Ranking All Of Director Robert Altman’s Movies
“What are Robert Altman’s Best Movies?” We looked at all of Altman’s directed filmography and ranked them against one another to answer that very question!
We took all of the movies directed by Robert Altman’s and looked at his
Rotten Tomato Critic, Rotten Tomato User, Metacritic, Metacritic User, IMDB, and Letterboxd scores, ranking them against one another to see which movies came out on top. The movies are ranked in our list below based on which movies have the highest overall score between all 6 review sites in comparison with all of the other movies by the same director. The process is all very scientific with no flaws at all.
The full ranking chart is also included below the countdown on the bottom of the page.
Happy Viewing!
The Top Film’s Of Robert Altman
37 ) Dr. T & the Women (2000)
Review Website Ranks:
- Rotten Tomatoes Critic: 23
- Rotten Tomatoes Users: 37
- IMDB User Review Score: 37
- Letterboxd User Score: 37
Dr. Sullivan Travis is a man at the top of his game, a rich and successful Dallas gynecologist whose “religion” is women. Dr. T. worships women. In his immediate family and in his office, they surround him. He is loving and giving to each and every one at all times — he is their savior. And sure enough, as in the story of Job, one day a higher force decides to test his faith. Once a man in complete control of his universe, Dr. T. now finds himself buffeted by chaos and confusion.
36 ) Prêt-à-Porter (1994)
Review Website Ranks:
- Rotten Tomatoes Critic: 27
- Rotten Tomatoes Users: 34
- IMDB User Review Score: 35
- Letterboxd User Score: 36
Paris Fashion Week draws the usual bunch of people; designers, reporters, models, magazine editors, photographers. Follows the various storylines of these characters, centering around a murder investigation of a prominent fashion figure. Features an all-star cast.
35 ) Beyond Therapy (1987)
Review Website Ranks:
- Rotten Tomatoes Critic: 28
- Rotten Tomatoes Users: 31
- IMDB User Review Score: 36
- Letterboxd User Score: 33
Manhattanites Bruce and Prudence are each looking for a meaningful romantic relationship and have been encouraged by their psychiatrists to find someone through the personal ads. Their first meeting is disastrous, but they begin to hit it off during their second date. However, Bruce’s bisexual, live-in lover does not want to share Bruce and is willing to do whatever it takes to keep him to himself.
34 ) The Delinquents (1957)
Review Website Ranks:
- Rotten Tomatoes Critic: 30
- Rotten Tomatoes Users: 36
- IMDB User Review Score: 31
- Letterboxd User Score: 30
A frustrated young man, separated from his younger girlfriend, gets involved in a juvenile gang.
33 ) Quintet (1979)
Review Website Ranks:
- Rotten Tomatoes Critic: 29
- Rotten Tomatoes Users: 30
- IMDB User Review Score: 33
- Letterboxd User Score: 33
During a future ice age, dying humanity occupies its remaining time by playing a board game called Quintet. For one small group, this obsession is not enough. They play the game with living pieces, and only the winner survives.
32 ) The Gingerbread Man (1998)
Review Website Ranks:
- Rotten Tomatoes Critic: 21
- Rotten Tomatoes Users: 35
- IMDB User Review Score: 30
- Letterboxd User Score: 30
Savannah lawyer Rick Magruder is at a party celebrating his courtroom victory defending a cop killer when a member of the catering staff, Mallory Doss, discovers her car has been stolen. Having had a few drinks, Magruder offers to give her a lift home, a decision that turns into a one night stand. Rick soon learns that her nut-case father, Dixon, seems to have begun threatening her again. Rick puts the force of his law firm behind Mallory, who he barely knows, has Dixon picked up by the police, and subpoenas the girl’s belligerent ex-husband, Pete, to testify against the old man. Dixon is put away in an asylum. However, he soon escapes, putting the lives of everyone who conspired against him in jeopardy.
31 ) Countdown (1968)
Review Website Ranks:
- Rotten Tomatoes Critic: 30
- Rotten Tomatoes Users: 33
- IMDB User Review Score: 27
- Letterboxd User Score: 28
A scientist (James Caan) replaces a military officer (Robert Duvall) as an astronaut on a space-race moonshot.
