UltimateMovieRankings (UMR) has been ranking movies since 2011. Movies are ranked by using a combination of box office grosses, reviews, and awards. So far we have ranked 36,000 movies, written over 8,500 pages, been viewed over 25 million times, won three website awards, and have received over 50,000 comments on our pages.
Our vital links: Site Index, Newest Pages & Request Hotline. The Trending Now Sidebar lists our most popular pages in the last 24 hours.
Our Site Index lets you see what movie subjects we have already written about. The index lists the movie subjects alphabetically. Subjects go from classic performers like Clark Gable and Charlie Chaplin to the stars of the 1960s like Marlon Brando, Elizabeth Taylor and Paul Newman to today’s most popular stars like Sandra Bullock, Channing Tatum and Chris Pratt.
We like ranking movies…and that is what this website is all about. And we are not talking about a Top Ten list…we are talking about ranking all the movies in somebody’s career from Best to Worst. The criteria used for the rankings is box office grosses, critic reviews, audience voting, and award recognition. Every day the amount of movies ranked by Ultimate Movie Rankings increases ….our tally is now over 25,000 movies. The number one ranked movie is The Godfather ….coming in last is Kirk Cameron’s Saving Christmas. Thankfully our pages have been well received. Recently we crossed the 15 million view mark and are now read in over 230 different countries.
How we got here.
Sometime in 2010, for the millionth time I was looking at Joel Hirschhorn’s book Rating The Movie Stars (1983) when I wondered had he updated his ratings lately? A quick internet check provided the sad news that Mr. Hirchhorn had passed away in 2005. About a month later, I thought I could update the ratings. I then came up with an idea to create a mathematical equation that would create a numerical score for each movie. The first thing I had to come up with were factors for the equation.
So I thought….if I were producing a movie, what would I like to see my movie accomplish. The first thing I would want would be for the movie to be successful at the box office. Secondly, I would like the critics and moviegoers to enjoy my movie. And finally, I would like my movie to receive award recognition through Golden Globe® and Oscar® ceremonies.
There are all kinds of ways to determine if you want to see or skip a movie. You can depend on your favorite critic. My favorites are the late great Roger Ebert and Leonard Maltin. You might go to Rotten Tomatoes to get the consensus of all the critics. You might watch the viewer ratings at Yahoo Movies and IMDB. You might depend on which movies are doing the best at the box office. You might wait for the end of the year awards.
Ultimate Movie Rankings (UMR) Score takes all of these options and creates a mathematical equation that generates a score from 1 to 100. The higher the score the better the movie. A “good ” movie score = 60 or above. So anything above 60 should be a good movie to check out. This gives a good comparison number between centuries and now my wife and I can argue over the merits of her favorite, The Sound of Music and one of my favorites, Pulp Fiction using the same scoring criteria.
So far, I’ve generated scores for 36,000+ movies. With these scores, I’ve written 1,000+ web pages with a focus on actors/actresses and similar groups (Star Trek vs Star Wars, Top 100 Sports Movies are examples).
So let’s look at the breakdown of the variables in the equation.
1. Box office results. Receives the second-highest percentage (30%) of the equation. The ceiling was 200 million in adjusted for inflation dollars. Any movie that crossed 200 million maxed out the points in the category.
2. Critics and audience reception. Receives the highest percentage (46%) of the equation. So where do I find critics/audience reception? I use many different sources: RottenTomatoes, IMDb, MetaCritic, Yahoo Movies, Roger Ebert, Leonard Maltin, and Fandango. Put them all together and I get an average with 100% being the highest score possible. Sadly with the passing of my all-time favorite critic, Roger Ebert, I needed a new source….after much research…..our latest movie critic and taking Mr. Ebert’s spot is YouTube movie reviewer Chris Stuckmann.
3. Award Recognition. The final part of the equation is worth 24%. A movie gets points for Golden Globe® and Oscar® nominations and wins. The Golden Globes get 5% while the Oscars® get 13% of the equation. The last 6% goes to the amount of Oscar® nominations and the amount of Oscar® wins.
One way to see how the scores are calculated:
Top 200 Box Office Hits with Inflation + Top 100 Best Reviewed Movies + 88 Best Picture Oscar Winners = Top 100 UMR Score Movies
In January of 2011, we published our first Ultimate Movie Ranking (UMR) Score table on HubPages.com…we picked one of our favorite actors, Bruce Willis, to be the guinea pig. We have updated his page countless times over the years.
