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.
Whilst I do disagree with The Work Horse about things like his according to Joel Hirschhorn’s critical appraisals the authority that religious scholars, clergymen and serious worshippers understandably do to the teachings of Jesus Christ; every now and again, just to show that I am a “Team Player” I like to record a matter on which I think WH has gotten it right.
Accordingly I agree with him that we should keep to the professional aspects of movie stars’ lives and avoid politics and passing judgement on alleged personal failings such as sexual infidelities and other kinds of normally socially-unacceptable behavior. After all we often do not have all the facts and “Use every man according to his desert and who should ‘scape whipping?” advised the great William Shakespeare, known as “Billy” to Americans like The Work Horse.
However if one of WH’s idols like Sir Maurice Micklewhite was to give me a serious beating-up in public for saying something critical about those Archibald Alexander Leach so-called [and to me dreadful] screwball comedies I would [to Paraphrase Jack Lemmon in 1965’s The Great Race} “Sure want to mention it to SOMEBODY on this site!”
I really write now though to record the first time I ever heard the expression or tag “Me Too.” When the Americans under the first President Bush engaged in the Gulf War in the early nineties, the British government wholeheartedly supported the policy; and every time Mr Bush made a statement defending his decision, or announcing the extension of the hostilities, our then Prime Minister, John Major, immediately popped in the media to say that he total agreed with the American President; and Mr Major was therefore nicknamed “Me Too” by anti-war protesters and politicians!
Yesterday was a Top 10 Day Here At UMR…our 2nd Top 10 Day Since 2020 Rolled Around
Our Top Ten Days When Looking At Total Views
April 26th 2017 32,973 views
May 30th 2016 32,102 views
December 31st 2016 28,547 views
September 6th 2016 27,676 views
October 18th 2018 24,156 views
February 22nd 2016 24,103 views
May 5th 2019 23,504 views
August 2nd 2015 21,841 views
February 6th 2020 21,753 views
January 19th 2020 21,727 views
April 19th 2019 20,495 views
I didn’t know how to classify this so I put it here. Since December 1992 I’ve logged all films 2 years or older I have seen from TV and DVD or tape on the computer. I always wanted to try some type of Oracle of Bacon thing. I put in the leads (the top 2 people billed) for every older film listed, over 9000. Older films seen previous to Dec 1992 are not included though I have them on file by index card. No picture I saw under 2 years old whether it was theatrically or on DVD is counted. I’ve done my worst and best films every year since 1980 and none of those current films are involved, so no Star Wars, Harry Potter’s, Marvel films etc. Just call it the Oracle of Dan’s classic connections to each other.
It works this way, every one and their co-star is counted. If they acted a few times together it only counts once because it’s the same person. Then the actors the costar appeared with are counted in . I set a cut off of 5 co-stars at the bottom and 652 actors made the cut. These are my top 200 stars connected by what I saw as an old film in that time. The stars are ranked followed by the co-stars followed by the secondary connections. If no number is listed beside the actor in the rank it is tied with the number above.
