After my recent rewatch with the wife:
1. Empire Strikes Back - The Hallmark film of Star Wars and deserving so. This film single handedly raised star wars above the scifi field and made it into something greater. The cinematography is amazing and still holds us, some of the shots are just gorgeous. It threw away the slow/old cinema pacing and styles of A New Hope and brought in modern cinema aspects that truely help Star Wars grow. Faster editing, better lighting, better sets, characters that are more than their early 20th century pulp generalizations. Where New Hope was a fun fantasy ride that set things up, Empire is what makes Star Wars special. Anyone who doesnt rank Empire as #1 is nuts. Empire Strikes back is Like Prisoner of Azkaban to me as a metaphor in a film seires. PoA was the first and only Harry Potter film to transcend in both direction, pacing, production quality and overall emotion, its the only Potter film to feel like a real quality film that cares about being the best possible FILM is can be. Empire is like that, its the only Star Wars film that cares about being the best possible film it can be. Not the best sci fi, not the best fantasy, it competes as a film against all other films (no its not the best film ever made, but it has the qualities of many of the best). If it was a house metaphor, Empire would be the house with the best finishes and quality on the inside and out. All the other films would be pretty on the outside but with questionable finished on the inside (except the prequels, which would just be burning landfills)
<--A decent gap-->
2. The Force Awakens - This will seem high to some, but after rewatching it on Bluray just a few nights ago, I still feel the same about it: It brought Star Wars back and hit all the points us fans have been crying for for so long. The crew at Disney gets it, they know what makes Star Wars tick, visually, thematically and emotionally. Is the filmed flawed? OMG yes. It has tons of flaws, its by no means a perfect film, and some parts are just stupid or undercooked. But it has heart, it has the star wars soul, its setup a lot of characters that can grow into great roles (none of them have reached that point yet, but nor did they in A New Hope). At the end of the day this was the first Star Wars film to make me feel giddy and like a little kid again sense I watched A New Hope back in the late 80's (wasnt born when it came out).
3. Return of the Jedi - This will be the most controversial part of my list, and I'm fine with that. I like it more than A New Hope. I just do. I'm not a fan of the Old Cinema style of editing, pacing and overall story mechanics used in A New Hope. Jedi moves quickly (except when it doesn't which drops it down below TFA) it sets up lots of Star Wars mainstays in the canon, it finally gives us some awesome space battles and the throne room fight end caps the OT perfectly. Sadly production qualities took a major hit from Empire thanks to an idiotic choice of directors who Lucas basically had to hand hold through the whole thing. I dont mind the Ewoks, in fact I find them cute and fun, though I hate that they were used in the end battle in such a way, the film would be better with the forest moon section substantially reduced. At the end of the day Jedi is rewatchable over and over again, it holds up decently (not as well as Empire), its fun, and it carries the universe accross the finish line (huffing and weazing and nearly falling flat on its face, but it still crossed!)
4. A New Hope - Dont hate me for this one, its only low in the way that #4 on this list is still in my top 20 films ever! I just feel A New Hope is a chore to rewatch. Scenes take forever to play out, the acting is suspect across the bored (and thats ok, it plays into the genre Lucas was imitating, but Empire shows us how much better this could have been) the editing is old school cinema (slow, takes a lot of time, holds onto shots for excruciating amounts of time). Overall its just a hard film to enjoy anymore for me, I want to love it, I love seeing my favorite characters, but I've come to represent them by their Empire personas, so A New Hope always feels like The Muppet Babies to me. Overall still a watershed moment in film, just stuck in a weird transitional period between classical films and modern films that the editing and pacing of it make it hard to sit through. This was the least favorite of my wife's and nearly made her not want to watch any more Star Wars. I get why this film is so highly thought of by everyone, I really do, and I appreciate its existence for both film history and the creation of Star Wars, I just dont really enjoy watching it.
<A huge smelly swamp, mountain range and ocean separates the quality of these films from the above. If you like the below films I think you have something wrong in the head>
5. Revenge of the Sith - The most competent of the prequels, and yet still feels like an armature production with no heart or soul. Poor Ewan, your talents where completely wasted on this (And I would like to see him as Obi Wan again, with a compitant director and script). The opening sequence was beautiful then completely ruined by droid humor. The love story was an abortion in ATOC and just as bad here. I can go on an on but honestly so many reviews have been done of this horrible film I'd just been adding to the white noise. Basically I agree with RLM on their points.
6. Phantom Menace - The only reason this is not equal with AOTC is it has some fun moments and a few sparks of interesting things, however I'll never forgive this film for making me leave the theater opening day wondering what the hell happen to Star Wars. Honestly until TFA came out, I had questioned if Star Wars was dead as a decent quality film production because of this film. I though by the time they ever revisited it people who like this piece of shit will be in charge of the industry and be clamoring for films like it. Thank god we've overall shunned this film and insured it is considered grade A garbage.
7. Attack of the clones - Its one of the worst films I've ever sat through, and continues to get worse everytime I've had to rewatch it.