The twenty best film openings ever?

20. 20 Gregory's Girl 1981

19. Reservoir Dogs 1992: "I'm gonna tell you what Like a Virgin's about." It was with this line that Tarantino quite brilliantly chose to announce himself to the world. Even before Reservoir Dogs opened, the film was already notorious for its violence, but here, for a full seven minutes, we were given instead a clutch of black-suited hoods nattering with astonishing fluency about Madonna lyrics and the ethics of tipping. Would it ever get to the action? No one cared. The dialogue was the action, and a scary 13 years on it remains as crisp as an icicle and as thrilling as a car chase. Mark Monahan

18. Goldfinger 1964, How cruel it is not to be able to include From Russia with Love, The Spy Who Loved Me, or any of 10 other Bond "teasers" - but there's room for only one, and Goldfinger has got to be it. All Bond life is here: a bomb, a bombshell and a blistering fight, concluded with 007's ingenious use of an electric heater and a terrific, callous pay-off. As he says, "Shocking! Positively shocking!", a particularly suave line coming from a man who minutes earlier was disguised as a duck.

17. Sunset Boulevard 1950

16. Live Flesh 1997

15. Strangers on a Train 1951

14. Manhattan 1979

13. Un Chien andalou 1929

12. Blade Runner 1982: It's hard not to just sit and gape at the opening of Scott's sci-fi epic: a panoramic imagining of Los Angeles, 2019, all twinkling towers and flame-belching refineries, unfolding to Vangelis's swirling synth chords. Lawrence G Paull's production design deserves considerable credit, but how serenely Scott captures it, and how deftly, too, he handles the first bit of action proper, the ultra-tense cross-examining of a "Replicant" (android) about his non-existent past and family. "My mother?" he says to his interrogator. "Let me tell you about my mother…" Things soon turn very ugly, but boy do they look good.

11. Great Expectations 1945

10. Scream 1996: Nearly 50 years after Hitchcock rewrote cinema's rules book in Psycho by allowing his villain to murder his leading lady so early on, Craven upped the ante - and revived the flagging slasher genre - by dispatching Scream's biggest star in the unforgettable opening scene. Drew Barrymore's sassy blonde, Casey, is home alone, preparing to watch a horror film (what else?) when the phone rings. The anonymous caller has an unexpected question: "Do you like scary movies?" Ten witty and stomach-churning minutes later, Casey is history.

9. Dumbo 1941

8. Star Wars 1977: Disappearing off into infinity, the written prologue is exciting enough, but it's scant preparation for what comes next. Lucas's camera pans down to an immaculately composed trio of planets and then, in a still unrivalled use of foreshortening, two spaceships appear. The first, which initially seems hefty enough, speeds past, fired upon by an as yet unseen foe; but, just seconds later, it's dwarfed by its pursuer, a magnificent wedge of technology that thunders over, and over, and over our heads. In 1977, this spectacle was unprecedented and little short of gobsmacking; even now, it's stirring stuff.

7 Enduring Love 2004

6 Apocalypse Now 1979: "This is the end," sings Jim Morrison of the Doors, and swathes of Vietnamese jungle explode silently into billowing flame; slo-mo US Army choppers cut through clouds of orange dust in the foreground. Then in extreme close-up - and upside down - Martin Sheen's Capt Willard appears, bathed in sweat and lying on a hotel bed, paralysed by alcohol-fuelled ennui. He looks up at the ceiling fan as it mimics exactly the spinning blades of a helicopter and delivers the immortal line: "Saigon. Shit, I'm still only in Saigon."

5. GoodFellas 1990: Scorsese's wiseguy saga starts with thumps coming from the boot of a Pontiac. Ray Liotta, Robert De Niro and Joe Pesci pull over to polish off the groaning unfortunate who's in there. "As far back as I can remember," Liotta's voiceover kicks in, "I always wanted to be a gangster." He slams the boot shut, and the appalled camera wheels in tight on his frozen face, the trumpet intro of Tony Bennett's Rags to Riches blaring up in exhilarating synch with the shot. An unimprovable, searingly ironic curtain-raiser. TR

4. City of God 2002

3. La Dolce vita 1960

2. Jaws 1975: Jaws begins where it belongs - underwater for the credits, with Bill Butler's camera and John Williams's score prowling the seafloor in cahoots. Spielberg cuts abruptly to a bunch of kids around a campfire; two of them break off and run, giggling and shedding clothes, to the water's edge. Her friend's too stoned, but Chrissie (Susan Backlinie) dives in, swims out, and, tugged sharply from below, faces a hideous, thrashing ordeal as the shark's first course. Here the era of the precision-tooled summer blockbuster began.

1 Don't Look Now 1973