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 10,500 pages, been viewed over 50 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.
ADDENDUM TO PART 2 GOODBYE JOEL
WORK HORSE I forgot to include this Addendum with Part 2 of my “farewell tour” of Joel. Apologies.
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JANE RUSSELL REVIEWS
JOEL HIRSCHHORN
August 10, 2017 at 11:56 pm Cogerson Site
Jane Russell was a heavily promoted sex symbol in the 1940s. She gained notoriety as a result of her appearance in The Outlaw. Despite her looks, she seemed synthetic and manufactured..
HIS KIND OF WOMAN [1951}
In a review of the film, the staff at Variety magazine lauded the pairing of Robert Mitchum and Jane Russell as the lead characters, writing, “[The] two strike plenty of sparks in their meetings as each waits out plot development … Both Mitchum and Russell score strongly. Russell’s full charms are fetchingly displayed in smart costumes that offer the minimum of protection.
MACAO [1952
More recently, film critic Dennis Schwartz lauded the casting of Jane Russell/ Robert Mitchum.
A wonderfully tongue-in-cheek scripted RKO adventure story directed by Josef von Sternberg…Jane Russell enthralls as she gets romanced by the laconic Mitchum, and they create movie magic together through their brilliant nuanced performances. The sultry actress was never better, as she belts out a few torch songs, tosses insults at Mitchum with natural ease, shows her romantic side and looks right through the leering bad guys of Macao as if they didn’t exist.
NOTE Dennis Schwartz is an American film critic and film writer who writes for Vermont-based film magazine Ozus’ World Movie Reviews Schwartz is one of the most prolific film reviewers on the Internet, having reviewed nearly 10,000 films (as of July 2015) since 1998. He is on the Governing Committee of the Online Film Critics Society. It is common to see older films from world cinema on Rotten Tomatoes which are devoid of reviews except one review by Schwartz. His reviews cover both classic and contemporary films.
GENTLEMEN PREFER BLONDES [1953]
Review in 2010 by Christian Blauvelt entertainment journalist and editor of British Broadcasting Company [BBC] Culture
Not since Mae West purred to Cary Grant to come up and see her sometime has a woman so successfully objectified men as in Russell’s rendition of “Ain’t There Anyone Here for Love?” Russell parades in an androgynous black leotard through a crowd of unnamed, shirtless dancers and acrobats—sexualized, yet marginalized, the way female backup dancers usually are—belting lyrics like “I like big muscles and red corpuscles/I like a beautiful hunk of man.”
Hey Bob….thanks for the mini-reviews…..interesting stuff as always. Though Joel sort of slammed her in his write up on her….he did put her in the book…..which is not often the case in some of the other books I own….so he did recognize that she was a star.
When looking at his breakdown of her movies….he does put His Kind of Woman in his Top 5 Jane Russell movies.
He was not as impressed with Macao….as where many critics and audience members….as it earns a 55% UMR rating score….and Joel’s input is not in that score.
He has Gentlemen Prefer Blondes as one of her three 4 Star performances.
Good stuff as always….off to get WoC and DoC3 from a Girl Scout cookie booth and go see BERN1960.
Thanks for all the feedback.
1 Thanks for all your feedback – much appreciated and as usual from you food for thought and also just like I am always interested in the wheels churning behind Steve’ scores your own processes also fascinate me even if we do not always see eye to eye though your own arguments are usually thoughtful and well measured [Split apart!].I think that I need to respond to only two of your points
(1) Some critics now regard the Mitch/Russell’s Macao as an underappreciated “gem” of its day. Mitchum’s Angel Face with Jean Simmons and directed by the great Otto Preminger is now also regarded in that light and indeed IMDB gives it a 73% rating and you in fact are even more flattering with a nice 76% rating. However it was panned in its day and I recall that one of the revered critics [possibly Halliwell or Maltin] gave it just 2 stars out of 4. IMDB accords Macao a respectable 67% rating against your own 55%. However for some classic movie buffs those films if one gets a good print are fascinating to watch because of the historical opportunity to see the likes of Mitch/Simmons/Russell in their heyday even if the films are not classics by strict artistic definitions.
