The 100% Club – Movies so good not even Rotten Tomatoes can complain

The Best of the Best of the Best, Sir!

I could easily make a list of movies we gave an A+ to at RunPee, but I thought I’d reach out and see what movies the rest of the world thinks can do no wrong. With us, sometimes we go in with low expectations and walk about with an unexpectedly happy grade. And sometimes we inexplicably find we expected to be good was overhyped and ultimately disappointing.

Checking a conglomerate review site like Rotten Tomatoes takes our subjectiveness out of the equation. This leaves an even playing field for the elite films that Rotten Tomatoes considers members of the 100% Club.

Also, at RunPee we haven’t seen everything, so this covers our bladders butts.

What movies are SO GOOD that everyone agrees is perfect? What films really ARE all that and a bag of chips?

Old Movies — really great or just grandfathered in?

Here is the official 100% Club at Rotten Tomatoes.

It has me confused. Why are mostly old films on this list? Was more care taken in filming in those days, was there less competition, or did Hollywood have less of an attitude of ‘let’s make a throwaway sequel to pay the rent”?

I can’t help but think a lot of these ‘perfect movies’ are just grandfathered in, by nature of nostalgia or by being a mirror of their times.

Some of the older one hundred percenters include, in no particular order:

• The Wizard of Oz (1939)
• 12 Angry Men (1957)
• Mary Poppins (1964)
• The Maltese Falcon (1941)
• Singing in the Rain (1952)
• The Grapes of Wrath (1940)
• Seven Samurai (1956)
• Pinocchio (1940)
• Frankenstein (1931)
• Citizen Cain (1941)
• Cool Hand Luke (1967)
• Laura (1944)
• Rear Window (1954)
• Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948)

And Four Modern Movies

There are only four made within my lifetime with 100% RT scores:

• Terminator (1984) — If you read my review you can see I agree with this one, but T-2 should be included.
• Paddington 2 (2018) — WTF? Okay, wow, a kiddie sequel in a small feature is one of the few and the proud. I’m confused.
• Toy Story 1 (1995) — Sure, why not? Pixar started off on a good foot with this one.
• Toy Story 2 (1999) WHY? This sequel wasn’t that great. 3 and 4 are better. Or what about Finding Nemo instead?

At least from the ones I’ve seen and can comment on. Three kid movies and one sci fi classic. What about Jaws, Raiders, E.T., Aliens, Jurassic Park? Die Hard, Titanic, Avatar, Lord of the Rings, Superman, The Matrix, The Empire Strikes Back, Blade Runner, Pirates of the Caribbean, Shawshank Redemption, Contact, Arrival, The Breakfast Club? We’ve got a list of 60 films that stand up to the test of time, and realize that’s not really scratching the surface.

This can’t be correct.

The Wikipedia Elite

I had to do more digging. The Wikipedia 100% list adds two more films:

• T-2: Judgement Day 3-D (2017) — Really? 3D only?
• Apocalypse Now: Final Cut (2019) — Another old movie with a re-release.

You’ve got to be kidding me. Why is this so hard? The 0% score article had LOTS of terrible films on offer. Is is easier to have a trash film than a great one? Are we so jaded we have to pick nits in all modern movies? I refuse to believe the only perfect movies are from the days of Black & White or early Technicolor.

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More searching, from the Wikipedia (this should not be so hard…)

Mad Max 2 (1981) was voted the greatest action film of all time in a readers’ poll by American magazine Rolling Stone in 2015.

Die Hard (1988) was voted the best action film of all time with 21 votes in a 2014 poll of 50 directors, actors, critics, and experts conducted by Time Out New York.

2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) was voted the best science fiction film of all time with 73 votes in a 2014 poll of 136 science fiction experts, filmmakers, science fiction writers, film critics, and scientists conducted by Time Out London. It was voted the best science fiction film of all time by 115 members of the Online Film Critics Society in 2002. It topped a readers’ poll conducted by Rolling Stone magazine in 2014. It is also the only science fiction film to make the Sight & Sound critics’ poll for the ten best movies (number 10 in 1992, number 6 in 2002 and 2012).

Blade Runner (1982) was voted the best science fiction film by a panel of 56 scientists assembled by the British newspaper The Guardian in 2004.  In British magazine New Scientist, Blade Runner was voted “all-time favourite science fiction film” in the readers’ poll in 2008, with 12 percent of thousands of votes. It topped a 2011 poll by Total Film magazine.

Serenity (2005) was voted the best science fiction movie in a poll of 3,000 people conducted by SFX magazine.

Titanic (1997) was voted the most romantic film of all time in a poll conducted by Fandango in February 2011.

Gone with the Wind (1939) was voted the favorite film of Americans in a poll of 2,279 adults undertaken by Harris Interactive in 2008, and again in a follow-up poll of 2,276 adults in 2014.

Roman Holiday (1953) was voted the best foreign (i.e. non-Japanese) film of all time in a 1990 poll of about a million people organized by Japanese public broadcaster NHK.

The Godfather (1972) was voted number 1 by Entertainment Weekly’s readers in 1999[20] and voted as number 1 in a Time Out readers’ poll in 1998. The film was voted the “Greatest Movie of All Time” in September 2008 by 10,000 readers of Empire magazine, 150 people from the movie business, and 50 film critics. It also topped Empire’s June 2017 poll of 20,000 readers.

The Empire Strikes Back (1980) was voted the best film of all time by over 250,000 readers of the Empire film magazine in 2015.

The Shawshank Redemption (1994) was voted the greatest film of all time by Empire readers in “The 201 Greatest Movies of All Time” poll undertaken in March 2006.

Titanic (1997) was voted the greatest hit of all time in a poll of 6,000 movie fans conducted by English-language newspaper China Daily in March 2008.

The Lord of the Rings trilogy (2001–2003) was voted the most popular film of all time by an audience poll for the Australian television special My Favourite Film in 2005 and by a poll cast by 120,000 German voters for the TV special Die besten Filme aller Zeiten (“The best films of all time”) in 2004.

Rocky (1976) topped British website Digital Spy’s “greatest ever sports movie” online poll in 2012, with 18.7% of the votes. Voters chose from a list of 25 films.

Superman (1978) was voted the greatest superhero movie in a poll of 1000 British adults conducted by Virgin Media in 2018.

The Dark Knight (2008) was voted the greatest superhero movie in a reader’s poll conducted by American magazine Rolling Stone in 2014.

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This can’t be right

I’m seriously disturbed by the lack of films from the 1970s until today that can be considered perfect. It’s not that we can’t create A+ films these days (look at last years’ amazing offerings alone, like Peanut Butter Falcon, Jojo Rabbit, Endgame, and 1917!).

Maybe it’s a snobbery thing.

What do you think?

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UPDATE — This list makes a bit more sense, including movies from the 90% scoring range and up: Top 100 Movies Of All Time Rated by Rotten Tomatoes.

The validity of movie rating systems

Null Movies – Films with a 0% score on Rotten Tomatoes

60 Movies Standing Up To The Test Of Time