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.
STEVE
1 Thanks for the explanation
2 Certainly your viewers seem to have got one thing right. The lady listed at No 7 in my last post to you is among those stars with the very least views on your site. That suggests to me that your users are very astute in their observations and refined in their tastes. By contrast on some other sites that lady is treated as Queen of the Castle.
3 At least my Joan comes 3rd on the list that I gave you with 738 views and I’m pleased that most of my male idols have at least 1K and some of them greatly exceed that figure.
Haha poor Myrna did do better at this site with nearly 22k views, I wonder if our bickering about her over the past 12 months helped boost that page? 😉
It’ll be interesting to see if videos on modern actors do as well as the classic actors on my channel when I eventually get round to them. We’ve had a peek at that recently with my Cruise and Statham videos.
I have a feeling many of my subscribers are middle-aged, they will not be happy when I start uploading videos on the new kids on the block. But there can’t be that many ‘notable’ golden oldies left, surely?
Bruce posts pages pretty much at random, oldies and newbies. While I have been trying to do it in roughly chronological order.
STEVE
1 It’s possible that John and Bruce starting arguments about Loy helped boost her views on the Cogerson site – I suppose it would have taken something out of the ordinary to do that.
2 Certainly I think that John was responsible for my Deanna exceeding 1K in views on your site as John labelled her the “forgotten” woman and I think your very discerning viewers were affronted and were determined to prove him wrong. Of course we mustn’t forget that Deanna was lovely to look at and your site deals in posters and stills so that viewers would most likely have wanted to look at the sweet young Durbin rather than the ageing Loy. .
STEVE
1 What do you think are the factors that determine the varying levels of interest that your videos attract from viewers. The following random selection of artists from your catalogue should illustrate my point.
1/Jean Simmons-1.2K views
2/Frank Sinatra-768
3/Bing Crosby -672
4/Danny Kaye -558
5/Dean Martin-462
6/Judy Garland-298
7/Myrna Loy-277
2 Jean has generally the most views by far and yet in the cinema she was a less important star than any of the others with the exception of the lady at No 7. It certainly puzzles me.particularly as Sinatra for example was listed by Time Magazine as one of the 100 most important people of the 20th Century
That is puzzling Bob. I expected Frank to do better. Some of it just doesn’t make any sense – Joel McCrea nearly 3.6k views surpassing James Stewarts 1k and John Wayne’s 2.8k. Deanna Durbin 1000 views ahead of Judy Judy Judy!
Some of these videos get linked at fan sites and get a hefty boost in views, Bruce has helped me with those in the past. Some like my Sci-fi movies 2010-2015 video turn viral and pick up a couple of thousand views each day.
Usually actors I expected to do well i.e. James Dean (462 views) don’t do as well as actors I didn’t expect big things from i.e. Audie Murphy (8.1k views!).
I’m glad it’s unpredictable, makes it more enjoyable.
To compare, the importance of the N-Y Roxy or the Gaumont Palace in Paris, the biggest Uk theatre in the years 20-30 was the Greens Playhouse of Glasgow with 4200 seats. Only 6 rooms exceeded the 3,000 seats in all the country (one in London, the Empire and its 3226 places).
Hi Laurent, I enjoyed your list and your summaries. I have heard of some of these films, but I don’t think I saw any of them. Seems Valentino was really big in 1922. Interesting that first-run movie theaters could have more than 1000 seats in these days! Thanks also for making me discover this French box office web sit – and thanks Bruce for sharing. Another one with loads of interesting facts and information. For the annual grosses in France though, I was not sure how to read the numbers. Are they in francs, US dollars, actuals or adjusted?
Hello Phil
Thak you for your kind words. I enjoy you like my summaries too, because my objective was mainly to (re) discover this fascinating period.
The receipts are in dollars since it is the US box office, harvested by the key theaters of Variety. These theaters were in N-Y, Chicago, LA, Pittsburgh, Portland, Seattle, Providence, Detroit, Denver, Montreal, San Francisco, Philadelphia etc.
Most of these halls actually counted more than 1000 seats, and even often more than 2000. Here are the most important of the time:
Los Angeles
Metropolitan: 3595 places
Portland
Broadway: 2500
Seattle
Fifth Avenue: 2700
San Francisco
Pantages: 2800
Minneapolis
State: 2,500
Hennepin-Orpheum: 2890
Philadelphia
Stanley: 4000
Fox: 3000
New York
Capitol: 5450
Paramount: 4000
Strand: 2995
Roxy (open in 1927): 6200. The largest Theaters in the world, in front of the Gaumont Palace in Paris and its 6000 seats.
Buffalo
Buffalo: 2600
State: 3400
Milwaukee:
Alhambra: 3000
Palace: 3400
Wisconsin: 3500
Baltimore:
Century: 3000
Chicago
Auditorium: 3000
Chicago: 4100
Oriental: 2900
State-Lake: 3800
providence
Albee: 2500
Majestic: 2500
Boston
Metropolitan: 4000
State: 4000
New Orleans
Saenger: 3568
Loew’s Stae: 3218
Saint Louis
Loew’s State: 3300
Here are the rooms (to my knowledge) of more than 2500 seats.