30 ) Popeye (1980)
Review Website Ranks:
- Rotten Tomatoes Critic: 21
- Rotten Tomatoes Users: 29
- IMDB User Review Score: 33
- Letterboxd User Score: 33
Popeye is a super-strong, spinach-scarfing sailor man who’s searching for his father. During a storm that wrecks his ship, Popeye washes ashore and winds up rooming at the Oyl household, where he meets Olive. Before he can win her heart, he must first contend with Olive’s fiancé, Bluto.
29 ) Health (1980)
Review Website Ranks:
- Rotten Tomatoes Critic: 30
- Rotten Tomatoes Users: 31
- IMDB User Review Score: 28
- Letterboxd User Score: 23
HealtH is set at a health food convention at a Florida luxury hotel, where a powerful political organization is deciding on a new president.
28 ) O.C. & Stiggs (1985)
Review Website Ranks:
- Rotten Tomatoes Critic: 30
- Rotten Tomatoes Users: 20
- IMDB User Review Score: 32
- Letterboxd User Score: 28
O.C. and Stiggs aren’t your average unhappy teenagers. They not only despise their suburban surroundings, they plot against it. They seek revenge against the middle class Schwab family, who embody all they detest: middle class.
27 ) Aria (1987)
Review Website Ranks:
- Rotten Tomatoes Critic: 25
- Rotten Tomatoes Users: 23
- IMDB User Review Score: 28
- Letterboxd User Score: 30
Ten short pieces directed by ten different directors, including Ken Russell, Jean-Luc Godard, Robert Altman, Bruce Beresford, and Nicolas Roeg. Each short uses an aria as soundtrack/sound (Vivaldi, Bach, Wagner), and is an interpretation of the particular aria.
26 ) A Perfect Couple (1979)
Review Website Ranks:
- Rotten Tomatoes Critic: 30
- Rotten Tomatoes Users: 23
- IMDB User Review Score: 26
- Letterboxd User Score: 23
Offbeat but endearing romantic comedy about unlikely match-up (by computer dating) of straitlaced Dooley, under the thumb of overbearing father, and singer Heflin, whose life is wrapped up with her familial rock group.
25 ) The James Dean Story (1957)
Review Website Ranks:
- Rotten Tomatoes Critic: 30
- Rotten Tomatoes Users: 19
- IMDB User Review Score: 21
- Letterboxd User Score: 27
Released two years after James Dean’s death, this documentary chronicles his short life and career via black-and-white still photographs, interviews with the aunt and uncle who raised him, his paternal grandparents, a New York City cabdriver friend, the owner of his favorite Los Angeles restaurant, outtakes from East of Eden, footage of the opening night of Giant, and Dean’s ironic PSA for safe driving.
24 ) Streamers (1983)
Review Website Ranks:
- Rotten Tomatoes Critic: 24
- Rotten Tomatoes Users: 26
- IMDB User Review Score: 20
- Letterboxd User Score: 23
Four young recruits about to be sent to Vietnam confront their prejudicial feelings toward one another when it’s learned one of them is homosexual.
22 ) Fool for Love (1985)
Review Website Ranks:
- Rotten Tomatoes Critic: 17
- Rotten Tomatoes Users: 25
- IMDB User Review Score: 25
- Letterboxd User Score: 23
A woman is waiting in a motel for her boyfriend, when an old flame turns up and tries to take her back to the life she is trying to leave behind.
22 ) Kansas City (1996)
Review Website Ranks:
- Rotten Tomatoes Critic: 20
- Rotten Tomatoes Users: 28
- IMDB User Review Score: 23
- Letterboxd User Score: 19
Robert Altman’s story is a riff on race, class, and power cross-cuts between the two kidnappings and the background of corrupt politics and virtuoso jazz music. It all takes place in Kansas City in 1934.
21 ) That Cold Day in the Park (1969)
Review Website Ranks:
- Rotten Tomatoes Critic: 26
- Rotten Tomatoes Users: 27
- IMDB User Review Score: 16
- Letterboxd User Score: 15
A rich but lonely woman, Frances Austen, one day invites a boy from a nearby park to her apartment and offers to let him live there.
