Casino Royale. What did this recent James Bond installment win, you ask? Well, according to the website, flickchart.com, Casino Royale has been mathematically proven as my number one film of all-time. Flickchart is a site that allows users to rank films up against one another. A complicated algorithm guides the rankings, but essentially you are given an endless list of one-on-one matchups and asked to choose the better film of the two. Often these matchups are embarrasingly lopsided (e.g. Schindler’s List versus Snakes on a Plane), other times they are painstakingly close (Almost Famous versus Lost in Translation), and sometimes they are perversely intriguing (Love Actually versus Death Proof). The only rule is YOU MUST CHOOSE.
I spent nearly three hours on the site today (it’s addicting). You keep clicking next out of curiosity as to what the next matchup will be. The more times you vote, the greater influence each vote of yours gets upon subsequent matchups. The program begins to recognize who wins versus what types of movies and will give varying point levels based upon the complexity of the choices. Like I said, it’s a complicated algorithm that governs this. There are certainly flaws to its ways, as not all movies show up automatically, whereas others continue to show up time and time again (how many times do I have to vote down Knowing, before flickchart decides not to waste my time with it anymore?). In three hours, I completed 3127 rankings, which encompassed 423 films. All the films you could possibly imagine are in the database; the four hundred or so I encountered merely represented the most popular. As you continue to play along, more and more obscure films will enter the fray.
When my eyes became tired and my hand arthritic, I decided to stop and take a look at my Top 20. I admit that I was surprised at how it turned out, but when I thought about it, it was tough to argue for certain films over others. In other words, while I never expected Casino Royale to be my favorite film, it was undefeated in 23 matchups, and I’m hardpressed in looking at any other one film on the list that I might have chosen over it. I always knew I liked Casino Royale, and now I realize that it just doesn’t get any better.
My top 20 list is as follows:
1. Casino Royale
2. Pulp Fiction
3. The Matrix
4. Toy Story 2
5. The Big Lebowski
6. Almost Famous
7. Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
8. Hero
9. American Beauty
10. Monsters, Inc.
11. High Fidelity
12. Lost In Translation
13. Star Wars
14. Inside Man
15. The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King (actually, Fellowship of the Ring is my favorite of the trilogy)
16. Fargo
17. Predator (I know, right? But pound for pound, it’s just a pretty darn good action movie.)
18. 28 Days Later
19. Vanilla Sky
20. The Sting
Certainly, there are flaws in the system. I think Rushmore is the funniest movie of all time, certainly worthy of top 20 status, but it did not appear until I manually looked it up, but even then it could only rise as high as 84, as it did not appear in many contests. The rankings began pretty strangely as well. For the first 300 or so, Mission Impossible could not be beat as my number one film! Even more concerning was Terminator: Salvation at number two, a film I have not even seen. However, that is why you’ve got to stick with it. Get your numbers up there in the thousands, and then you begin to normalize. If you’re wondering, Mission Impossible is now somewhere around 212, and I took Terminator Salvation out of the running altogether by designating it as a film I had not seen, and thus precluding it from appearing in any further matchups.
Over 400,000 movie lovers have used flickchart and it keeps “global tallies” as you go along, telling you how many people voted for particular films, etc. The global number one movie of all time? The Dark Knight. And to think, it wasn’t even nominated for an Oscar.
I had fun wasting an afternoon on Flickchart, but I think after 3000 contests, I’m maxed out, and I don’t just mean physically. I began to notice that the Top 20 started to solidify around this point and there was no longer any fluctuation within that tier. I also found myself growing at peace with where my list was at. A nice blend of multiple genres, all films I own, and certainly ones I have seen (and am willing to see) on multiple occasions. Now, if only there were such algorithms for all of life’s other big choices.
In addition to being a Film Inspector I am also a seer of Hollywood. My Third Eye tells me what to expect in the coming years:
The Film Inspector 