YouTube Critic's Starter Pack: Most Referenced Films on IMDb
by thenolanfan | created - 3 months ago | updated - 3 months ago | PublicMoney interests you, you want to be a YouTube cinema critic, but you don't know where to begin? We've got you covered. This is a list of the most referenced films. You can see which films get the most cited in YouTube videos. If you want to boost your credibility, name these films and throw in one of the generic commentaries associated with them, and you are sure to pass as a knowledgeable film critic. André Bazin and Roger Ebert are jealous.
These are IMDb's most referenced films. Which one is your favorite?
Discuss here
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1. Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope (1977)
PG | 121 min | Action, Adventure, Fantasy
Luke Skywalker joins forces with a Jedi Knight, a cocky pilot, a Wookiee and two droids to save the galaxy from the Empire's world-destroying battle station, while also attempting to rescue Princess Leia from the mysterious Darth Vader.
Director: George Lucas | Stars: Mark Hamill, Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher, Alec Guinness
Votes: 1,380,950 | Gross: $322.74M
6100 references
This film is just so, so, so fun and mmm, perfect. You know Lucas did a fantastic job at bringing at making a big adventure of epic scope. And, Darth Vader really got that menacing , iconic presence
2. The Wizard of Oz (1939)
PG | 102 min | Adventure, Family, Fantasy
Young Dorothy Gale and her dog Toto are swept away by a tornado from their Kansas farm to the magical Land of Oz, and embark on a quest with three new friends to see the Wizard, who can return her to her home and fulfill the others' wishes.
Directors: Victor Fleming, George Cukor, Mervyn LeRoy, Norman Taurog, Richard Thorpe, King Vidor | Stars: Judy Garland, Frank Morgan, Ray Bolger, Bert Lahr
Votes: 406,844 | Gross: $2.08M
3808 references
I'm not usually a big fan of classic Hollywood, but this film is so iconic, I feel gotta watch it, the character are funny and compelling
3. Star Wars: Episode V - The Empire Strikes Back (1980)
PG | 124 min | Action, Adventure, Fantasy
After the Rebels are overpowered by the Empire, Luke Skywalker begins Jedi training with Yoda, while his friends are pursued across the galaxy by Darth Vader and bounty hunter Boba Fett.
Director: Irvin Kershner | Stars: Mark Hamill, Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher, Billy Dee Williams
Votes: 1,308,546 | Gross: $290.48M
2125 references
Lucas really did a more mature film with this one and it pays off cause you can really see the stakes beginning to buildup, and the character getting more complex
4. The Godfather (1972)
R | 175 min | Crime, Drama
The aging patriarch of an organized crime dynasty in postwar New York City transfers control of his clandestine empire to his reluctant youngest son.
Director: Francis Ford Coppola | Stars: Marlon Brando, Al Pacino, James Caan, Diane Keaton
Votes: 1,888,311 | Gross: $134.97M
2036 references
It is not without reason that this is called often called the best film of all time. There is a cast of all-time great performances from Brando, to Pacino. Really a hugely influential movie on gangster and American cinema overall
5. Jaws (1975)
PG | 124 min | Adventure, Thriller
When a killer shark unleashes chaos on a beach community off Cape Cod, it's up to a local sheriff, a marine biologist, and an old seafarer to hunt the beast down.
Director: Steven Spielberg | Stars: Roy Scheider, Robert Shaw, Richard Dreyfuss, Lorraine Gary
Votes: 617,449 | Gross: $260.00M
1859 references
John Williams and Spielberg really did an amazing job at building tension. You never see the shark and yet it is so suspenseful. It proves Spielberg is a master.
6. The Terminator (1984)
R | 107 min | Action, Sci-Fi
A human soldier is sent from 2029 to 1984 to stop an almost indestructible cyborg killing machine, sent from the same year, which has been programmed to execute a young woman whose unborn son is the key to humanity's future salvation.
Director: James Cameron | Stars: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Linda Hamilton, Michael Biehn, Paul Winfield
Votes: 877,849 | Gross: $38.40M
1679 references
It is the film that started it all for Cameron. Arnold Schwarzenegger plays that invincible robot and so menacing. OMG
7. Casablanca (1942)
PG | 102 min | Drama, Romance, War
A cynical expatriate American cafe owner struggles to decide whether or not to help his former lover and her fugitive husband escape the Nazis in French Morocco.