After a 12 hour delay…UltimateMovieRankings is back up and running. A very frustrating day for sure.
Yes, I have been able to post on Martin Balsam.
yea server, yea UMR. I consulted my computer expert to make sure it was not me. LOL
Aha I couldn’t get to the website either yesterday, was wondering if there was something wrong with my internet settings. I thought about adjusting my browser security settings but common sense prevailed. One page was working, the index page, which I had bookmarked. Good to see the UMR up and running again.
Hey Bob. All of your kind words sent in the direction of me, WoC and UMR are greatly appreciated. Interesting that it was the Cary Grant page that got you to find our page. Our page has grown and grown…that growth has a lot to do with the regular commenters….I can’t imagine doing this so long if not for the influence of the UMR Hall of Famers. So thank you for your part in making this website better.
The last Work Horse whom I knew was a workmate and close friend of mine in the British Royal Air Force in the early 1960s who had nicknamed HIMSELF “The Work Horse” -he was a Mancunian: they do things like that.
Also if you had mentioned Joel Hirschhorn to me I would have assumed that he was one of those strange exaggerated characters that you get in far-fetched classical operas. [Joel pretended to be an opera critic just as he did a movies one; though to be fair I have seen a few of his comments on operatic singing and agree with them].
AccrodinglyLittle did I know when I first encountered it that this site was operated by a human dynamo in harness with a highly supportive and computer-literate wife and that the Cogerson site like the character Topsy would ‘grow and grow’. “Working with Burt in Trapeze was like being near a furnace.” Bernie Swartz.
Anyhow in the one decade Roger making such a great comeback that briefly he became the oldest No 1 ranked tennis player in history and becoming as well the first male player ever to accumulate tennis 20 grand-slams; and the Cogerson site making its debut – wow! I should probably note beside each of those entries in my diaries “A day worthy to be marked with a great white stone!”
I have always thought that the following quote from the great Helen Keller would be a fitting epitaph for WH
“I am only one but still I am one.
I cannot do everything but still I can do something.
I will not refuse to do something that I can do.”
BRUCE
I requested a deletion of my first Part 2 submission at 7.15 am today [labelled anonymous] and was told my request had been granted, but unfortunately that has not been the case.
There is little point in recording one’s personal appreciation of something and then choosing to remain anonymous! So when you have a moment would you do the honours?
The last Work Horse whom I knew was a workmate and close friend of mine in the British Royal Air Force in the early 1960s who had nicknamed HIMSELF “The Work Horse” -he was a Mancunian: they do things like that.
Also if you had mentioned Joel Hirschhorn to me I would have assumed that he was one of those strange exaggerated characters that you get in far-fetched classical operas. [Joel pretended to be an opera critic just as he did a movies one; though to be fair I have seen a few of his comments on operatic singing and agree with them].
Little did I know back then that this site was operated by a human dynamo in harness with a highly supportive and computer-literate wife and that the Cogerson site like the character Topsy would ‘grow and grow’. “Working with Burt in Trapeze was like being near a furnace.” Bernie Swartz.
Anyhow in the one decade Roger making such a great comeback that briefly he became the oldest No 1 ranked tennis player in history and the first male tennis player ever to accumulate 20 grand slams; and the Cogerson site making its debut – wow! I should probably note beside each of those entries in my diaries “A day worthy to be marked with a great white stone!”
I have always thought that the following quote from the great Helen Keller would be a fitting epitaph for WH
“I am only one but still I am one.
I cannot do everything but still I can do something.
I will not refuse to do something that I can do.”
It is now not just the new year but a new decade and I tend to look back over what to me have been the most significant events of a previous decade. Roger Federer winning 3 more grand slams in 2017 and 2018 at the ages of 35 and 36 was of course high on the list.
Barack Obama becoming the first African American President of the US was also big in my estimation – though for a time Donald Trump ran around saying that Mr Obama was born on some place like Mars!
Also of great significance was my coming across the Cogerson site some 8 years ago. I remember vividly just returning from a weekend in Amsterdam and flicking through the internet and discovering to my surprise a page on Al Leach which gave adjusted domestic gross for his entire career. I had never before seen such a comprehensive statistical exercise for a Classic era star.
I thought it was just an isolated exercise for only one performer so you can imagine my delight when I soon discovered that there were also similar pages for many of my own idols like The Duke, Mumbles and Greg. I made hay while the sun shone of course and quickly transcribed the figures into my own databases; but I believed at first that the author would soon grow tired of maintaining the site. Continued in Part 2