20 ) The Company (2003)
Review Website Ranks:
- Rotten Tomatoes Critic: 18
- Rotten Tomatoes Users: 22
- IMDB User Review Score: 21
- Letterboxd User Score: 19
Ensemble drama centered around a group of ballet dancers, with a focus on one young dancer who’s poised to become a principal performer.
19 ) Buffalo Bill and the Indians, or Sitting Bull’s History Lesson (1976)
Review Website Ranks:
- Rotten Tomatoes Critic: 14
- Rotten Tomatoes Users: 21
- IMDB User Review Score: 24
- Letterboxd User Score: 19
Buffalo Bill plans to put on his own Wild West sideshow, and Chief Sitting Bull has agreed to appear in it. However, Sitting Bull has his own hidden agenda, involving the President and General Custer.
18 ) A Prairie Home Companion (2006)
Review Website Ranks:
- Rotten Tomatoes Critic: 15
- Rotten Tomatoes Users: 18
- IMDB User Review Score: 19
- Letterboxd User Score: 18
A look at what goes on backstage during the last broadcast of America’s most celebrated radio show, where singing cowboys Dusty and Lefty, a country music siren, and a host of others hold court
17 ) Cookie’s Fortune (1999)
Review Website Ranks:
- Rotten Tomatoes Critic: 11
- Rotten Tomatoes Users: 17
- IMDB User Review Score: 18
- Letterboxd User Score: 19
Conflict arises in the small town of Holly Springs when an old woman’s death causes a variety of reactions among family and friends.
16 ) Images (1972)
Review Website Ranks:
- Rotten Tomatoes Critic: 30
- Rotten Tomatoes Users: 14
- IMDB User Review Score: 10
- Letterboxd User Score: 8
Schizophrenic housewife, engulfed by terrorizing apparitions, kills off each, unknowing if these demons are merely figments of her hallucinatory imagination or part of reality.
15 ) Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean (1982)
Review Website Ranks:
- Rotten Tomatoes Critic: 30
- Rotten Tomatoes Users: 11
- IMDB User Review Score: 8
- Letterboxd User Score: 10
The Disciples of James Dean meet up on the anniversary of his death and mull over their lives in the present and in flashback, revealing the truth behind their complicated lives. Who is the mysterious Joanne and what’s the real story behind Mona’s son, James Dean Junior ?
14 ) Vincent & Theo (1990)
Review Website Ranks:
- Rotten Tomatoes Critic: 9
- Rotten Tomatoes Users: 14
- IMDB User Review Score: 13
- Letterboxd User Score: 17
The tragic story of Vincent van Gogh broadened by focusing as well on his brother Theodore, who helped support Vincent. Based on the letters written between the two.
13 ) A Wedding (1978)
Review Website Ranks:
- Rotten Tomatoes Critic: 19
- Rotten Tomatoes Users: 10
- IMDB User Review Score: 13
- Letterboxd User Score: 10
Muffin’s wedding to Dino Corelli is to be a big affair. Except the ageing priest isn’t too sure of the ceremony, only the families actually turn up as the Corelli Italian connection is suspect, security guards watch the gifts rather over-zealously, and Dino’s grandma expires in bed just as the reception starts. Could be quite an occasion.
12 ) Thieves Like Us (1974)
Review Website Ranks:
- Rotten Tomatoes Critic: 7
- Rotten Tomatoes Users: 14
- IMDB User Review Score: 13
- Letterboxd User Score: 15
Bowie, a youthful convicted murderer, and bank robbers Chicamaw and T-Dub escape from a Mississippi chain gang in the 1930s. They hole up with a gas station attendant and continue robbing banks. Bowie, who is injured in an auto accident, takes refuge with the daughter of the gas station attendant, Keechie. They become romantically involved but their relationship is strained by Bowie’s refusal to turn his back on crime. The film is based on the novel Thieves Like Us by Edward Anderson. The novel is also the source material for the 1949 film They Live by Night, directed by Nicholas Ray.