Director: Michael Curtiz | Stars: Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman, Paul Henreid, Claude Rains
Votes: 578,983 | Gross: $1.02M
1675 references
I'm not a big fan of classic Hollywood. But this film is just classic, you must watch it. Everything is so great from the directing, the acting to the screenplay. You really understand why it is this timeless classic
8. Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)
PG | 115 min | Action, Adventure
In 1936, archaeologist and adventurer Indiana Jones is hired by the U.S. government to find the Ark of the Covenant before the Nazis can obtain its awesome powers.
Director: Steven Spielberg | Stars: Harrison Ford, Karen Allen, Paul Freeman, John Rhys-Davies
Votes: 978,312 | Gross: $248.16M
1671 references
Spielberg created the greatest adventure film. It really is a great adventure. And, Harrison Ford is so charismatic in the leading role. Everybody did a killer job
9. Psycho (1960)
R | 109 min | Horror, Mystery, Thriller
A Phoenix secretary embezzles $40,000 from her employer's client, goes on the run and checks into a remote motel run by a young man under the domination of his mother.
Director: Alfred Hitchcock | Stars: Anthony Perkins, Janet Leigh, Vera Miles, John Gavin
Votes: 680,788 | Gross: $32.00M
1660 references
I have just seen this film, and I understand why people say Hitchcock's an all-time great. The suspense he builds is amazing. It is not for nothing that he is called the "master of suspense
10. E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982)
PG | 115 min | Adventure, Family, Sci-Fi
A troubled child summons the courage to help a friendly alien escape from Earth and return to his home planet.
Director: Steven Spielberg | Stars: Henry Thomas, Drew Barrymore, Peter Coyote, Dee Wallace
Votes: 417,406 | Gross: $435.11M
1622 references
This film is my childhood, I have watched it a thousand times and every time it feels like my heart is warming up. I cry every time at the end. Spielberg is a master
11. Ghostbusters (1984)
PG | 105 min | Action, Comedy, Fantasy
Three parapsychologists forced out of their university funding set up shop as a unique ghost removal service in New York City, attracting frightened yet skeptical customers.
Director: Ivan Reitman | Stars: Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, Sigourney Weaver, Harold Ramis
Votes: 422,611 | Gross: $238.63M
1592 references
This film is so funny and an all-time great, but it used to scare me as a child.
12. Back to the Future (1985)
PG | 116 min | Adventure, Comedy, Sci-Fi
Marty McFly, a 17-year-old high school student, is accidentally sent 30 years into the past in a time-traveling DeLorean invented by his close friend, the maverick scientist Doc Brown.
Director: Robert Zemeckis | Stars: Michael J. Fox, Christopher Lloyd, Lea Thompson, Crispin Glover
Votes: 1,224,502 | Gross: $210.61M
1590 references
Clearly the best time-travel film of all time. The Delorean is such a unique car.
13. Jurassic Park (1993)
PG-13 | 127 min | Action, Adventure, Sci-Fi
A pragmatic paleontologist touring an almost complete theme park on an island in Central America is tasked with protecting a couple of kids after a power failure causes the park's cloned dinosaurs to run loose.
Director: Steven Spielberg | Stars: Sam Neill, Laura Dern, Jeff Goldblum, Richard Attenborough
Votes: 1,004,092 | Gross: $402.45M
1454 references
When I was young this film used to scare me, but now I see the craftmanship of Spielberg. The CGI still holdup to this day, it is incredible how he managed to bring back to life the dinosaurs. The newer films are terrible in comparison
14. The Shining (1980)
R | 146 min | Drama, Horror
A family heads to an isolated hotel for the winter where a sinister presence influences the father into violence, while his psychic son sees horrific forebodings from both past and future.
Director: Stanley Kubrick | Stars: Jack Nicholson, Shelley Duvall, Danny Lloyd, Scatman Crothers
Votes: 1,038,052 | Gross: $44.02M
1446 references
I'm a big fan of Kubrick. He is one of the all-time great and The Shining just shows how he is able to create horror. I'm a grown-up, but I was scared by the scene with the twins
15. Gone with the Wind (1939)
Passed | 238 min | Drama, Romance, War
American motion picture classic in which a manipulative woman and a roguish man conduct a turbulent romance during the Civil War and Reconstruction periods.
