This is a list of my 250 favorite movies of all time. This is an ever changing list but this is the list as of June 2025.

I first joined Letterboxd in the summer of 2020. The pandemic was well underway, and it was the only summer in the last decade and a half that I didn't spend at camp, since it was closed down. I had nothing really to do. I had a really bad job working for a COVID call center, where I had to just call twenty or thirty people a day and tell them they had been in contact with someone who tested positive for COVID. It was an exhausting and draining job and I hated it. Around that same time, a friend of mine, Alex, told me about this site since he knew I was really into movies.

I've always been into movies. Ever since I was a kid, I've loved movies. They've long been a passion and comfort to me, and before joining, I'd probably watched a few thousand over my life. A few years before joining LB, I'd really gotten into watching movies on a regular basis. Mostly Oscar nominees, famous classics, and new releases, but I'd try to average around two to three hundred films a year. That number has skyrocketed since joining LB to around six hundred a year. In fact, just recently, I crossed the 3,000 films threshold here.

I love films. They are my life. What I want to dedicate my life too. They are one of the greatest passions in my life. Not just watching them, but making them, studying them, genuinely just living through these films. There is no higher artform for me than cinema. And LB has helped me foster that passion in a way I could really only scratch the surface for prior. Through the countless lists I've looked through that have helped me discover new movies to the challenges I do every year that push me to find them to the friends I've made through this site and related social media platforms that I am able to then discuss those movies with. I have learned so much since joining LB, more than I ever could have imagined. And there's still so much more to learn.

This list is meant as a milestone. A celebration of my five years here. The first thing I did when I joined this site back in 2020 was make lists. I made Top 10 lists of every year. Then Top 25s of every decade. And finally, a Top 100 of All Time list. But here on LB, we have of course the Top 250 of All Time. And so, as a fun five year anniversary marker, I thought it would be fun to expand my existing Top 100 and make my own Top 250 of All Time.

This is that list. My Top 250 Films of All Time. I will remake this list every five years, rather than every year. And perhaps I'll expand it every five years as well. We'll see. Maybe one day I'll make a Top 500 or even a Top 1,000.

The newest film on the list is Hurry Up Tomorrow (249) while the oldest is Cabiria (144).

Every decade starting from the 1910's is represented on this list:
1910's: 2
1920's: 10
1930's: 14
1940's: 15
1950's: 22
1960's: 21
1970's: 19
1980's: 32
1990's: 23
2000's: 38
2010's: 24
2020's: 30
Along with this, 2024 is the most represented year with 9 films. The most recent year without a film present is 1925.

32 countries are represented on this list:
USA: 173
UK: 28
Japan: 28
France: 18
Germany: 10
Mexico: 8
South Korea: 6
Sweden: 6
Italy: 6
Taiwan: 4
Canada: 4
New Zealand: 3
Australia: 3
Spain: 3
Ireland: 3
Hungary: 2
Switzerland: 2
Luxembourg: 2
South Africa: 2
Denmark: 2
Guatemala: 2
West Germany: 2
Belgium: 2
USSR: 2
Hong Kong: 2
Botswana: 1
India: 1
Czechoslovakia: 1
Brazil: 1
Peru: 1
China:
Norway: 1

