert Altman

📊 7.3/10 ⏱️ 116 min 📝 1 lists

Appears on: AFI Top 100

The personnel at the 4077 MASH unit deal with the horrors of the Korean War and the stresses faced i...

#23

⭐ 0.8

Grease

1978 • Randal Kleiser

📊 7.2/10 ⏱️ 110 min 📝 1 lists

Appears on: National Film Registry

Good girl Sandy Olsson and greaser Danny Zuko fell in love over the summer. When they unexpectedly d...

#24

⭐ 0.8

All the President's Men

1976 • Alan J. Pakula

📊 7.9/10 ⏱️ 138 min 📝 1 lists

Appears on: IMDB Top 250

"The Washington Post" reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein uncover the details of the Watergate...