Matrix Voted 15th Best Film of All Time!

The British Public has voted The Matrix as the 15th Best film of all time!

The top three are as follows:
03 The Shawshank Redemption – 1994
02 The Godfather & The Godfather Part II – 1972 & 1974
01 Star Wars: A New Hope & The Empire Strikes Back – 1977 & 1980

This was created with a poll of British Audiences. Here’s the story from Reuters:
UK Viewers Vote ‘Star Wars’ Best Movie Ever
LONDON (Reuters) – George Lucas’s intergalactic spectacular ”Star Wars” has been voted the greatest movie of all time by viewers of Britain’s Channel 4.

The film, which revolutionized the sci-fi genre when it was released in 1977, and its 1980 sequel “The Empire Strikes Back,” beat blockbusters such as “Gladiator” and “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” to gain the accolade.

But the poll, which attracted more than 20,000 votes from viewers, has been derided by film critics for ignoring the true classics of cinema history. Orson Welles’ “Citizen Kane,” widely acknowledged by critics as the finest film ever made, scraped into the top 20 at number 19, while 1962 epic “Lawrence of Arabia” was at 30.

Guardian film critic Peter Bradshaw said of the result: “It depresses me.”

“When people are asked for their favorite film, they tend to go for something they view as a classic, and it’s disturbing that people now think ‘Star Wars’ is a classic.”

The result will also disappoint veteran British film critic Barry Norman who told this week’s “Radio Times” magazine that he expected “Star Wars” to win but would never have voted for it.

Defending the poll, Channel 4’s head of film programming Nick Jones said it was representative of what people really liked.

“(It) is not the usual film buffs’ list of titles most people have never heard of,” he said in a statement.

Francis Ford Coppola’s mobster movies “The Godfather” and ”The Godfather, Part II” came second in the viewers’ poll.

At number three was “The Shawshank Redemption,” starring Morgan Freeman and Tim Robbins, followed by Quentin Tarantino’s ”Pulp Fiction” at number four.

Billy Wilder’s “Some Like It Hot,” starring Marilyn Monroe, Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon, came in at number five.

Channel 4, which unveiled the result in a three-hour show on Sunday night, had asked viewers to pick their top ten films from a shortlist of 100 drawn up by industry experts and filmmakers.