The 50 best movies of all time, according to critics

marlon brando the godfather

Many of the notable lists that rank the greatest movies of all time — like the American Film Institute's "100 Years ... 100 Movies" from 1998 — have enlisted thousands of movie-industry names to come up with a consensus on the well-established classics.

When film critics are the only factor taken into account for such a list, however, the results skew in unexpected directions.

To find out which films have been the most critically acclaimed in history, we turned to the reviews aggregator Metacritic for its ranking of the all-time greatest movies, which scores films by their composite critical reception.

The resulting list includes modern masterpieces, like "Moonlight" and "Pan's Labyrinth," in contention with classics like "The Godfather."

Here are the 50 best movies of all time, according to the critics on Metacritic:

50. "Maborosi" (1994)

Critic score: 94/100

User score: N/A

Plot summary: "A young woman's husband apparently commits suicide without warning or reason, leaving behind his wife and infant."

49. "Carlos" (2010)

Critic score: 94/100

User score: 7.8/10

Plot summary: "The story of Venezuelan revolutionary Ilich Ramírez Sánchez, who founded a worldwide terrorist organization and raided the 1975 OPEC meeting."

48. "The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King" (2003)

Critic score: 94/100

User score: 9.1/10

Plot summary: "Gandalf and Aragorn lead the World of Men against Sauron's army to draw his gaze from Frodo and Sam as they approach Mount Doom with the One Ring."

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