11 ) Secret Honor (1984)
Review Website Ranks:
- Rotten Tomatoes Critic: 16
- Rotten Tomatoes Users: 12
- IMDB User Review Score: 8
- Letterboxd User Score: 10
In this speculative one-man drama, we see former President Richard Milhous Nixon alone in his study, dictating his thoughts into a tape recorder. His only company are a four-screen closed-circuit TV setup, the portraits on the walls, a bottle of Chivas Regal – and a loaded pistol. At times addressing an imaginary judge in a court of public opinion, at other times speaking to an aide named Roberto, and sometimes just talking to himself, the former chief executive reflects, in a series of meandering monologues, on his humble Quaker upbringing, his school days, his family and a political career that reached all the way to the White House. Nixon rails at his treatment by the likes of Dwight D. Eisenhower, the “goddam Kennedys,” J. Edgar Hoover, Henry Kissinger, Jews, liberals, the media, “East Coast shits,” among others, as he leads up to the “true” reasons for the Watergate scandal that resulted in his resignation – an act he regards as one of “secret honor.”
9 ) Brewster McCloud (1970)
Review Website Ranks:
- Rotten Tomatoes Critic: 13
- Rotten Tomatoes Users: 6
- IMDB User Review Score: 16
- Letterboxd User Score: 8
Brewster is an owlish, intellectual boy who lives in a fallout shelter of the Houston Astrodome. He has a dream: to take flight within the confines of the stadium. Brewster tells those he trusts of his dream, but displays a unique way of treating others who do not fit within his plans.
9 ) Gosford Park (2001)
Review Website Ranks:
- Rotten Tomatoes Critic: 11
- Rotten Tomatoes Users: 12
- IMDB User Review Score: 10
- Letterboxd User Score: 10
Multiple storylined drama set in 1932, showing the lives of upstairs guest and downstairs servants at a party in a country house in England.
8 ) MASH (1970)
Review Website Ranks:
- Rotten Tomatoes Critic: 10
- Rotten Tomatoes Users: 9
- IMDB User Review Score: 6
- Letterboxd User Score: 10
One of the world’s most acclaimed comedies, MASH focuses on three Korean War Army surgeons brilliantly brought to life by Donald Sutherland, Tom Skerritt and Elliott Gould. Though highly skilled and deeply dedicated, they adopt a hilarious, lunatic lifestyle as an antidote to the tragedies of their Mobile Army Surgical Hospital, and in the process infuriate Army bureaucrats. Robert Duvall, Gary Burghoff and Sally Kellerman co-star as a sanctimonious Major, an other-worldly Corporal, and a self-righteous yet lusty nurse.
7 ) California Split (1974)
Review Website Ranks:
- Rotten Tomatoes Critic: 6
- Rotten Tomatoes Users: 6
- IMDB User Review Score: 10
- Letterboxd User Score: 6
A down on his luck gambler links up with free spirit Elliot Gould at first to have some fun on, but then gets into debt when Gould takes an unscheduled trip to Tijuana. As a final act of desperation, he pawns most of his possessions and goes to Reno for the poker game of a lifetime. A film set mainly in casinos and races, as the two win and lose (but mainly win), get robbed, and get blind drunk.
6 ) The Player (1992)
Review Website Ranks:
- Rotten Tomatoes Critic: 1
- Rotten Tomatoes Users: 5
- IMDB User Review Score: 6
- Letterboxd User Score: 6
A Hollywood studio executive is being sent death threats by a writer whose script he rejected – but which one?
4 ) McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971)
Review Website Ranks:
- Rotten Tomatoes Critic: 7
- Rotten Tomatoes Users: 3
- IMDB User Review Score: 3
- Letterboxd User Score: 1
A gambler and a prostitute become business partners in a remote Old West mining town, and their enterprise thrives until a large corporation arrives on the scene.
4 ) Nashville (1975)
Review Website Ranks:
- Rotten Tomatoes Critic: 5
- Rotten Tomatoes Users: 6
- IMDB User Review Score: 2
- Letterboxd User Score: 1
This movie tells the intersecting stories of various people connected to the music business in Nashville. Barbara Jean is the reigning queen of Nashville but is near collapse. Linnea and Delbert Reese have a shaky marriage and 2 deaf children. Opal is a British journalist touring the area. These and other stories come together in a dramatic climax.