1 LORETTA YOUNG 32 381
2 JOAN BLONDELL 26 371
3 ROBERT YOUNG 30 276
4 JOAN CRAWFORD 27 322
5 ROBERT TAYLOR 28 294
6 PAT O’BRIEN 26 321
7 BARBARA STANWYCK 24 323
8 GEORGE BRENT 25 319
9 ROBERT MONTGOMERY 25 260
10 CHESTER MORRIS 29 195
11 KAY FRANCIS 22 258
12 WALLACE BEERY 24 221
13 JOHN WAYNE 32 181
14 WARREN WILLIAM 21 217
15 ANN SHERIDAN 20 222
16 MARY ASTOR 21 193
17 BETTE DAVIS 19 211
18 ANN HARDING 18 252
19 LIONEL BARRYMORE 19 206
20 DICK POWELL 20 188
21 RICHARD DIX 26 155
22 GLENN FORD 28 152
23 MYRNA LOY 17 267
24 HUMPHREY BOGART 19 185
25 HENRY FONDA 19 182
26 JOEL MCCREA 23 152
27 VAN JOHNSON 20 158
28 CLARK GABLE 16 239
29 WALTER HUSTON 17 192
30 WILLIAM POWELL 18 175
31 PRESTON FOSTER 17 180
32 EDWARD G. ROBINSON 20 149
33 VIRGINIA BRUCE 16 189
34 ELEANOR PARKER 17 179
35 IRENE DUNNE 15 202
36 GARY COOPER 17 176
37 ANN SOTHERN 18 154
38 LUCILLE BALL 15 197
39 FRANCHOT TONE 17 175
40 LANA TURNER 17 169
41 JANE WYMAN 18 149
42 ROSALIND RUSSELL 16 170
43 WALTER PIDGEON 17 156
44 DENNIS MORGAN 16 166
45 DONNA REED 15 180
46 MADGE EVANS 15 180
47 JOHN PAYNE 16 158
48 OLIVIA DE HAVILLAND 14 183
49 RICARDO CORTEZ 15 164
50 DOUGLAS FAIRBANKS JR. 16 153
51 DANA ANDREWS 18 132
52 AUDIE MURPHY 21 116
53 GINGER ROGERS 15 155
54 BASIL RATHBONE 17 138
55 ROBERT MITCHUM 21 115
56 JAMES CAGNEY 13 197
57 DENNIS O’KEEFE 18 126
58 MAUREEN O’SULLIVAN 13 192
59 RANDOLPH SCOTT 19 119
60 WARNER BAXTER 20 113
61 FREDRIC MARCH 14 154
62 JOHNNY MACK BROWN 29 100
63 DEBORAH KERR 15 143
64 WILLIAM HOLDEN 16 132
65 RAY MILLAND 14 150
66 JOAN BENNETT 15 138
67 JACK PALANCE 21 103
68 ADOLPHE MENJOU 15 135
69 SPENCER TRACY 14 145
70 JEAN PARKER 14 143
71 CARY GRANT 16 123
72 NORMA SHEARER 13 155
73 SHIRLEY TEMPLE 14 137
74 ROBERT RYAN 15 127
75 MELVYN DOUGLAS 13 152
76 LEW AYRES 14 134
77 ERNEST BORGNINE 15 123
78 CONSTANCE BENNETT 13 146
79 LEWIS STONE 13 142
80 IDA LUPINO 13 135
81 CONRAD NAGEL 14 121
82 CLAUDETTE COLBERT 12 152
83 STERLING HAYDEN 14 120
84 JOHN BARRYMORE 15 111
85 MARGARET LINDSAY 12 147
86 VICTOR MATURE 17 100
87 EDWARD ARNOLD 12 144
88 BORIS KARLOFF 16 101
JAMES STEWART 16 101
90 WAYNE MORRIS 14 110
91 BARRY SULLIVAN 12 138
92 EVELYN KEYES 12 136
93 JOE E. BROWN 14 109
94 MICKEY ROONEY 24 79
95 ALAN LADD 13 120
96 JAMES CRAIG 12 131
97 HERBERT MARSHALL 13 114
98 VIRGINIA MAYO 12 126
99 JACKIE COOPER 14 102
100 RICHARD WIDMARK 14 101
101 FRED MACMURRAY 13 108
JOAN FONTAINE 13 108
103 JAMES ELLISON 12 120
104 ERROL FLYNN 13 106
105 JOHN HODIAK 11 129
106 EDMUND LOWE 13 105
107 LARAINE DAY 11 129
108 JOHN GARFIELD 12 116
109 YVONNE DE CARLO 11 128
110 DIRK BOGARDE 23 74
111 BRIAN DONLEVY 13 103
112 KATHARINE HEPBURN 11 127
113 GEORGE SANDERS 13 103
114 DAVID NIVEN 14 94
115 JEAN SIMMONS 12 112
116 WILLIAM BOYD 15 87
117 FRANK MORGAN 12 109
