Movie of the Year 1930-2015? What are you talking about? Well let me tell you. Over the last 5 years we have written many movie pages on many different subjects. Since 2011 we have done a yearly page that looks at every major movie release. Last year we tracked 166 movies. We tracked three major categories of information: (1) Domestic and worldwide box office grosses. (2) Critic reviews and audience voting…. and (3) Award Recognition….namely Golden Globe® and Oscar® nominations and wins. Once we gather all of these information…we use the three main categories to rank the movies. To do well in the rankings a movie needs to do well in all three categories. Last year, despite winning 0 Oscars®….The Martian ended up being our Movie of the Year. So how did The Martian get the Top Spot? The Martian was the 8th biggest box office hit of the year, it was 9th best reviewed movie of the year, it picked up 7 Oscar® nominations and won a Golden Globe® for Best Comedy of the Year…yes Comedy….that is not a misprint.
Originally we were going to do a table with only the UMR Movie of the Year. After some debut, we figured it would be better to include the Best Picture Oscar® Winner, the Best Reviewed Movie of the Year, the Biggest Box Office Hit of the Year and the UMR Movie of the Year. So for each year listed you could have 4 different movies or you could only have 1 movie for the year.
Movie of the Year 1930-2016 Table
- Column One is the year the movie was tracked
- Column Two is the Best Picture Oscar® Winner
- Column Three is the Best Reviewed (critics & audiences) Movie of the Year
- Column Four is the Biggest Domestic Box Office Hit fo the Year
- Column Five is the UMR Movie of the Year (combines box office, reviews & awards)
Our Yearly Review Movie Pages
- 1939 Movies Ranked Best to Worst Our movie of the year? Gone With The Wind
- 1942 Movies Ranked Best to Worst Our movie of the year? Mrs. Miniver
- 1946 Movies Ranked Best to Worst Our movie of the year? The Best Years of Our Lives
- 1952 Movies Ranked Best to Worst Our movie of the year? Greatest Show on Earth
- 2011 Movies Ranked Best to Worst Our movie of the year? The Help
- 2012 Movies Ranked Best to Worst Our movie of the year? Lincoln
- 2013 Movies Ranked Best to Worst Our movie of the year? Gravity
- 2014 Movies Ranked Best to Worst Our movie of the year? American Sniper
- 2015 Movies Ranked Best to Worst Our movie of the year? The Martian
One day we hope to do every year….so far our progress has been very very slow moving.
Dunkirk is a fine selection. No arguments from me.
I LOVE IT!!!! well thought out. your umrs are so great I wish you had listed them in each column to sort by. thanks for another great job. are all your lists on site index? I enjoy reading your articles.
Hey bob. Glad you like this page. It was a fun one to put together. I will update it when WoC gets through doing some more magic on the program. I can add links to the years we have pages on…when I do that update. Looking at the list, I feel the Top UMR movie is usually “spot on”. I do not see a single movie that looks insanely wrong.
This will not be a page that will need a “dynamic” update. Thanks for checking out one of our “Bill James” style movie reports.
Hey bob….took a lot longer than I thought….but I finally got this page updated…..also redoing the site index….which will hopefully make it easier to find our “Bill James type pages”.
Cogerson
This chart popped up on the comments page and so I focused on it for the first time. These are very interesting lists and I enjoyed going through them. Comments–
1—–I have to see “To Be Determined”–sounds like an interesting Oscar winner.
2—–Noticed as Steve did that only three films swept all four categories–It Happened One Night, Lawrence of Arabia, and The Godfather.
3—–I also think your UMR list is better than the Oscar winning list.
4—–Still there are some strange movies of the year on the UMR list–Little Women over King Kong in 1933? Boys Town over Snow White & the 7 Dwarfs? Johnny Belinda edging out The Red Shoes? Just interestingly–how did Little Women end up ahead of King Kong when Kong has the best reviews and the best box office. Little Women didn’t win a major Oscar, so just a nomination makes it picture of the year? Other than extreme Katherine Hepburn buffs, who watches it today? King Kong on the other hand is an iconic film.
5—–I noticed the spectacular box office performance by Clark Gable from 1934 to 1940 when he was in six of the top box office films over seven years. He also had three pictures of the year. A unique run.
Anyway, on the whole excellent work on an intriguing idea.
Hey John…glad you liked this page…it is one of the ones I visit all the time. This time next week I think To Be Determined will be getting replaced by La La Land…actually all of the 2016 movies will be replaced…Deadpool did a great job of holding on to the Top Spot….but those days are over….as La La Land has topped that one.
As for the strange UMR movies on top….this is only movies in my database versus all movies…that might explain some of it. As for King Kong, I will have to check out those numbers later today. I know Little Women got a Best Picture nomination and Kong did not…both got great reviews and were massive hits. So it was close.
Glad this page has gotten some attention from somebody other than me…..lol.
Interesting
Thank you Sara
How Do I actually declare exactly what a relief to search out one who in fact knows about what they’re speaking about on the internet. You actually realize how to bring in a challenge to sunshine and then make it important. Lots more people really need to understand this not to mention understand this particular aspect of the editorial.
Thanks for the kind words Donna G.