Movie Auditor › Rankings › 1979
Best Movies of 1979, Ranked by IMDb, Rotten Tomatoes, Metacritic and TMDB
85 films from 1979 are in our catalog; the 50 best are ranked below. Top of the list is Alien ('1979), at 8.4 on IMDb. The average IMDb score across this list is 7.4. Biggest split between audiences and critics: ...And Justice for All, 7.4 on IMDb against 58 on Metacritic.
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| # | Movie | Genre | IMDb | Tomato | Meta | TMDB | Director |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Alien '1979 | Horror / Sci-Fi | 8.4 | 93% | 89 | 8.2 | Ridley Scott |
| 2 | Apocalypse Now '1979 | Drama / War | 8.4 | 91% | 94 | 8.3 | Francis Ford Coppola |
| 3 | Life of Brian '1979 | Comedy | 8.0 | 96% | 77 | 7.8 | Terry Jones |
| 4 | Stalker '1979 | Sci-Fi / Drama | 8.0 | 100% | 85 | 8.1 | Andrei Tarkovsky |
| 5 | Being There '1979 | Comedy / Drama | 7.9 | 95% | 83 | 7.6 | Hal Ashby |
| 6 | Kramer vs. Kramer '1979 | Drama | 7.8 | 90% | 77 | 7.6 | Robert Benton |
| 7 | Manhattan '1979 | Comedy / Drama / Romance | 7.8 | 93% | 83 | 7.7 | Woody Allen |
| 8 | All That Jazz '1979 | Drama | 7.8 | 88% | 72 | 7.5 | Bob Fosse |
| 9 | Escape from Alcatraz '1979 | Drama / Thriller | 7.5 | 97% | 76 | 7.5 | Don Siegel |
| 10 | The Warriors '1979 | Action / Thriller | 7.5 | 88% | 65 | 7.7 | Walter Hill |
| 11 | Breaking Away '1979 | Drama / Comedy | 7.7 | 95% | 91 | 7.2 | Peter Yates |
| 12 | The Muppet Movie '1979 | Comedy | 7.6 | 89% | 74 | 7.2 | James Frawley |
| 13 | The Castle of Cagliostro '1979 | Animation / Comedy / Crime | 7.6 | 95% | 72 | 7.5 | Hayao Miyazaki |
| 14 | Hair '1979 | Musical / Drama / Comedy | 7.5 | 83% | 68 | 7.3 | Miloš Forman |
| 15 | The Marriage of Maria Braun '1979 | Drama | 7.7 | 93% | - | 7.4 | Rainer Werner Fassbinder |
| 16 | ...And Justice for All '1979 | Drama | 7.4 | 78% | 58 | 7.1 | Norman Jewison |
| 17 | Rocky II '1979 | Drama / Action | 7.3 | 68% | 61 | 7.3 | Sylvester Stallone |
| 18 | The China Syndrome '1979 | Drama / Thriller | 7.4 | 88% | 81 | 7.1 | James Bridges |
| 19 | Scum '1979 | Drama / Crime | 7.6 | 89% | 78 | 7.1 | Alan Clarke |
| 20 | Camera Buff '1979 | Drama | 7.8 | 90% | - | 7.5 | Krzysztof Kieślowski |
| 21 | Richard Pryor: Live in Concert '1979 | Comedy | 8.0 | 92% | - | 7.4 | Jeff Margolis |
| 22 | The Tin Drum '1979 | Drama / War | 7.4 | 84% | 63 | 7.0 | Volker Schlöndorff |
| 23 | Nosferatu the Vampyre '1979 | Drama / Horror | 7.3 | 93% | 79 | 7.3 | Werner Herzog |
| 24 | Vengeance Is Mine '1979 | Crime / Drama | 7.7 | 100% | 85 | 7.5 | Shōhei Imamura |
| 25 | The Black Stallion '1979 | - | 7.4 | 90% | 84 | 7.1 | Carroll Ballard |
| 26 | Tess '1979 | Drama / Romance | 7.3 | 81% | 82 | 7.1 | Roman Polanski |
| 27 | I... for Icarus '1979 | Thriller / Crime / Mystery | 7.8 | - | - | 7.6 | Henri Verneuil |
| 28 | Tale of Tales '1979 | Animation | 7.8 | - | - | 7.3 | Yuri Norstein |
| 29 | Norma Rae '1979 | Drama | 7.3 | 91% | 61 | 7.2 | Martin Ritt |
| 30 | French Fried Vacation 2 '1979 | Comedy | 7.4 | - | - | 7.3 | Patrice Leconte |
| 31 | The Wanderers '1979 | Drama | 7.3 | 89% | 64 | 7.0 | Philip Kaufman |
| 32 | Quadrophenia '1979 | Drama / Musical | 7.2 | 100% | 79 | 7.0 | Franc Roddam |
| 33 | The In-Laws '1979 | Comedy | 7.3 | 89% | 69 | 6.6 | Arthur Hiller |
| 34 | The Jerk '1979 | Comedy | 7.1 | 82% | 61 | 6.9 | Carl Reiner |
| 35 | Over the Edge '1979 | Crime / Drama | 7.3 | 86% | 67 | 7.1 | Jonathan Kaplan |
| 36 | Hardcore '1979 | Drama / Crime / Thriller | 7.1 | 80% | 63 | 6.8 | Paul Schrader |
| 37 | Buffet Froid '1979 | Comedy / Crime | 7.2 | - | - | 7.0 | Bertrand Blier |
| 38 | The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Movie '1979 | Animation / Comedy / Musical / Sci-Fi | 7.3 | 100% | - | 7.4 | Chuck Jones |
| 39 | All Quiet on the Western Front '1979 | War / Drama | 7.1 | 100% | - | 6.7 | Delbert Mann |
| 40 | Serie Noire '1979 | Drama / Crime | 7.3 | - | - | 7.4 | Alain Corneau |
| 41 | Time After Time '1979 | Drama / Comedy / Sci-Fi / Thriller | 7.0 | 88% | 69 | 6.8 | Nicholas Meyer |
| 42 | Orchestra Rehearsal '1979 | Comedy / Drama / Musical | 7.1 | 78% | - | 6.7 | Federico Fellini |
| 43 | Woyzeck '1979 | Drama | 7.0 | 86% | - | 6.6 | Werner Herzog |
| 44 | The Rose '1979 | Drama / Musical / Romance | 7.0 | 73% | 67 | 6.7 | Mark Rydell |
| 45 | Hothead '1979 | Comedy / Drama | 7.2 | - | - | 7.1 | Jean-Jacques Annaud |
| 46 | Love on the Run '1979 | Romance / Drama / Comedy | 7.0 | 62% | - | 7.0 | François Truffaut |
| 47 | Jesus '1979 | Drama | 7.1 | - | - | 8.3 | Peter Sykes |
| 48 | Elvis '1979 | Musical / Drama | 6.9 | 71% | - | 6.9 | John Carpenter |
| 49 | The Story of Heidi '1979 | Animation | 6.9 | - | - | 7.8 | Isao Takahata |
| 50 | Murder by Decree '1979 | Crime / Mystery / Thriller | 6.8 | 81% | 68 | 6.3 | Bob Clark |
Our catalog covers roughly the 8,800 most-rated films on TMDB, so lesser-known titles may be missing. Order uses a confidence-weighted IMDb score so a perfect score from a handful of votes does not beat a well-established classic; the scores shown are the raw ones.
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