James Stewart Has 11 Perfect Movies, According To Rotten Tomatoes

Whatever you think about the idea of there being no more movie stars, one thing I think we can all agree on is they don’t make ’em like James Stewart any more. One of the rare Hollywood stars whose off-screen persona lived up to his on-screen pedigree, Stewart has so many great movie moments that it would be incredibly difficult to pick a definitive best-of list. We can, of course, list our favorite Stewart roles, moments, and movies, but the actor had such an esteemed, diverse, and prolific career that everybody’s list would surely be strikingly different.

Whether you prefer early-career “aw, shucks” Stewart or complex, conflicted, late-career Stewart, the actor essentially made something for everyone during his time in the spotlight, which, as it happens, spanned World War II in which Stewart served as a pilot and commanding officer. From celebrated romantic comedies to celebrated Alfred Hitchcock films and some of the most critically acclaimed Westerns ever produced, Stewart displayed a unique range that makes narrowing down his best movies nigh-on impossible.

In 2025, however, we have something that Stewart surely never saw coming: Rotten Tomatoes. Amid a tide of ever-increasing media, RT has become a handy resource for those looking for a way to cut through the murk and decide what’s actually worth watching. But the review aggregator has also provided us with an easy, though imperfect, way to take stock of any given actor or director’s career, and in Stewart’s case, it’s interesting to see which of his films managed to finesse the TomatoMeter into a perfect score — and even more interesting to see which of his films didn’t achieve that status.

Rotten Tomatoes isn’t just for checking whether a new film fared well enough with the TomatoMeter to be worth a watch. It also allows us to look back at an individual’s career and get an approximation of what might be considered their best work. In the case of Sean Connery, Rotten Tomatoes would have you believe that his finest film is the forgotten Disney fantasy adventure “Darby O’Gill and the Little People” (hey, I told you the system was imperfect). But that doesn’t mean the site is entirely useless in this regard — it has at least given a perfect score to the excellent Andrew Garfield thriller “Red Riding: 1974.“

So we come to James Stewart, who, were he alive today, might stammer himself to self-implosion when confronted with such a thing as Rotten Tomatoes, especially if he took a look at the site’s ranking of his filmography and saw certain of his movies assigned cartoon splats. For our purposes, however, it’s interesting to see which of his projects actually managed to gain the elusive 100% critic score, as some of the films you might expect to be in this exclusive club just missed out.

Stewart has 11 movies with a perfect, 100% critic score on the site, which is pretty darn impressive by itself. I mean, Rotten Tomatoes maintains that there are only two perfect movies within the entire sci-fi genre, so 11 for just one man? That’s a true movie star stat (either that or the whole RT ranking system isn’t all that coherent a thing, but I digress). What made the cut? Surely “It’s A Wonderful Life” or “Rear Window” is up there? How about “Vertigo” or “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington?” Nope.

James Stewart’s “perfect” films are “Vivacious Lady,” “Bend of the River,” “The Man from Laramie,” “The Far Country,” “Shenandoah,” “The Philadelphia Story,” “Winchester ’73,” “The Mortal Storm,” “Rose Marie,” “Anatomy of a Murder,” and “The Naked Spur.” A healthy mix of genres, to be sure, but there are some glaring omissions, too. So, what’s going on?

Here’s the thing with these “perfect” Rotten Tomato scores. Typically, the fewer reviews a movie has, the higher the chance of it gaining either a flat 0% or a full 100% score. This is simply a by-product of how the site works. In order to get an overall percentage, each review submitted to the site has to be assessed as either positive or negative. What happens when it’s kind of in the middle? It still gets either a positive or negative label, with the RT curators tasked with ascertaining whether a film is, as the website explains, “mixed-positive or mixed-negative.” In other words, “a decision has to be made: is it Fresh or is it Rotten?”

The final percentage score is a representation of how many reviewers found the film “fresh” and how many found it “rotten.” So, when you only have a handful of reviews and the film is sort of OK, that guarantees a 100% score simply due to the paucity of reviews available and the fact that the curators are more likely to just label said reviews “mixed positive.” In James Stewart’s case, he has a full 11 films with a “perfect” score, and I’m afraid to say, quite a few of them aren’t very widely reviewed. One of the best Civil War movies ever made, “Shenandoah,” for example, has just six critiques backing up its 100% rating, and several others are in the 10 to 12 range.

This is typical of older films, which didn’t immediately face the wrath of the internet and its plentiful review sites upon their debuts. Conversely, it’s part of the reason some of the actor’s more popular movies aren’t in the 100% club, with “Rear Window” and its 98% based on a healthy 133 reviews. Likewise, “It’s a Wonderful Life” earned 94% based on 98 reviews. But Stewart’s 100-percenters aren’t entirely made up of movies with single-digit review numbers. In fact, beloved rom-com “The Philadelphia Story” is particularly impressive, with a 100% score based on a sizable 105 reviews. Now that’s a bonafide Fresh rating! Similarly, 1959’s “Anatomy of a Murder” has a full 53 reviews to its perfect score, while “Winchester ’73” claims a decent 32 reviews.

With all that said, 11 “perfect” movies is still some sort of achievement however you look at it, and there’s nobody in Hollywood history more deserving that Stewart.