195 directors are represented on this list. The following are directors with multiple films on this list:
Stanley Kubrick: 6 (Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, 2001: A Space Odyssey, The Shining, Lolita, Barry Lyndon, Paths of Glory)
Charlie Chaplin: 6 (The Kid, Limelight, The Great Dictator, City Lights, Modern Times, Monsieur Verdoux)
Martin Scorsese: 6 (Silence, The Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story by Martin Scorsese, Hugo, Taxi Driver, The Departed, The Aviator)
Zack Snyder: 5 (Zack Snyder's Justice League, Watchmen, Rebel Moon: Part Two - The Curse of Forgiveness, Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice)
Hayao Miyazaki: 4 (Spirited Away, Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, Princess Mononoke, My Neighbor Totoro)
John Carpenter: 4 (Halloween, In the Mouth of Madness, The Thing, Prince of Darkness)
Billy Wilder: 4 (Sunset Boulevard, Double Indemnity, Ace in the Hole, Some Like it Hot)
Akira Kurosawa: 4 (Seven Samurai, Ikiru, Ran, Kagemusha)
Francis Ford Coppola: 3 (The Godfather: Part II, Megalopolis, Apocalypse Now)
Bong Joon-Ho: 3 (Parasite, Snowpiercer, Memories of Murder)
Orson Welles: 3 (Chimes at Midnight, Citizen Kane, The Trial)
Stanley Kramer: 3 (Inherit the Wind, The Defiant Ones, Judgment at Nuremberg)
Fritz Lang: 3 (Die Nibelungen: Kriemhild's Revenge, Metropolis, You Only Live Once)
Wes Anderson: 3 (Asteroid City, Moonrise Kingdom, the Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou)
Howard Hawks: 3 (Red River, His Girl Friday, Bringing Up Baby)
William Wyler: 3 (The Children's Hour, Wuthering Heights, The Heiress)
Peter Jackson: 2 (The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers)
Joel Coen: 2 (Raising Arizona, The Big Lebowski)
Adam Elliott: 2 (Mary & Max, Memoir of a Snail)
Edward Yang: 2 (Yi Yi, A Brighter Summer Day)
Terrence Malick: 2 (The Tree of Life, The New World)
Elia Kazan: 2 (On the Waterfront, Baby Doll)
Peter Weir: 2 (Dead Poets Society, The Truman Show)
Ingmar Bergman: 2 (The Seventh Seal, Persona)
Terry Jones: 2 (Life of Brian, Monty Python & the Holy Grail)
Jayro Bustamante: 2 (La Llorona, Rita)
Gary Trousdale: 2 (The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Beauty and the Beast)
Kirk Wise: 2 (The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Beauty and the Beast)
Ernst Lubitsch: 2 (The Doll, To Be or Not To Be)
Rouben Mamoulian: 2 (Applause, Love Me Tonight)
Masaki Kobayashi: 2 (Harakiri, Samurai Rebellion)
Julie Taymor: 2 (Across the Universe, Titus)
Michael Curtiz: 2 (Casablanca, Angels with Dirty Faces)
Miloš Forman: 2 (One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Ragtime)
George Lucas: 2 (Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith, Star Wars)
Bruno Dumont: 2 (Jeannette: The Childhood of Joan of Arc, Joan of Arc)
Alfred Hitchcock: 2 (Notorious, Rebecca)
Nicholas Ray: 2 (Rebel Without a Cause, Johnny Guitar)
Park Chan-Wook: 2 (Lady Vengeance, Oldboy)
Steven Spielberg: 2 (The Fabelmans, Jurassic Park)
The most popular directors on the Letterboxd 250 that are not represented here are Abbas Kiarostami, Quentin Tarantino, Wim Wenders, Satyajit Ray, and Yasujirō Ozu.

These films earned a total of 511 Oscar nominations and won 150 of them. These nominations include 45 for Best Picture, 9 of which won. Those nine are The Godfather: Part II (2), The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King (10), Parasite (11), On the Waterfront (36), Casablanca (127), One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (129) Forrest Gump (194), The Departed (200), and Rebecca (245). The only feature category to not be represented here at all is Documentary Feature. A winner from every other category is on this list.

The average length of the list is 143.12 minutes with the longest film being Shoah (240) at 566 minutes and the shortest being Look Back (43) at 58 minutes.

The average letterbox score of the list is 3.95 with the highest rated film being Harakiri (115) with a 4.7 and the lowest rated film being Rebel Moon - Part Two: The Curse of Forgiveness (71) with a 1.9. I personally gave the top 58 of these films 5 stars and the rest 4.5.

66 of these films are also on the Letterboxd Top 250, including 5 of the Top 10. 47 of these films are not eligible for the Top 250 either because they are documentaries or because they don't have enough ratings.

145 of these are films I first watched since joining Letterboxd. The highest ranked one is Babylon (3).