I often get asked why I rank movies using statistics versus just sharing my personal preferences. When asked this question, Judd Nelson immediately pops up into my mind. His role as John Bender in 1985’s The Breakfast Club made a huge impression on me during high school. While attending college I worked at a video store and my Nelson admiration went with me. When customers would ask for recommendations, I would somehow figure out a way to recommend Nelson’s St. Elmo’s Fire, Making the Grade, Fandango and of course The Breakfast Club. Shortly thereafter his Blue City was released.
Blue City received not just bad reviews but horrible ones. I remember one reviewer saying, “….it looks like it was edited with a chainsaw”. Its box office results were dismal. Yet, when the movie reached my video store, I treated it like Citizen Kane had arrived. I recommended it to anybody that walked into the store. Even though my customers would return the movie and say it was not very good, I stuck to my guns and kept enthusiastically recommending it. It literally took years before I realized that not only was Blue City not great, but that it was awful.
When I started ranking movies on UltimateMovieRankings.com back in 2011, my memory of steering so many people wrong with regards to Blue City laid heavily on me. To get my personal preferences and biases out of the way, I figured it was best to rank movies using statistics. Using box office grosses, critic reviews, movie goer reviews and award recognition I created a mathematical formula to rank movies.
My statistical ranking formula generally pushes good movies to the top and bad movies to the bottom of the rankings. Is it perfect? Heck no, but it is very consistent. Will you question some of the rankings found in this book? I would be shocked if you did not. There are many times when I question the results.
So now that you know why I use statistics to rank movies, let’s talk about this book. Amazingly, this is my third book. I find it amazing because I do not really know what I am doing. My first book was called Top 50 Movie Stars…. Statistically Speaking. It featured 50 actor and actresses that had the best movie careers based on their statistics. Thousands of thespians were researched with Spencer Tracy earning the top ranked spot. I think that book turned out well, but younger readers wanted to read more about current stars than classic stars. That feedback led me to my second book, Ranking Today’s Movie Stars. It featured a breakdown on almost 400 modern stars with Tom Hanks earning the top ranked spot.
While those two books looked at movie stars, this book will look at categories of movies. Movies will be ranked by genres, franchises, and other categories. So, if you ever wanted to know which James Bond, Sports, Computer Animated or Zombie movie is the best statistically then you have found the right book.
Our newest subject….researched the movies…just ran out of time to write the page.
MovieYear
1st – Catch-22 (1970)
Rescuers, The (1977)
Elf (2003)
Horrible Bosses (2011)
5th – In & Out (1997)
On a Clear Day You Can See Forever (1970)
Cold Turkey (1971)
Legally Blonde 2: Red, White and Blonde (2003)
Hell is for Heroes (1962)
10th – Rescuers Down Under, The (1990)
Hot Millions (1968)
Little Miss Marker (1980)
Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer (1998)
First Family (1980)
15th – Sports Pages, The (2001)
Hey Flora…you are 100% correct. I was looking at a list of actors who are over 90 and still going strong when I saw Mr. Newhart’s name….figured it was past time to give Newhart some UMR time in the spotlight.
Long time reader rare commentor. I do have a request. I understand your logic of not wanting to overload your readers with lots of new pages. I have noticed you have been putting your new pages on this page. The order you are putting them in, it’s very confusing. Is there a way you can put them in the order you write them versus the current way? Either that or maybe explain how we can distinguish the newest pages. I might be in the minority, but I appreciate all the new content. I just wanna be able to find it. I hope you’ll take the time to consider this suggestion/request.
Hey Seton…..point taken…I will fix the newest page timeline after I catch up on the comments. We had a “website expert” review on website. Having a new page about every 2.1 days was apparently on the low side of things. Good websites generate new materail at a much greater rate. One of their many suggestions was cranking out more new material. I want to get more stuff out….but do not want the readers to be overwhelm. Glad you like the quantity of new material….though I suspect you might be in the minority of the regular commenters. Good stuff…I will fix that before I go to sleep.
Hey Seton…your suggestion has been implemented. Thanks for taking the time to comment…and even more thanks for checking out our website. Both are greatly appreciated.