3 ) Short Cuts (1993)
Review Website Ranks:
- Rotten Tomatoes Critic: 4
- Rotten Tomatoes Users: 1
- IMDB User Review Score: 3
- Letterboxd User Score: 5
Multi-storied, fish-eyed look at American culture with some 22 characters intersecting–profoundly or fleetingly–through each other’s lives. Running the emotional gamut from disturbing to humorous, Altman’s portrait of the contemporary human condition is nevertheless fascinating. Based on nine stories and a prose poem by Raymond Carver.
2 ) 3 Women (1977)
Review Website Ranks:
- Rotten Tomatoes Critic: 3
- Rotten Tomatoes Users: 4
- IMDB User Review Score: 1
- Letterboxd User Score: 1
Pinky is an awkward young teen who starts work at a spa in the CA. Desert. She becomes overly attached to fellow spa attendant, Millie when she becomes Millie’s roommate. Mille is a lonely outcast who desperately tries to win attention with constant upbeat chatter. They hang out at a bar owned by a strange pregnant artist and her has-been cowboy husband. After each of 2 emotional crises, the three woman steal and trade each other’s personalities until they settle into a new family unit that seems to give each woman what she was searching for.
1 ) The Long Goodbye (1973)
Review Website Ranks:
- Rotten Tomatoes Critic: 1
- Rotten Tomatoes Users: 2
- IMDB User Review Score: 3
- Letterboxd User Score: 1
Detective Philip Marlowe tries to help a friend who is accused of murdering his wife.
Robert Altman’s Best Movies
Robert Altman Review Website Filmography Rankings
| Film | RT Critic | RT User | IMDB | Letterboxd | Overal Rank |
| The Long Goodbye | 1 | 2 | 3 | 1 | 1 |
| 3 Women | 3 | 4 | 1 | 1 | 2 |
| Short Cuts | 4 | 1 | 3 | 5 | 3 |
| McCabe & Mrs. Miller | 7 | 3 | 3 | 1 | 4 |
| Nashville | 5 | 6 | 2 | 1 | 4 |
| The Player | 1 | 5 | 6 | 6 | 6 |
| California Split | 6 | 6 | 10 | 6 | 7 |
| MASH | 10 | 9 | 6 | 10 | 8 |
| Brewster McCloud | 13 | 6 | 16 | 8 | 9 |
| Gosford Park | 11 | 12 | 10 | 10 | 9 |
| Secret Honor | 16 | 12 | 8 | 10 | 11 |
| Thieves Like Us | 7 | 14 | 13 | 15 | 12 |
| A Wedding | 19 | 10 | 13 | 10 | 13 |
| Vincent & Theo | 9 | 14 | 13 | 17 | 14 |
| Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean | 30 | 11 | 8 | 10 | 15 |
| Images | 30 | 14 | 10 | 8 | 16 |
| Cookie’s Fortune | 11 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 17 |
| A Prairie Home Companion | 15 | 18 | 19 | 18 | 18 |
| Buffalo Bill and the Indians, or Sitting Bull’s History Lesson | 14 | 21 | 24 | 19 | 19 |
| The Company | 18 | 22 | 21 | 19 | 20 |
| That Cold Day in the Park | 26 | 27 | 16 | 15 | 21 |
| Fool for Love | 17 | 25 | 25 | 23 | 22 |
| Kansas City | 20 | 28 | 23 | 19 | 22 |
| Streamers | 24 | 26 | 20 | 23 | 24 |
| The James Dean Story | 30 | 19 | 21 | 27 | 25 |
| A Perfect Couple | 30 | 23 | 26 | 23 | 26 |
| Aria | 25 | 23 | 28 | 30 | 27 |
| O.C. & Stiggs | 30 | 20 | 32 | 28 | 28 |
| Health | 30 | 31 | 28 | 23 | 29 |
| Popeye | 21 | 29 | 33 | 33 | 30 |
| Countdown | 30 | 33 | 27 | 28 | 31 |
| The Gingerbread Man | 21 | 35 | 30 | 30 | 32 |
| Quintet | 29 | 30 | 33 | 33 | 33 |
| The Delinquents | 30 | 36 | 31 | 30 | 34 |
| Beyond Therapy | 28 | 31 | 36 | 33 | 35 |
| Prêt-à-Porter | 27 | 34 | 35 | 36 | 36 |
| Dr. T & the Women | 23 | 37 | 37 | 37 | 37 |