RITA HAYWORTH 12 109
119 RONALD REAGAN 13 100
120 ANNE SHIRLEY 14 88
121 RONALD COLMAN 13 97
122 ANTHONY QUINN 20 70
123 RORY CALHOUN 14 85
124 CLAIRE TREVOR 10 124
125 MICHAEL CAINE 14 84
126 DICK FORAN 15 80
127 BILL ELLIOTT 18 72
128 JEFF CHANDLER 10 122
129 RUTH ROMAN 11 108
130 GREER GARSON 9 147
131 GENE RAYMOND 10 120
132 RHONDA FLEMING 11 100
133 TREVOR HOWARD 13 83
134 HEDY LAMARR 9 131
135 ANITA LOUISE 11 99
136 MAUREEN O’HARA 11 98
137 RAMON NOVARRO 14 78
138 MERLE OBERON 11 95
139 LON CHANEY JR. 18 64
140 GEORGE ARLISS 9 122
141 SHELLEY WINTERS 10 102
142 EDDIE ALBERT 11 93
143 MARGARET O’BRIEN 10 101
144 JOSEPH COTTEN 12 83
145 ANN DVORAK 11 91
146 CHARLES STARRETT 26 56
147 ANNE BANCROFT 11 90
148 BOB STEELE 17 64
149 DAN DURYEA 10 98
150 CAROLE LOMBARD 9 112
151 VICTOR MCLAGLEN 10 98
152 LON CHANEY 15 68
153 LAURENCE OLIVIER 14 72
154 BRUCE CABOT 9 110
155 UNA MERKEL 10 96
156 LYLE TALBOT 10 94
157 JEAN ARTHUR 8 127
158 ROBERT CUMMINGS 10 94
TYRONE POWER 10 94
160 PATRICIA NEAL 9 106
161 TOM KEENE 20 56
162 GEORGE RAFT 8 123
163 JAMES MASON 18 58
164 RICHARD BARTHELMESS 8 123
165 RICHARD ATTENBOROUGH 10 91
166 BUCK JONES 13 73
167 GENE TIERNEY 9 103
168 ROCK HUDSON 10 91
169 EDMOND O’BRIEN 12 77
170 GUY KIBBEE 10 89
171 LEE TRACY 11 81
172 PETER CUSHING 19 55
173 JEAN MUIR 9 101
174 BRIAN AHERNE 8 116
175 JUNE TRAVIS 10 88
176 BUSTER CRABBE 14 65
177 CLIFF ROBERTSON 12 74
178 CHARLES COBURN 9 97
179 ROD STEIGER 11 78
180 GLENDA FARRELL 8 109
181 PAULETTE GODDARD 12 72
STEWART GRANGER 12 72
183 RICHARD GREENE 9 94
184 REX HARRISON 12 71
185 WILLIAM HAINES 10 82
186 PAUL LUKAS 8 105
187 RALPH BELLAMY 11 77
188 COLEEN GRAY 10 80
LESLIE HOWARD 10 80
190 STANLEY BAKER 11 73
191 ELIZABETH TAYLOR 9 85
192 RICHARD BURTON 13 61
193 MARION DAVIES 12 66
194 CAMERON MITCHELL 15 55
195 LLOYD BRIDGES 10 78
196 ALEXANDER KNOX 8 96
197 PRISCILLA LANE 9 83
198 RICHARD HARRIS 12 65
199 SYLVIA SIDNEY 8 94
200 LUPE VELEZ 9 82
VICTOR JORY 9 82
Bob Cox asked me about some kind of list which I couldn’t do. Inspired by this and Bob I’m going to try and do one based on all the films I gave a 6/10 or higher on the IMDB. They have me down rating over 20,000 things (including shorts, TV show episodes etc). I have extracted the whole list and then extracted all films, serials, shorts and TV films that I gave that rating too. TV films, shorts and serials don’t count in my total films seen nut if I like a lot of shorts or serials I think they should be included in this (it’s my list). This will take a couple of months as I have to fill in the top billed people but it should also be much more modern. I think the Three Stooges will be tops in films rated good or better but on an Oracle type list there’s really no co-stars since they’re billed in the top 2 (or 3).