For the French box office, there is hardly any data before 1944.
Hello Laurent
I again
I am always fascinated by the movie palace and all the Numbers of the seats, and the décorations and the atmosphérique theaters in USA anyway we get the REX in Paris.
Can I ask you if you know how in the list You give how
many theaters are always entertaining to day.
I know fo NYC Paramount and Roxy are over but in Hollywood the Grauman chinese the Egyptians always are on the market and in inNYC there is always Radio City Music Hall.
Some of them are restored and some of them are became cinémathèque theaters
But most of them Have disapeared.
Thanks for this fascinating list.
See you
Pierre
I confess that I don’t know much about what has become of most of these theaters. But I can tell you that the N-Y Capitol closed in 1968, the N-Y Strand as well, in 1987, and as well as the N-Y Astor in 1982. The N-Y Rivoli has resumed its activity in 2012.
In Paris, large rooms (over 1,000 seats) of the time, it also remains the Normandie.
Hi Laurent, thanks for your response. Wow, these seem more stadiums than movie theaters. I’m not sure how big movie theaters are in France now, but there are few large ones left in Canada. Most theater chains divide their spaces into 7-10 rooms that can seat about 50-100 people so the cinematic experience is not what it used to be (not to mention that many have an endless run of loud commercials followed by an endless run of previews).
Anyway, my question on the currency of the box office numbers was not on 1922 (I understood your page was in US dollars), but on other pages on the site that provide the money earned in France for different years or movie stars. Do you know if these numbers are in francs or dollars and if they are adjusted for inflation?
Hello Phil,
I’m sorry I didn’t understand what you meant. I’m not always performing intellectually Lol. Indeed, your question makes perfect sense. The French box office is in admissions. As for Spain, Germany and Italy. So in order for you to know what really mean these figures, know that in France, out of more than 30,000 films released since 1945, about 4,500 have made more than 1,000,000 admissions. Less than 800 exceeded 3,000,000, just over 225 attracted more than 5,000,000 spectators, and only 27 films exceeded 10,000,000 entries.
In Paris, there were several great theaters. Between 1000 and 2000 seats, there were the Grand Rex, the Marivaux, the Marbeuf, the Biarritz for exemple. Over 2000 seats, there were the Olympia, the Moulin Rouge (not the cabaret), the Normandie, the Paramount and the Gaumont Palace with his 6000 seats.
Thanks Laurent, all clear now!
In Canada there were some gret theaters :
Toronto :
Uptown :2965 seats
Pantages : 2450
Hip : 2600
Montreal
Capitol : 2700
Palace : 2700
Loew’s : 3200
Hello Bruce,
Here, for those who are interested in silent film, here is the top 11 to 20 box office USA of 1922.
And thank you again to accept that I leave the link on your site.
http://www.boxofficestory.com/box-office-usa-1922-top-11-a-20-a130464274
Hello Laurent,
Thanks for the link and of course i follow it and guess what, I know very well this site for à long Time and I like it
It is very well done and I was asking me why not box office in the 30 and you just answer by your last comment.
I though that le film français get this database which is always with the Numbers of spectateurs not with the receipt of the theaters.
Anyway i Will follow your twenty box office because I think if the thirtheen are the DECADE the twenties stay the MAGICAL because Everybody in all over the world can watch and understand.
And I Never though Lollobrigida was one of the big box office in France.
Could you ask to your friend a Dietrich page because I saw Every year from 1945 and you get most informations for her except for one film I did not find KISMET.
Bonne fin de soirée
Pierre
Before the Film Français, there was the Cinématographie Française which published some figures of the French box office, by theaters. But it was grosses in francs.
Gina Lollobrigida was a very big star in France. One of the foreign actresses who made the most admissions in the country, may be even the most of all. 9 films of more than three million admissions, it’s a record for a foreign actor or actress.
For Marlene Dietrich, I forward your request.
Hello Pierre,
A Marlene Dietrich page has been published on Box office story, with some datas for the french box office, but also for UK, Italy and worldwide.
Good reading.
Hello Laurent,
Thank you so much for the information because I Have so much work in that days that I Have no Time to go and to see what happened on these sites.
Just read the comments that s all
Have a good day
Bye
Pierre
Hello again Laurent
I go on the page of Dietrich and I was very interrested because it gives informations that I did not know even I know for le studio des ursulines and the german version of the BLUE ANGEL.
In Europe we speak with Number of spectators in US they speak about money and I think it is much better.
And in the site of Bruce it is all the receipt and in yours it is the rental so it is ok for me..
I dont know that SHangai EXpress was réissued in1973 in USA , I know for the BLUE ANGEL.
I just canf say thank you to both Bruce and you for all these amazing jobs and patience you give for the comments,
Bravo, Messieurs et Merci
Have a good Time
Pierre
Hello Bruce
Thanks you so much for sharing this site because I am very often on both site that one with Laurent link sur and of course yours and I like very much both.
Great meetings i think five or four years ago
Good morning
Pierre