In June of 1998, the American Film Institute aired a special on CBS where it counted down the 100 greatest American movies ever made.  And although I had never heard of films like Citizen Kane, Casablanca or Vertigo prior to its airing, I made it my mission to watch the films on its list – even though films like The Godfather, Goodfellas and Pulp Fiction would have to wait, since I wasn’t old enough to rent them.

That single episode sparked an interest in film for me and shaped my taste in movies.  This website is my way of honoring the great movies that have been released throughout history, and my hope is that it will inspire others the way that the American Film Institute special inspired me.

Although time is always a struggle and both updating the site and compiling lists is extremely time consuming, it is my hope to extend the lists to include rankings for each year, dating back to 1922, thanks to the help of The Film Daily‘s annual polls, which ran from 1922 to 1969.

Along with The Film Daily, there are two additional people who deserve loads of thanks: Alex Fung, who in the late 90’s compiled many lists on Geocities and Engin Palabyik, who from 2001 to 2005 created a site far superior to this one.  When his site discontinued in 2006, it left a void for me that I needed to fill, which led to the obsession that is criticstop10.com.