IMDb's Top 20, Ranked as Shawshank Finally Hits China (2026)

Shawshank Is Finally Getting Its China Premiere, 32 Years Late

That kind of "better late than never" story is exactly what pulled me back into one of my favorite pointless internet pastimes: re-litigating the IMDb top 20 movies of all time. Everyone agrees the list is mostly right. Almost nobody agrees on the order. So I went through all 20 and ranked them into tiers based on nothing but my own taste. This is not a scientific ranking, it's one movie-obsessed person's honest opinion — and I know a few of you will fight me on some of these.

My Personal Tier List of the IMDb Top 20

S Tier — Don't @ Me

These are the ones I think genuinely earned their spot at the top, full stop.

• The Godfather (1972) and The Godfather Part II (1974) — I'm putting these together because separating them feels wrong. Coppola basically invented the modern crime epic twice in a row.
• The Shawshank Redemption (1994) — The most quietly devastating "feel good" movie ever made. Wild that an entire country is only now getting to see it on the big screen for the first time.
• 12 Angry Men (1957) — One room, twelve guys, zero action scenes, and it's still more tense than half of this year's thrillers.
• Schindler's List (1993) — Not an easy rewatch, but I don't think it's supposed to be. It belongs at the top and I won't pretend otherwise.

A Tier — Still Elite

• The Dark Knight (2008) — Heath Ledger's Joker alone would carry this movie, but the whole thing holds up scene for scene.
• The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001) and The Return of the King (2003) — The trilogy that made "three-hour movie" sound like a compliment instead of a warning.
• Pulp Fiction (1994) — Still the most quotable script on this entire list.
• GoodFellas (1990) — I'll die on the hill that this is Scorsese's most rewatchable movie, even above his more "important" work.

B Tier — Great, Just Not My Top Picks

• Se7en (1995) — That ending still gets me every single time, but the pacing loses me slightly on a rewatch.
• Fight Club (1999) — A great movie that I think benefits from not rewatching too often, or the twist stops hitting as hard.
• The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (2002) — Unfairly treated as the "middle chapter" filler when it has some of the best battle sequences in the trilogy.
• Star Wars: Episode V – The Empire Strikes Back (1980) — A near-perfect sequel, I just personally rank a few sci-fi entries above it.
• One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975) — Jack Nicholson is incredible here, this one's just a notch below the S tier for me emotionally.

C Tier — My Slightly Controversial Takes

• Inception (2010) — I love this movie, but I think the internet has ranked it a little higher than it deserves purely because of the ending debate.
• The Matrix (1999) — Genuinely groundbreaking for its time, but I think it's aged in a way some of the others on this list haven't.
• Interstellar (2014) — This is the one I get the most pushback on. I love the first half; the tesseract sequence loses me a bit.

D Tier — My Personal Least Favorites (Still Great Movies!)

• Forrest Gump (1994) — A classic for a reason, it's just not the one I reach for on a rewatch night.
• The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966) — I respect this one more than I personally enjoy it, and I think that's a totally normal reaction to a lot of classic Westerns.

This is obviously just my own gut ranking — if your S tier looks completely different, that's the fun part. That's kind of the whole appeal of a top-20 list like this: everyone's version looks a little different.

Why "Better Late Than Never" Is Basically Shawshank's Whole Story

The China premiere isn't a random footnote, it's on-brand for this movie. Shawshank was a genuine box-office disappointment in 1994, only clawing its way to classic status years later through VHS rentals, cable reruns, and word of mouth. Getting an official Chinese theatrical release — and specifically becoming the film chosen for the format's first-ever IMAX presentation — thirty-two years after it first premiered is just the latest chapter in a movie that has always found its audience the slow way.

It's also sparked a fun bit of chatter online: once the announcement went out, fans started joking about which other beloved-but-never-released classics might be next in line for a similar treatment. It's a good reminder that a "best movie ever" ranking isn't really fixed — access, re-releases, and even one country finally getting to see a film for the first time can shift how a whole new wave of viewers experiences the IMDb Top 20.

It's also worth noting how unusual this list actually is in general: three Lord of the Rings entries, two Godfather films, and a black-and-white courtroom drama from 1957 all sitting in the same top 20 as a 2010 sci-fi blockbuster. Not many "best of all time" lists age that gracefully across genres and decades.

I Turned My Ranking Into an Actual Graphic

After going back and forth on this for way too long, I ended up dragging everything into a film tier list template I found online so I could actually visualize my S-to-D breakdown instead of just listing it out in a doc. It's got all 20 movies pre-loaded, and you can drag them around or swap in your own posters if you want to build your version. If you'd rather start from a blank tier list template and rank a completely different set of movies, that works too — took me maybe ten minutes total to make mine. There's even a Shawshank-specific character tier list if you'd rather rank Andy, Red, and the rest of the cast instead of the whole IMDb list.

So, Where Would You Put Shawshank?

That's my ranking, controversial takes and all. I'd genuinely love to know where you'd move things around — does Interstellar deserve better than C tier? Is Forrest Gump getting slandered by me putting it in D? And if you're in China and finally getting to see Shawshank on a big screen for the first time this August, I'm a little jealous. Drop your own tier breakdown in the comments, I read all of them.

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FAQ

Is it true Shawshank Redemption is finally playing in Chinese theaters? Yes. Warner Bros. confirmed on August 10, 2026 that the film's 4K restoration will have its official mainland China theatrical premiere on August 28, 2026, in 2D, CINITY LED, and — for the first time anywhere in the world — IMAX. The film had never previously had an official theatrical release in mainland China.

Why has Shawshank stayed at No. 1 on IMDb for so long? IMDb's Top 250 is based on weighted user ratings, and Shawshank has consistently drawn an enormous volume of very high ratings for decades, which is hard for newer films to match until they've had years to accumulate votes. It's also currently the top-ranked film on Douban, China's major film-rating platform.

Is The Dark Knight really the only 2000s comic book movie on the list? Yes, it's the sole superhero film in the current Top 20, which says a lot about how it's regarded compared to most of the genre.

Do I need to agree with the official IMDb order to make my own tier list? Not at all — that's really the point of a tier list. It's meant to reflect your personal taste, not replace the official ranking.

Is the tier list template free to use? Yes, you can open the template and start dragging movies around right away without much setup.

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