For the record on the other list, Johnny Mack Brown was the person who was billed the most in the top 2 films over the past 27 years. He was credited with 84 followed by Gene Autry with 74. Why do they rank much lower, well for Gene he wasd co-listed with Smiley Burnette 31 times and 27 times with his horse Champion. Champion didn’t work with anyone else and Smiley, the comic sidekick usually stuck with 1 cowboy most of the time. Johnny Mack Brown has 28 times with Raymond Hatton (old comic sidekick) and 14 with Fuzzy Knight (another sidekick).
Other strange things, all Andy Hardy pictures were seen before 1992 so no credits for Mickey Rooney or Lewis Stone there. Johnny Weissmuller gets no credits for any Tarzan film he appeared in (all seen pre 1992) but is credited for all the Jungle Jim films. A lot of classic stars were seen in revival theaters circa 1979 to 1983, over 800 films, so no Ten Commandments or Casablanca, Yankee Doodle Dandy etc. They will be represented on the other list. I doubt Johnny Mack Brown or Gene Autry have more than a couple of pictures that I’ve given 3 stars or 6/10 and above too. They’re basically routine films.
seen nut should be seen but
Gene he wasd should be Gene he was
Yea Dan, amazingly detailed Dan, great list. thanks for sharing and arranging your wealth of knowledge..
Hey bob cox…..sounds like you got Dan really thinking. Looking forward to the bob inspired list….that might take awhile to get here.
Hey Dan. Sorry I missed this list. Very cool that you created this list this way. The Bill James in you is strong….lol. Even cooler that you are working on a list inspired by bob cox. *Bill James is a stat baseball god.
Your 200 is filled with lots of legends. Cary Grant coming in 71st place….seems low….but that is my Grant bias kicking in. I will have to share this list with one of the Joan Crawford facebook pages that I visit often. They will get a kick out of the 4th spot in the rankings…and an even bigger kick of Bette Davis being listed below her.
Interesting about the other list….Johnny Mack Brown is not a name I would have guessed in a million years. Gene Autry is on my list of people to get an UMR page done. Lots of good trivia in the bottom part of your comment. An impressive collection Dan. I think our minds work the same way…and your results are very interesting to see. Thanks again for taking the time to share this information with UMR. You truly are the man!
Did you ever see 100 Years of Movies a short made for TV. In 9 minutes it does the history of movies up to Schindler’s List. This short was the first thing broadcast on TCM before their first movie airing which was Gone with the Wind. I found out the guy that made that compilation did a similar one in 1986, Precious Images. This film was sponsored by the Director’s Guild of America and features clips from 453 movies in 8 minutes. It won the Academy Award for best live short that year and is supposedly the most shown short in history. You should check them out on Youtube. Chuck Workman is the director of both.
HI Debbie Tante:
So you’ve finally snapped! What took you so long? Obviously you’ve become so fed up with those posts from The Master appearing on this site that you have been driven to in effect spamming your own husband. Or was it my suggesting that your husband might have a Miss Brooks type female colleague with a crush on him at work that has driven you over the edge?
The first of the rash submitted at 3.02 PM yesterday looks as if it has been written in Cthulhu speak from the H P Lovecraft horror stories or Klingon speak from Star Trek. I understand Steve Lensman speaks both languages so maybe he can translate for us.
I am reminded of an episode of the TV sitcom Frasier aired on 5 Nov 2002. Here’s what IMDB has to say about it.
“Frasier’s son Frederick, who is part Jewish, wants to give a speech at his Bar Mitzvah and Frasier in turn wants to give a speech about Freddie in Hebrew at the ceremony. Noel Shemsky, Frasier’s co-worker and a Star Trek fanatic, agrees to teach him in return for a favor. When Frasier fails to fulfill his end of the deal Noel teaches him the speech in Klingon. As a result, Frasier embarrasses himself and his son and is told off by the Jewish elder for speaking “gibberish”.
But hey! Debutante those fellow-spammers of yours have been allowed to jump the queue [academics usually are on this site]: posts that regulars like me [“the Real Deal”] had previously sent are lying unanswered [such as my classic gems about Lou Gossett Junior] while your husband fends off the ‘spammers’.
