For the Awards/Box Office List, ratings were based on a 90-point base scale with potential bonuses applied for films that appear in the list of 1000 highest grossing films of all time and for films receiving nominations and wins from a few different awards shows. The base scale consists of a combination of the Letterboxd rating for the film (added twice), plus the IMDB Rating, plus the Metacritic score for the film adjusted to a 10-point rather than 100 point maximum and multiplied by three, plus the Rotten Tomatoes audience score adjusted to a 10-point maximum, plus the Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer adjusted to a 10-point maximum. From there, the highest grossing films gained bonuses from .01 points to 10 points based on their position on the list of 1000 films from Box Office Mojo. Then films receiving SAG nominations, BAFTA nominations, and Golden Globe Nominations were given one bonus point per nomination and an extra point for each win (with 2 extra points given to films that won the Best Motion Picture awards at the Golden Globes rather than just 1). Each Oscar Nomination a film received was worth two points, while wins for Acting, Directing, Animated Film, and Song received 2 bonus points and wins for all other categories except Best Picture received 1 bonus point. The Best Picture winner from each year at the Oscars received 5 extra points for achieving the highest award possible for a film. The resulting highest rating in this list was 160.17, and the lowest rating received by a film that still made the list was 60.1.

The Critical Success List ratings were on a 100-point scale with no possible bonuses. The scale applied a similar approach to the Awards/Box Office List with only a few tweaks. First, the Metacritic score was multiplied by four rather than five, due to its analytical nature compared to the simply positive vs. negative nature of the Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer. The other major difference in the Critical List is that films do not receive inherently lower scores if they are missing one of the five ratings that comprise the system. In the case of a missing score, that score’s total possible points would be deducted from 100, then the films rating would be scored as a percentage of the new possible total (e.g., a film lacking a Metacritic score would have its other scores added normally and taken as a percentage of 60). The resulting highest rating in this list was 97.1, and the lowest rating received by a film that still made the list was 68.3.

In the Audience/Critics List, ratings were also based on a 100-point scale with no possible bonuses. The scale took all five of the ratings used in the previous two lists and multiplied each rating by two (or four in the case of the Letterboxd score). In the same way as the Critical Success List, films missing scores would be graded on a percentile basis. The resulting highest rating in this list was 95.4, and the lowest rating received by a film that still made the list was 67.8.

After compiling the three lists, scores from each list were averaged, with the resulting ratings compiled into a list of many films. The 1001 highest rated are included in the list of films that this blog will cover. Ties will all be covered in the same article, ranked at their highest position on the list. The lowest composite score on the list (a 2-way tie for 1000th) is 81.23, and the highest composite score (ostensibly the best film of all time) is 114.61.

It is estimated that more than 800,000 films have been made in history, meaning that this list is a collection of about the top 0.1% of films ever made. Films on this list are in the 99.9th percentile of films ever, so a low ranking is still an incredibly high ranking. Every year, after the Oscars, the list will be updated with the films from the previous year that rate high enough replacing the films at the bottom of the list, meaning that many of these early posts will not actually remain on the list after a year. Please enjoy Watch This Film blog’s list of 1001 Greatest Films of All Time, which is hopefully as objective as it possibly can be and use the reviews to your advantage when determining what great films are best suited for your enjoyment, but also remember that the reviews are mostly subjective and that everyone’s movie opinions are their own. If you enjoy films that are not on this list, that is not a bad thing; there are literally more than 800,000 other movies out there. This is not a definitive list of the only films that should be watched, merely a way of broadening watch options for those who have only watched blockbusters, family films, and various other Disney products to this point.