I often get asked why I rank movies using statistics versus just sharing my personal preferences. When asked this question, Judd Nelson immediately pops up into my mind. His role as John Bender in 1985’s The Breakfast Club made a huge impression on me during high school. While attending college I worked at a video store and my Nelson admiration went with me. When customers would ask for recommendations, I would somehow figure out a way to recommend Nelson’s St. Elmo’s Fire, Making the Grade, Fandango and of course The Breakfast Club. Shortly thereafter his Blue City was released.
Blue City received not just bad reviews but horrible ones. I remember one reviewer saying, “….it looks like it was edited with a chainsaw”. Its box office results were dismal. Yet, when the movie reached my video store, I treated it like Citizen Kane had arrived. I recommended it to anybody that walked into the store. Even though my customers would return the movie and say it was not very good, I stuck to my guns and kept enthusiastically recommending it. It literally took years before I realized that not only was Blue City not great, but that it was awful.
When I started ranking movies on UltimateMovieRankings.com back in 2011, my memory of steering so many people wrong with regards to Blue City laid heavily on me. To get my personal preferences and biases out of the way, I figured it was best to rank movies using statistics. Using box office grosses, critic reviews, movie goer reviews and award recognition I created a mathematical formula to rank movies.
My statistical ranking formula generally pushes good movies to the top and bad movies to the bottom of the rankings. Is it perfect? Heck no, but it is very consistent. Will you question some of the rankings found in this book? I would be shocked if you did not. There are many times when I question the results.
So now that you know why I use statistics to rank movies, let’s talk about this book. Amazingly, this is my third book. I find it amazing because I do not really know what I am doing. My first book was called Top 50 Movie Stars…. Statistically Speaking. It featured 50 actor and actresses that had the best movie careers based on their statistics. Thousands of thespians were researched with Spencer Tracy earning the top ranked spot. I think that book turned out well, but younger readers wanted to read more about current stars than classic stars. That feedback led me to my second book, Ranking Today’s Movie Stars. It featured a breakdown on almost 400 modern stars with Tom Hanks earning the top ranked spot.
While those two books looked at movie stars, this book will look at categories of movies. Movies will be ranked by genres, franchises, and other categories. So, if you ever wanted to know which James Bond, Sports, Computer Animated or Zombie movie is the best statistically then you have found the right book.
Cogerson – Summer 2021
Our newest subject….researched the movies…just ran out of time to write the page.
MovieYear
1st – Catch-22 (1970)
Rescuers, The (1977)
Elf (2003)
Horrible Bosses (2011)
5th – In & Out (1997)
On a Clear Day You Can See Forever (1970)
Cold Turkey (1971)
Legally Blonde 2: Red, White and Blonde (2003)
Hell is for Heroes (1962)
10th – Rescuers Down Under, The (1990)
Hot Millions (1968)
Little Miss Marker (1980)
Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer (1998)
First Family (1980)
15th – Sports Pages, The (2001)
This is Bob Newhart. I am looking forward to when the page is written
Hey Flora…you are 100% correct. I was looking at a list of actors who are over 90 and still going strong when I saw Mr. Newhart’s name….figured it was past time to give Newhart some UMR time in the spotlight.
Dude! You have been one busy writer. Keep it up!
Had a couple of pages ready to go for tonight…..but I will publish them tomorrow….so Lucy and Richard will have to wait another day.
Long time reader rare commentor. I do have a request. I understand your logic of not wanting to overload your readers with lots of new pages. I have noticed you have been putting your new pages on this page. The order you are putting them in, it’s very confusing. Is there a way you can put them in the order you write them versus the current way? Either that or maybe explain how we can distinguish the newest pages. I might be in the minority, but I appreciate all the new content. I just wanna be able to find it. I hope you’ll take the time to consider this suggestion/request.
Hey Seton…..point taken…I will fix the newest page timeline after I catch up on the comments. We had a “website expert” review on website. Having a new page about every 2.1 days was apparently on the low side of things. Good websites generate new materail at a much greater rate. One of their many suggestions was cranking out more new material. I want to get more stuff out….but do not want the readers to be overwhelm. Glad you like the quantity of new material….though I suspect you might be in the minority of the regular commenters. Good stuff…I will fix that before I go to sleep.
Hey Seton…your suggestion has been implemented. Thanks for taking the time to comment…and even more thanks for checking out our website. Both are greatly appreciated.