Top 250 Movies
Some friends and I have been looking at the Top 250 Movies on IMDB.com, and we compared who had seen the most. I tied with several others at 183 (Hitchcock and Kurosawa films helped me a lot). Since this is a dynamic list, the top 250 can change every day, but the list is fairly consistent from week to week.
Voting for “greatness” is an inherently flawed and subjective enterprise, doubly so when Internet voting is concerned (I could make 20,000 IMDB accounts and vote Ernest Goes To Jail into the list, for example). Still it is a fun thing to talk about, and if nothing else, it helps me find great movies I’ve missed over the years.
The absurd part is how many recent movies are in the Top 250. When I checked on February 13, 2007, 43 films out of the 250 were released between 1920 and 1949. There were 48 films in the top 250 released from 2000 on. So about 20% of the greatest movies of all time have been released in the past seven years? What a miraculous age we live in!
Of course, voters are more likely to vote on more recent movies, and a 12-year-old might genuinely think Return of the King is the greatest movie in the history of cinema, since he’s seen 100 movies total. Like hall of fame inductions, I think there should be a cooling off period before voting a movie as one of the greatest of all time (say ten years).
What should be considered for greatness? Influence, both cinematic and cultural, should be a factor. By that criteria, Wizard of Oz, Gone With The Wind, Psycho, and Blade Runner will always be in a greatest movies list. Yes, The Passion of the Christ might get in on that criteria, but let’s wait the required ten years before putting it up there. I’m surprised that a few incredibly popular movies didn’t make it, such as Titanic, Rocky, and E.T.
Documentaries were not eligible for the top 250, which is outrageous. Night and Fog, the French documentary on the Holocaust, should make the top 250, as well as Hoop Dreams.
Another obvious exclusion is the lack of movies from the developing world. India, the Middle East, and Africa are completely excluded, and there is only one movie from South America (City of God).
One last point: cinema is still an amazingly young art form. There are conceivably people alive today in 2007 who could have seen every movie on this list when it premiered.
Voting for “greatness” is an inherently flawed and subjective enterprise, doubly so when Internet voting is concerned (I could make 20,000 IMDB accounts and vote Ernest Goes To Jail into the list, for example). Still it is a fun thing to talk about, and if nothing else, it helps me find great movies I’ve missed over the years.
The absurd part is how many recent movies are in the Top 250. When I checked on February 13, 2007, 43 films out of the 250 were released between 1920 and 1949. There were 48 films in the top 250 released from 2000 on. So about 20% of the greatest movies of all time have been released in the past seven years? What a miraculous age we live in!
Of course, voters are more likely to vote on more recent movies, and a 12-year-old might genuinely think Return of the King is the greatest movie in the history of cinema, since he’s seen 100 movies total. Like hall of fame inductions, I think there should be a cooling off period before voting a movie as one of the greatest of all time (say ten years).
What should be considered for greatness? Influence, both cinematic and cultural, should be a factor. By that criteria, Wizard of Oz, Gone With The Wind, Psycho, and Blade Runner will always be in a greatest movies list. Yes, The Passion of the Christ might get in on that criteria, but let’s wait the required ten years before putting it up there. I’m surprised that a few incredibly popular movies didn’t make it, such as Titanic, Rocky, and E.T.
Documentaries were not eligible for the top 250, which is outrageous. Night and Fog, the French documentary on the Holocaust, should make the top 250, as well as Hoop Dreams.
Another obvious exclusion is the lack of movies from the developing world. India, the Middle East, and Africa are completely excluded, and there is only one movie from South America (City of God).
One last point: cinema is still an amazingly young art form. There are conceivably people alive today in 2007 who could have seen every movie on this list when it premiered.
posted by David Bowden at 2/13/2007 02:58:00 PM
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