When it comes to movie recommendations, there are few better places to look than to IMDb’s list of the 250 best movies ever made. With anybody being able to rate a movie out of ten on the website, it collects opinions from viewers with vastly different tastes.
Being that there are thousands of great movies and there’s only room for 250 of them, it may not come as a surprise that some personal favorites don’t appear on the list. However, there are a fair few American classics, event movies, and cult hits that people would be shocked didn't make the cut.
Drive (2011)
Though Drive might arguably have a shallow plot according to some critics, the movie was able to amaze audiences purely with its aesthetically pleasing shots of LA.
The movie is full of neon-drenched frames, female-led disco music, that iconic Scorpion jacket, and that hot pink font. It is not only one of the best heist movies of the 2010s, but it’s one of the most distinctive and visionary movies of the 21st century.
The Avengers (2012)
At one point, The Avengers was on the Top 250 list, and it was even pretty high up, but it has since been edged out. The lack of interest in the movie is most likely due to the MCU having expanded at an exponential rate and releasing much more varied movies in the time since, and it has made fans look at the first Avengers a little differently.
But amidst the Infinity War/Endgame excitement, people may have forgotten some of the huge things that happened in the movie; it was the first film that put all those heroes in a room together, it had the battle of New York, and it even featured Black Widow riding on an alien vessel!
Titanic (1997)
Inarguably one of the most iconic doomed romances in movies, Jack and Rose’s love story wrapped up in a disaster film of epic proportions is one of the most ingenious creations in cinema history.
The film remained the highest-grossing movie of all time (until it was knocked off by James Cameron’s Avatar) and it even made hundreds of millions of dollars when it was re-released in 3D. Titanic might not be the most historically accurate movie ever, but it still managed to take home 11 Oscars.
The Irishman (2019)
Being one of the best gangster movies of the past 15 years, The Irishman marked many returns. It was Martin Scorsese’s first gangster movie since 2006’s The Departed, and most notably, his first movie with Robert De Niro since 1995’s Casino.
Just like movies such as The Avengers and Titanic, The Irishman was an event, as it’s a 3.5-hour epic that spans decades and had a budget of hundreds of millions of dollars. The movie received overwhelming praise from critics and has a rare 96% score on Rotten Tomatoes, but audiences just mustn’t have been able to stomach the run time or the arguably botched de-aging effects.
Rushmore (1998)
Wes Anderson is at least represented on the Top 250, as the modern classic The Grand Budapest Hotel is placed at #189, but his 1998 hit Rushmore doesn’t come anywhere near.
Rushmore is often regarded as Anderson’s best movie, as a boy genius is at odds with his teacher/father figure when they comically fight over the same woman. Jason Schwartzman and Bill Murray have amazing chemistry, it has a powerfully nostalgic soundtrack, and as is every Anderson movie, the shots are perfectly symmetrical.
Blade Runner (1982)
Blade Runner infamously bombed at the box office and it’s had many false starts with a handful of vastly different versions, but in the 38 years since the movie’s initial release, it has gone on to become a cult hit and even get a sequel that cost hundreds of millions to produce.
The cult classic is beloved for the way it puts twists on the classic film noir genre and features one of the most talked-about endings in movie history. Blade Runner is a one of a kind movie and the way it looks cannot be replicated.
Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (1986)
There are loads of coming of age movies whose absence from the list comes as a shock, many of them being 80s movies and some of them even being from the same director, but this John Hughes classic truly deserves a place on IMDb's top 250.
There might be several things about the movie that haven’t aged well, but it’s a product of its time and it still has a strong and meaningful message to teenagers. Ferris Bueller’s Day Off is filled with genius scenes full of pranks and introspective museum visits.
La La Land (2016)
Being one of the most underrated musicals not released by Disney, La La Land captured the hearts of millions, and with Ryan Gosling’s effortless cool, the movie even had the harshest people sobbing by the end of the movie.
The songs are catchy, the film is aesthetically stunning, and it even opened the doors for the success that The Greatest Showman and A Star Is Born saw. With an 8.0 on the website, it’s just shy of getting on to the list.
Magnolia (1999)
Magnolia is Paul Thomas Anderson’s magnum opus. After the surprise success of his previous movie, Boogie Nights, the studio offered PTA full creative freedom for his next project, and that resulted in a three hour and fifteen-minute multi-stranded epic drama starring Tom Cruise, Julianne Moore, Phillip Hoffman, and so many more.
The character of Frank Mackey, a pick-up artist and motivational speaker with major daddy issues, even earned Cruise his last Academy Award nomination.
Do The Right Thing (1989)
Do The Right Thing famously lost Best Picture to Driving Miss Daisy at The Academy Awards, but time has shown which of the two is the better movie. Do The Right Thing is a movie that everybody should watch.
It’s a fascinating, even enlightening, look at not just racism, but many prejudices that people have in their own social groups. The fact that it doesn’t feature in the top 250 is a travesty, as the film’s message is completely timeless.