Even comments that I made about Hirsch yesterday have received no attention; and it is usually regarded as sacrilege on this site to ignore ANYTHING relating to The Master. And to cap it all one of your conspirators has even pretended to be ME – the cheek!
If your fellow pranksters want to atone, the 3.02 pm guy or gal should undertake to translate into Klingon all future comments by The Master before your husband reproduces them on this site. Indeed that would be quite ‘poetic justice’ as when I first came across those Hirschhorn posts I initially concluded that THEY were the mischief of spammers.
THE DEBUTANTE’s SONG [AKA The Silent Partner]
From Beaches 1988 / starring Bette Midler and Barbra Hershey
It must be so cold here in my shadow,
Never to have sunlight on your face.
A wonderful girl with just a name,
A beautiful name without a space.
I am the one with all the glory:
You are the one with all the grace.
You always walked a step behind,
And it might have appeared to go unnoticed
But I’ve got it all here in my mind.
You are my indispensable:
I need someone of your kind.
Did I ever say that you’re my hero?
I would be lacking in these things.
‘Cause while I can fly higher than the eagle
You are the wind beneath my wings.
HI ANON: Whilst your poem [pinched from Beaches and paraphrased] reflects ORGANISATIONAL truth, everyone knows that the Cogersons are a very strong partnership, with The Debutante concentrating most on the contributions that make best use of her skills and anyway probably wanting to remain in the background. Indeed maybe that’s no bad thing: whilst I am sure she would bring a lot to the table up front, could the world take two of them drooling on about Joel Hirschhorn!?
As I read your lines though I couldn’t help laughing [even The Work Horse allows us to have a bit of fun at times on his site] because I was reminded of another husband and wife team, the Armstrongs with whom I worked years ago.
William Armstrong was chauvinistic towards women; and his wife, Joan, always meekly walked beside him head down, seemingly never having an opinion of her own. Indeed one colleague once joked to the pair of them “When there’s silence I know that Joan’s speaking.”
On one occasion the Armstrongs announced their intention to holiday abroad in a country where it was tradition for the wife to always walk behind the husband in public. Tongue in cheek, an office wit said to William “Will Joan have to walk behind YOU out there William?” The latter, who was devoid of any sense of humour, took the question seriously and replied “Well naturally I will expect her to obey the customs of the country.”
He spoke like that regularly. For example on one occasion he was part of a group of us who were out for lunch and I couldn’t quite understand one point in the conversation that a friend of mine was making so I kept asking questions; and William, who actually hadn’t participated in the discussion up until then but was listenig in intensely , finally lost patience and snapped “Oh for C****t’s sake will somebody paint Bobby a picture!” Even WH never puts me down that fiercely.
Hello All…..WoC tasked her students in her Python class to visit and fill the comment box up. So all of those comments might look like spam…but they were actually done at the request of their teacher, WoC.
Thanks for the explanation Bruce, I popped in here yesterday and thought the place was under attack by some very inventive spammers with a lot of time on their hands. 🙂
I see Bob has been forced to invoke Cthulhu again. “Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn” try saying that after a couple of pints.
HI STEVE: I see that you too have got your hands on a copy of The Master’s book.
“Steve Lensman
February 1, 2020 at 11:00 am
Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn” try saying that after a couple of pints.”
Sadly though, to paraphrase Lee J Cobb in On The Waterfront , now that WH has gotten academics involved with his site a couple of thickos like you and me are “just other guys around here” and Flora is just abother gal. The gang that wrote those ‘spams’ will be admitted to this site’s exhalted circle at the head of which sit Myrna and Joel. We are what in the 1970 Brit Generl Election Harold Wilson called 1970’s Tories “Yesterday Men.”
Hey Steve…..I jokingly always ask if WoC talked about UMR in her class. She sometimes works as adjunct professor at one of the universities in our area. Normally…she jokes…”Of course..the entire class was about your website”…the reality is….once in awhile she throws UMR a bone (like once a semester)….and we get these type of comments.