What is the greatest movie of all time?
2 October 2026 · Movies
On GOATvs right now
The world's places and splits, from everyone's votes. They move as the votes come in.
- The Shawshank Redemption #1
- The Godfather #7
- Citizen Kane #633
- The Dark Knight #3
- Pulp Fiction #9
- The Godfather vs The Godfather Part II 61% – 39%
- The Shawshank Redemption vs The Godfather 65% – 35%
- The Dark Knight vs Pulp Fiction 59% – 41%
Ask a film critic, an Oscar voter and a friend on a sofa which movie is the greatest ever made, and you will often get three different answers. Each group has its own way of counting, and each has crowned a different winner over the years. GOATvs counts a fourth way: two films side by side, pick one, and let everyone's picks add up to a single list. The box above shows where some of the usual contenders stand right now.
The critics' answer has a long paper trail. Since 1952 the British magazine Sight and Sound has asked critics every ten years to name the greatest films. Citizen Kane, made by Orson Welles in his mid-twenties and released in 1941, topped that poll five times in a row, from 1962 to 2002. Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo replaced it in 2012, and in 2022 the top spot went to Chantal Akerman's Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles, a quiet 1975 film that surprised many readers. The American Film Institute's lists of the 100 greatest American movies, in 1998 and again in 2007, also put Citizen Kane first.
If there is one film that critics and the wider public both keep near the top, it is The Godfather. Francis Ford Coppola's 1972 crime saga won the Academy Award for Best Picture and climbed to second place on the AFI's 2007 list. Its sequel, The Godfather Part II, became the first sequel to win Best Picture, which is why the two films are one of the most argued-over pairs in cinema: many people who love the first think the second is even better.
Fans have their own favourite. The Shawshank Redemption was a box-office disappointment in 1994 and won none of its seven Oscar nominations, yet it found its audience on video and television and has sat at or near the top of IMDb's user-rated Top 250 for well over a decade, usually just ahead of The Godfather. Its story of hope inside a prison is the kind of film people rewatch, recommend and defend.
The same year gave us Pulp Fiction, which won the Palme d'Or at Cannes and changed the way a generation of filmmakers told stories, with its loops in time and its talk-heavy scenes. And The Dark Knight showed in 2008 that a superhero film could be taken as seriously as any crime drama. Heath Ledger won a posthumous Oscar for his Joker, and the film's absence from that year's Best Picture shortlist is often credited with the Academy's decision to widen the category beyond five nominees.
Why do the answers differ so much? Critics' polls reward influence and craft, so older films that changed the language of cinema rise to the top. Fan ratings lean towards films people love to rewatch, which tilts them to the last few decades. Awards measure one year at a time, and they miss films that only grow in reputation. Head-to-head voting has its own character: it asks a simpler question, this one or that one, and it is hard to vote for a film you have never seen, so famous films people actually watch do well.
There will never be a final answer, and that is the fun of it. The best way to see what the world thinks is to join in: try The Godfather vs The Godfather Part II, then look at the full Top 100 movies of all time, ranked by everyone, or the lists for crime and thrillers and drama.
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