Directors: Victor Fleming, George Cukor, Sam Wood | Stars: Clark Gable, Vivien Leigh, Thomas Mitchell, Barbara O'Neil
Votes: 320,155 | Gross: $198.68M
1341 references
I'm not a big fan of classic Hollywood, but you gotta respect this film for its scope. It was totally the MCU of 1939.
16. Titanic (1997)
PG-13 | 194 min | Drama, Romance
A seventeen-year-old aristocrat falls in love with a kind but poor artist aboard the luxurious, ill-fated R.M.S. Titanic.
Director: James Cameron | Stars: Leonardo DiCaprio, Kate Winslet, Billy Zane, Kathy Bates
Votes: 1,207,705 | Gross: $659.33M
1327 references
This is the first film I watch in the theater with my first girlfriend and I will always remember it. It's got that really powerful romance, but it is a James Cameron film. I don't remember my girlfriend's first name, but I remember being awed by this film.
17. Star Wars: Episode VI - Return of the Jedi (1983)
PG | 131 min | Action, Adventure, Fantasy
After rescuing Han Solo from Jabba the Hutt, the Rebels attempt to destroy the second Death Star, while Luke struggles to help Darth Vader back from the dark side.
Director: Richard Marquand | Stars: Mark Hamill, Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher, Billy Dee Williams
Votes: 1,067,228 | Gross: $309.13M
1310 references
This film put an end to one of my favorite childhood franchises along with Back to the Future and E.T.. I had grown up, it is the first Star Wars film I had seen in a theater. And, I remember Leia being my first crush, I haven't forgotten her bikini, when I was a teenager I had a picture of it in my closet.
18. The Matrix (1999)
R | 136 min | Action, Sci-Fi
When a beautiful stranger leads computer hacker Neo to a forbidding underworld, he discovers the shocking truth--the life he knows is the elaborate deception of an evil cyber-intelligence.
Directors: Lana Wachowski, Lilly Wachowski | Stars: Keanu Reeves, Laurence Fishburne, Carrie-Anne Moss, Hugo Weaving
Votes: 1,938,227 | Gross: $171.48M
1298 references
This film has been so influential in every action films that came after it. The bullet time is really a masterpiece of filmmaking. And, Keanu Reeves is such a big star.
19. Citizen Kane (1941)
PG | 119 min | Drama, Mystery
Following the death of publishing tycoon Charles Foster Kane, reporters scramble to uncover the meaning of his final utterance: 'Rosebud.'
Director: Orson Welles | Stars: Orson Welles, Joseph Cotten, Dorothy Comingore, Agnes Moorehead
Votes: 447,288 | Gross: $1.59M
1278 references
I saw this film for the first time yesterday. And, I must say I agree, it was so ahead of its time. I understand why it is named Top 1 by so many people. It is simply this groundbreaking film as per 1940s standard and Orson Welles as just 25 when he directed it
20. 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
G | 149 min | Adventure, Sci-Fi
After uncovering a mysterious artifact buried beneath the Lunar surface, a spacecraft is sent to Jupiter to find its origins - a spacecraft manned by two men and the supercomputer H.A.L. 9000.
Director: Stanley Kubrick | Stars: Keir Dullea, Gary Lockwood, William Sylvester, Daniel Richter
Votes: 678,782 | Gross: $56.95M
1232 references
I have just seen this film yesterday and I must say I understand why it is considered an all-time great. It has been so influential on sci-fi we all love, and the VFX still holdup. Kubrick is now one of my favorite filmmakers
21. Alien (1979)
R | 117 min | Horror, Sci-Fi
The crew of a commercial spacecraft encounter a deadly lifeform after investigating an unknown transmission.
Director: Ridley Scott | Stars: Sigourney Weaver, Tom Skerritt, John Hurt, Veronica Cartwright
Votes: 894,861 | Gross: $78.90M
1211 references
I love how they managed to scare us s much without showing the creature at the same. And, the birth sequence was so scary, I did nightmares
22. King Kong (1933)
Passed | 100 min | Adventure, Horror, Sci-Fi
A film crew goes to a tropical island for an exotic location shoot and discovers a colossal ape who takes a shine to their female blonde star. He is then captured and brought back to New York City for public exhibition.
