Unfortunately, AllMovie.com is not what it used to be, and I mean that literally. As I will explain below, AllMovie has “switched data providers” and now everything that we used to be able to access 24/7 on the website — ratings, reviews, biographies, metadata — is no longer there.

This page used to serve as a useful complementary guide to the AllMovie database, allowing cinephiles to quickly view a well-ordered list of the films AllMovie considered the best. I suppose this page still technically does that, but only from an archival standpoint.

If you would prefer to skip the behind-the-scenes details, use these links below to jump down to the most relevant part of the page to access the list of movies and the archived links to their reviews and directors.

Navigation

Overview

The Silent Era
The 1930s
The 1940s
The 1950s
The 1960s
The 1970s
The 1980s
The 1990s
The 2000s
The 2010s
The 2020s

Animated Films

Documentary Films

Performance Films

Miniseries
Series

Overview: A New Era

In March 2024, AllMovie officially announced that it is “evolving” — in other words, it is shedding any connection to the database of reviews, biographies, and metadata that made the website so valuable for so many years.

For those not aware of how AllMusic and AllMovie work behind the scenes, the writers contribute to a database — a database that has changed ownership multiple times over the years, and as of this moment is owned by Xperi, a technology company that owns familiar A/V brands such as DTS, HD Radio, and IMAX Enhanced.

The Power of Metadata

Xperi came to own the AllMusic and AllMovie databases through a merger with TiVo in 2020. The metadata in these databases has formed the basis for much of how we have discovered and interacted with music and movie content for decades.

The algorithms of entertainment apps and streaming services mine this metadata — not just what is officially credited on a work but also curated attributes like genres, subgenres, themes, moods, tones, etc. — to better serve the user what he or she is looking for.

What About the websites?

The websites at AllMusic.com and AllMovie.com have different ownership (currently NetAktion), and merely license the information/metadata from the databases owned by Xperi (just like streaming services do, FYI).

While editors are credited thousands of times on reviews and biographies on AllMusic.com, they are actually employed by Xperi. The same is true for the editors on AllMovie.com.

How AllMovie Has Changed

Or at least it was. This brings us to AllMovie.com’s latest evolution. The ratings, reviews, biographies, themes, moods, etc. some of us have grown to rely on are gone across the website. According to AllMovie’s announcement, the website has “moved to a different data provider.”

What this obviously means is they can no longer justify the cost of licensing data from the Xperi database. I have long suspected that AllMovie doesn’t get nearly the amount of traffic as AllMusic, and according to Ahrefs, this is indeed the case.

How Much Traffic Does AllMusic Generate?

According to Ahrefs, AllMusic.com generates approximately 415,000 monthly visits from organic search in the United States:

organic search stats for allmusic.com according to ahrefs

How Much Traffic Does AllMovie Generate?

Contrast this with AllMovie.com, which according to Ahrefs generates approximately 29,300 monthly visits from organic search in the United States:

organic search stats for allmovie.com according to ahrefs

What Does This Mean?

This is obviously a vast difference, which is no doubt reflected in both the ad revenue and membership revenue collected.

Clearly, a decision was made to go in another direction by selecting a different data provider than the database the website is known for using.

What Happens to the List of Movies on This Page?

Now that the database owned by TiVo can no longer be accessed publicly via AllMovie.com (or anywhere else, for that matter), the list of 5-star movies in that database are now frozen in time right here.

Obviously, this is both good and bad. It’s nice to have a historical record, but a bit of a bummer to know that the list will never be added to again.

Can I Still Read the Reviews of the 5-Star Movies?

For the most part, yes. Since I still had the original links saved, I was able to find most of the reviews on the Wayback Machine (Internet Archive) and create links to those archived reviews.

Therefore, you can still use the list below to navigate to the review page (or just the overview page if an archive of the review page doesn’t exist) or to the director biography page.

Is the List on This Page Now Presented Any Differently?

Nope. Feature films are still sorted by decade, and other categories are still separated out like they used to be.

On desktop devices there is now a navigational set of tabs to the left of this text with “jump links” under them that allow you to instantly move to the section of the list that most interests you.

Simply click on the category tab (Features, Animation, Documentaries, Performances, Miniseries, or Series) to reveal the list of jump links for that category, and then click on the link to jump down to the corresponding section.

feature films

Features

With the development of theatrical exhibition at the beginning of the 20th century, the feature film emerged as the primary source of entertainment within the evening’s program.

Of course, as the film industry became more commercially refined by the end of the 20th century, the feature film eventually became the only entertainment included with the purchase of a movie ticket.

In cinematic terms, features generally consist of live-action footage staged for a camera that is later edited into a narrative. Features do not include documentaries or animated films, which are cinematically different.

The Silent Era

The 1930s

The 1940s