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.
Ever heard of PrettyFamous.com? Seems they are borrowing heavily from your idea for rating movies. You might want to check it out, especially how they calculate their Smart Movie Rating.
http://movies.prettyfamous.com/l/23141/Rogue-One-A-Star-Wars-Story-2016 seems like stuff you have been doing for a very long time.
Hello Bruce,
I wish you a merry christmas with your family.
And to you as well…Laurent….thanks for all of your help this year.
BRUCE
1 I have just read an article about how the modern worldwide movie market is a far cry from that which existed in the Classic Era. Readers of your site already knew that of course as your adjusted global stats have persistently shown us that the best average take abroad in those days was normally around 50% of the domestic market and at times much lower.
2 The article goes on to say that as a result whilst years ago producers regarded a film’s domestic earnings as the definitive measure of success, today the yardstick is the worldwide gross. However the article concludes by saying that as reliable information about worldwide figures is “spotty” [particularly with regard to older films] the best consistent “approximation” of the relative popularity of actors and movies is the domestic gross adjusted for ticket price inflation.
3 This site can therefore take a bow because of its comprehensive coverage in that respect of both classic AND modern movies and their stars, as well as of course providing comparative columns of artistic ratings and much other information besides.
4 All of this makes you realise how misleading the Variety all time rentals chart was which ignored all grosses and didn’t adjust for inflation. Do you know if they still run it in the old format? If so are you aware of the cut-off point? When I last saw that chart it was away back in the mid-1970s and only movies with rentals of $4 million and above were included but of course that figure is around $15 million today when adjusted for inflation. For old times’ sake I’d be interested in any info you have as it used to be my Bible. Many thanks BOB
Hey Bob…interesting information in your comment. As we incorporate more worldwide box office numbers here….I wonder if that % will drop or stay the same? Of late…I have been sure to include all the worldwide stats I have. I guess I have finally seen the light…….and realized that worldwide might be interesting to people not living in the United States.
“Spotty” is a much nicer word than I would use….I think….”Crappy” is the word that pops into my head. Thanks for the nice words about this site. Sometimes when I set back and see all the pages here….it is mind boggling that we have gotten so much information out there.
As for the Variety All-Time Rental charts…they were still publishing those charts in the mid to late 1980s….I think USA Today and their coverage on Monday about the previous weekend….killed the “rental” number….as the studios realized most normal movie fans did not care how much money a movie earned for the studios….but they were very interested in knowing how much it earned at the box office. There is one issue of Variety you might consider buying…February 24th 1992…..they list the All-Time Film Rental Champs by Decade…it lists about 1200 movies…from 1912’s Paul J. Rainey’s African Hunt to 1991’s Terminator 2.
Thanks for the feedback.
1 By implication you rightly highlighted that grosses do not always represent profitability. Bruce gives Garbo’s Torrent for example just adjusted lowly 55 million grosses worldwide but according to Wikipedia that movie made a profit because of low production costs.
2 However even if we had profit/loss figures for all films I would not favour them as a standard measurement for the comparative commercial success of stars. That is because for example excessive budgets were largely outside the control of stars certainly in the Classic Era and what’s deducted from the gross before a profit is reached could differ from studio to studio and even from movie to movie
3 Besides as the Crawford profit/loss survey shows the top stars would have had relatively few flops and anyway across the careers of all stars the flops of one performer would normally tend to balance out against the financial bombs of the rest
4 Neither is the CPI method of general inflation calculation which is excellent for showing the purchasing power today of grosses from bygone years a good way to measure the relative success of movie stars with each other over the years. That is largely because whilst general inflation tended to remain relatively stable over long periods in the classic era cinema ticket prices increased more sharply. For example since the 1934 the dollar’s value inflated by a multiple of around 18.04 times whereas cinema ticket prices increased by a multiple of 37.4
5 Besides the proof of the pudding is in the eating and Bruce’s stats clearly illustrate the top grossing names as being those whom the public and the experts have long recognised as the greatest stars In short overall grosses are the best way of proceeding for the purposes of comparisons between stars. Keep going Bruce!
Hey Bob….I think a studio can do lots of stuff to make it look like a movie was not profitable. I recently was reading that Warners was claiming they lost over $100 million on one the Harry Potter movies…which only grossed $800 million….now that is some good studio bean counting to make that happen.
Hi. Can you add my Ultimate James Dean website to your James Dean page??
Here is my page address:
http://ultimatejamesdeangallery.webs.com/
Here is yours:
https://www.ultimatemovierankings.com/james-dean-movies/
Hey Georgette….I will be happy to do that…..thanks for stopping by….it is greatly appreciated.