Directors: Merian C. Cooper, Ernest B. Schoedsack | Stars: Fay Wray, Robert Armstrong, Bruce Cabot, Frank Reicher
Votes: 87,256 | Gross: $10.00M
1153 references
It has aged a bit, but I love it, it has been influential on so many films. And the empire state building sequence is an amazing demonstration of practical effects
23. Pulp Fiction (1994)
R | 154 min | Crime, Drama
The lives of two mob hitmen, a boxer, a gangster and his wife, and a pair of diner bandits intertwine in four tales of violence and redemption.
Director: Quentin Tarantino | Stars: John Travolta, Uma Thurman, Samuel L. Jackson, Bruce Willis
Votes: 2,086,939 | Gross: $107.93M
1149 references
When it hit theaters we hadn't seen a film like it. I remember my cousin recommending it to me, and I rented it at the Video Rental Store, we watched it without our parents' permission. It was unlike anything I had watched before. Tarantino made gangsters compelling and funny. And, the non-linear storytelling is groundbreaking
24. Rocky (1976)
PG | 120 min | Drama, Sport
A small-time Philadelphia boxer gets a supremely rare chance to fight the world heavyweight champion in a bout in which he strives to go the distance for his self-respect.
Director: John G. Avildsen | Stars: Sylvester Stallone, Talia Shire, Burt Young, Carl Weathers
Votes: 591,016 | Gross: $117.24M
1127 references
Such a moving film. Probably the best sport film ever made. I mean the training montage is so good. And, Stallone's performance is so great. It deserved its Best Picture win.
25. Godzilla (1954)
Not Rated | 96 min | Action, Horror, Sci-Fi
American nuclear-weapons testing results in the creation of a seemingly unstoppable, dinosaur-like beast.
Director: Ishirô Honda | Stars: Takashi Shimura, Akihiko Hirata, Akira Takarada, Momoko Kôchi
Votes: 35,211 | Gross: $2.42M
1097 references
This isn't a great film, but it is so so much fun. Godzilla is destroying everything and it is all practical effects the new Godzilla films are terrible.
26. Die Hard (1988)
R | 132 min | Action, Thriller
A New York City police officer tries to save his estranged wife and several others taken hostage by terrorists during a Christmas party at the Nakatomi Plaza in Los Angeles.
Director: John McTiernan | Stars: Bruce Willis, Alan Rickman, Bonnie Bedelia, Reginald VelJohnson
Votes: 895,218 | Gross: $83.01M
1041 references
This film made Bruce Willis a star, and he deserved it. Alan Rickman is also menacing as the villain. To me, this is the best Christmas film of all time because it embodies Christmas values, but it is mixed with amazing action scenes. They simply don't make action scenes like this anymore
27. The Exorcist (1973)
R | 122 min | Horror
When a 12 year old girl is possessed by a mysterious entity, her mother seeks the help of two priests to save her daughter.
Director: William Friedkin | Stars: Ellen Burstyn, Max von Sydow, Linda Blair, Lee J. Cobb
Votes: 416,280 | Gross: $232.91M
1038 references
People vomited when this film premiered. I remember the cover got me hooked when I saw it at the video rental store. My father wouldn't let me watch it I watched it in my twenties. And, it is still one of the scariest films ever made.
28. Apocalypse Now (1979)
R | 147 min | Drama, Mystery, War
A U.S. Army officer serving in Vietnam is tasked with assassinating a renegade Special Forces Colonel who sees himself as a god.
Director: Francis Ford Coppola | Stars: Martin Sheen, Marlon Brando, Robert Duvall, Frederic Forrest
Votes: 676,646 | Gross: $83.47M
1022 references
This film is like a descent into hell. I recommend it, but it isn't for everyone, it is a challenging film much like Saving Private Ryan. And, people go crazier and crazier. You wonder if you aren't getting crazy yourself. With The Godfather, this is probably Coppola's best.
29. The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001)
PG-13 | 178 min | Action, Adventure, Drama
A meek Hobbit from the Shire and eight companions set out on a journey to destroy the powerful One Ring and save Middle-earth from the Dark Lord Sauron.
Director: Peter Jackson | Stars: Elijah Wood, Ian McKellen, Orlando Bloom, Sean Bean
Votes: 1,899,332 | Gross: $315.54M
1019 references
Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings is a perfect trilogy. And, this film started it all. The performances from the cast are all-star. It adapted faithfully Tolkien's masterpiece and kept the scope of it, the wonder of the fantasy world. It defined a new threshold for fantasy films. A true masterpiece. A perfect cinematic experience. Everything was so great about it, you can't even criticize it. I literally don't see any flaws
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