The art of the tagline is almost as old as the art of movies themselves. The practice of branding films with a catchy line of ad copy dates back to the silent era, and has remained engrained in motion picture culture a century later. As long as there are films, there will be cutesy taglines to try to convince us to go see them.

With the end of the decade nigh, the staff of ScreenCrush gathered to select the 50 finest taglines of the era. Lists were made. Votes were tabulated. Arguments raged. But in the end, these 50 taglines were deemed the best of the best.

Bear in mind this list ranks only the taglines, and not the films they are affiliated with. There are some extremely crappy movies — with extremely clever taglines — below. There are also a few taglines for movies that aren’t even out in theaters yet. Again, the quality of the film has no bearing on the quality of the tagline. Here at ScreenCrush, we measure those two things separately.

With those caveats out of the way, let’s begin.

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