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.
Hello Bruce,
Here is the top 11-20 of 1924’s US grosses :
http://www.boxofficestory.com/usa-box-office-1924-top-11-a-20-a131691272
In passing, I like the table on George Sanders. I saw 16 movies from the list. Many good movies in it, like Ivanohe, Village of the Damned, Man Hunt, Rebecca or Forever amber. But my favorite is Moonfleet. I love this movie, one of my favorite of all cinema. Stewart Granger, the directing of Fritz Lang, this side a little Gothic with its decors worthy of the Hammer, the lights, the scene where Granger whips a smuggler to give him a lesson … In short, I’m a fan of this film.
Hello everybody,
Here is the first section of the US top 50 1924 !
http://www.boxofficestory.com/box-office-usa-1924-top-10-a131599630
Good reading.
Hello Bruce,
I know you are eager to see the end of the top 50 of 192 Lol. So here it is :
http://www.boxofficestory.com/box-office-usa-1923-top-41-a-50-a131423260
And coming soon 1924….
Hey Laurent….thanks for sharing this information…I made your link my “post of the day”…good information.
HI BRUCE
1 Naturally your very welcome new pages on for example the Janes Russell & Powell contain movies that you have covered previously on the pages of their co-stars. I notice that in most if not all cases you are now quoting a slightly increased adjusted figure for each of the movies concerned. For example Jane’s new page gives $202 million for The Tall Men which is credited with just $196.9 on Gable’s page which has of course been in existence for some time.
2 I have been going on the assumption that hitherto your grosses had been inflation-adjusted to the year 2014 or 2015 for which Mojo gives average ticket price of$8.17 & $8.43 respectively and that the recent new pages have been adjusted to 2016 ticket prices for which Mojo quotes an average ticket price of $8.65 [Mojo’s current estimated average ticket price for 2017 is $8.89]
3 You are aware that I do a lot of spin-off private projects involving box office grosses and that I depend on your figures for those exercises. It would therefore be helpful to me in maintaining consistency throughout those exercises to know the base year(s) to which your figures are inflation adjusted. Would it be too much trouble for you to include a reference to the inflation adjusted base year at the top of each future new page’s stats table and to do the same on existing pages where you update the original inflationary adjustments? If I recall correctly Steve gives 2013 as his base year for the Worldwide inflation-adjusted grosses he quotes on his Francis Coppola video
Hey Bob….not sure if WoC has done something to the current ticket prices or not….if she changed it…then that is probably the reason for the differences….yet another reason I want this site to be dynamic. These new slideshows are actually one of the first steps to that happening. I will work on your request when we get back from Atlantic City….leaving first thing in the morning. Generally…we (WoC and myself) have resisted the urge to change the ticket prices every year….usually waiting until the price change causes significant increases…..because once we change the average….the entire site would need to be updated….which is a pretty hefty task to manually do. Good feedback as always.
Hello Bruce,
After three weeks of vacation and of a long unbearable waiting (lol), here finally the continuation of the top 50 of 1923 :
http://www.boxofficestory.com/us-top-1923-new-c29283086