Magazines, TV shows, and authors have attempted it, but nothing has done it better than IMDb.com, aka the Internet Movie Database: collecting the opinions of movie fans and crunching their votes into a top movies list.
IMDb allows anyone to make an account on the web-site and give any movie a rating out of ten points (ten being the best, one being the worst). The site then tallies all of the total votes using a tricky little formula and gets out a list of the top 250 movies according to fans. Here is the top ten, as of midnight on December 14, 2008. and their ratings on the site:
- The Shawshank Redemption - 9.1 (out of 10)
- The Godfather - 9.1
- The Godfather, Part II - 9.0
- The Dark Knight - 8.9
- The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly - 8.9
- Pulp Fiction - 8.9
- Schindler’s List - 8.8
- One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest - 8.8
- The Empire Strikes Back - 8.8
- 12 Angry Men - 8.8
The list wisely weights movies’ rankings with regards to how many votes the movie has received: for example, a movie that has a 8.8 rating with 1,000 votes will be weighted worse than a a movie with a 8.5 ranking and 250,000 votes. The more votes a movie gets, the more stable it is, and the more likely it is to climb up into the Top 250 list.
IMDb’s Top 250 features movies that have received 300k+ votes, so it is a pretty strong sampling of users’ opinions. The list has even received mention from some highly esteemed critics, a pretty cool feat for something that is little more than a souped up online poll.
One common concern is that people will vote for controversial movies either a 10 or a 1 in an attempt to get the movie to a different ranking. IMDb, however, claims to have an algorithm to separate out the regular and real voters from ballot stuffers.
The tricky area about the list is what exactly the list is composed of. Is it a list ranking the 250 “best” movies? The most popular movies?
I think the most accurate phrasing is that the IMDb Top 250 is a ranking of the most beloved movies by the site’s users. It is not an attempt to be a concensus at what is great, nor what is most widely viewed or known, but what movies the fans as a whole hold highest on average.
Another common, and very valid, criticism of the movie: Since the internet skews towards young users — and the average user on IMDb is probably between 18 and 25, I’d say — the list tends very strongly towards recent movies. It’s not unheard of for new movies to rocket onto the list within days of being released, before sinking as the crowd less eager to see the movie watches it.
Still, you’ll see a couple movies each year settle at pretty resepctable spots. The Dark Knight still sits at an astonishing #4 on the list (even peaking at the top spot!), while WALL·E is also absurdly high at #34. Yet dozens of classics aren’t even on the list.
The greatest part about this list is that it constantly changes and updates itself just from users watching and rating movies.
One of my goals in life is to see all of the movies on this (and I know someone who claims to have seen every one as of a couple of months ago — props, 2mas), so the list has taken a special place in my heart as a resource of quality, entertaining, beloved movies to hunt down. It’s honestly more useful than some list from some academic critic or something because it’s put together by people looking for movies with generally the perspective that I am: as emotive, engaging entertainment and storytelling. It’s the people’s opinion I care about, and that’s why IMDb’s Top 250 works so well.
Truly one of my favorite lists on the Internet. Extremely informative, always changing, and built by the people.
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