I watched every film that was in the main competition for the 2013 Cannes Film Festival. This is how I rank them by how much I liked them.

Cannes 2013 - Official Competition ranked

This is not a list of the best or greatest films ever made. It's not a ranking of the most popular films ever made, though all of the films on this list were very popular. This is intended as a list of the films that have wound their way into the fabric of pop culture, the movies that everyone has seen, or at least thinks they've seen.

Cinephiles will not find any new films through this list. It is aimed at people who haven't seen many old films. It is meant as a kind of booster shot of film literacy, listing only the films that have been endlessly referenced and remembered by other films and media.

Criticisms are welcome: I'm only one man and I don't doubt I've made mistakes.

Sorted roughly by how essential it is to see the film if you haven't already.

Ingrid Bergman, Humphrey Bogart, Peter Lorre, Claude Rains, Sydney Greenstreet, Paul Henreid, and Conrad Veidt in Casablanca (1942)

I love Ian Fleming's Bond novels. For the most part, I don't feel that the films lived up to the books, but they're mostly fun anyway. And I just finished having a James Bond marathon, so why not rank them?

Sean Connery, Honor Blackman, and Shirley Eaton in Goldfinger (1964)

Every film that placed in the Top 10 in Sight & Sound's decennial film poll. Includes the Director's polls as separate lists. Listed by list appearance frequency, and then by average ranking.

Orson Welles, Dorothy Comingore, and Ruth Warrick in Citizen Kane (1941)

Mostly the usual suspects of "Great Film" lists. Newest film on the list is Sideways, oldest is It Happened One Night. Non-English language films were eligible, but only two made it on: La grande illusion and 8 1/2.

Writers Guild of America's 101 Greatest Screenplays (2005)

A list of every film honoured in the American Film Institute's 100 Years lists. Includes nominees, films that were only honoured through selection as a ranking Star's signature film and films that were only noted as an alternate appearance of a ranked or nominated hero or villain.

Original lists can be found on the AFI's website here: http://www.afi.com/100Years/

Bela Lugosi, Lon Chaney Jr., Bud Abbott, Lou Costello, and Glenn Strange in Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948)

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