(2) Chaplin and Brando. Yes Brando adored Charlie’s silent slapstick comedies but claimed to detest Chaplin in the flesh when he came to work with him. The reason given by Mr Mumbles was that Charlie’s son Sydney Chaplin had a supporting part in Countess from Hong Kong and according to Mr M Charlie for some reason took delight in humiliating Sydney before cast and crew. If true that would have irked the Great Mumbler who seems to have been heavily into “family”. For example it has been suggested that on that island of his he kept and financially supported ex wives/lovers and children they bore him. Clearly some of his family connections were tragic for him in the end with his son Christian being jailed for manslaughter and Marlon’s daughter Cheyenne hanging herself. I remember my mother saying that despite his great fame the grief that Mr Mumbles had to bear was enough to drive a parent himself/herselfto suicide.
2 Which leads me on to concluding that what happens in real life is more important than things on the screen and I therefore hope that the news about you own mother continues to be good.
FAREWELL JOEL: PART THREE
1 If my own information is correct Joel departed this earth in 2005 but if Glenn Ford got it right Joel then possibly immediately began another life and would today be a young teenager. I know that we viewers are expected to take very seriously everything to do with the Father of The Site [our own Joel El ] but nonetheless I thought it would be fun to speculate on whom Joel today might be.
2 Let’s say for openers that in another few years he becomes one of those young whippersnapper film critics who write for soft- left-wing type pop magazines and can’t accept that Mr Mumbles had ever given a BAD performance.
3 Or let’s fantasise that he develops into a mainstream democratic right-wing politician who captures the White House by campaigning on a horse and wearing a big cowboy hat and converting US voters to the cult of John Wayne.
4 How ironic would that be! Especially so if just as Glenn Ford says he himself discovered that he used to be Charley Bill, the President of the United States found out that he was once Joel Hirschhorn the Van Helsing of critics who ferociously drove stakes through the American People’s Champion and Mr Mumbles
5 We who wish to see the legacy of this great site protected must be confident that Bruce Cogerson has in place an heir who at the critical time will seize control of the site, keep it in the family name and be in a position to join the President of the United States in a “Mea Culpa” to loyal Americans for having previously misled them.
ANYWAY GOODBYE JOEL though no doubt just like all those people who followed Watergate slavishly desperate to see Richard Nixon dragged down but ended up missing him when he’d gone I may come to miss YOU.
ADDENDUM – DAVID SHIPMAN- THE REAL DEAL
WIKIPEDIA
For over a quarter of a century David Shipman was the most influential writer on film in the world and the 10 books he wrote, most notably the three volumes that made up The Great Movie Stars and the two-volume The Story of Cinema, he exerted an influence no other writer on film has matched. More widely read than Pauline Kael, more authoritative and more knowledgeable than Leslie Halliwell, he always seemed in touch with the audiences for whom he wrote, and they appreciated his strongly held if iconoclastic views and the fact he was always his own man. Other noted works include the quartet of books he called the 4 Great Moviemakers [Chaplin, Olivier, Brando and Hitchcock.] “ Shipman in 1983 was the only person ever to be granted a Deanna Durbin interview after she retired
Hey Bob….interesting thoughts on the return of Joel….looking at people born on the day he passed…September 17th 2005….so far nobody has reached a level of success to be known…….but right now they would only be 12…..so they have a chance to be famous one day.
I own a few Shipman books…..but never really connected with him like I did other critics.
Joel….says goodbye as well.
Thanks for the comments and visit.
GOODBYE JOEL PART TWO
1 WH I have sent you extracts from an article in The New Yorker which challenges traditional concepts of what makes great screen acting and if its author is right then Joel’s star-rating system may well be at least partially defunct. It might be worth your while to read the whole article by googling “Free yourself from the Cult of Marlon Brando.” For example you will see that the author regards among America’s best Classic era actors The Duke and Oscar neglected the Great Cary Grant. [Hurrah for sanity!]
2 You will see too that the author sidelines Mr Mumbles’s usually most revered performances to single out Guys and Dolls and Last Tango. Alexander Walker respected film critic of The London Evening Standard newspaper labelled Last Tango as the greatest ever movie performance by an actor.
3 Interestingly also is that apparently when they came to clear out the effects of the late Mr Mumbles and turned to his DVD video collection everything in that collection consisted of silent comedies of the likes of Chaplin and The Kops except for Marlon’s own Guys and Dolls but none of his other films It’s as if he was unbeknown to himself agreeing with The New Yorker article [But if he didn’t know about it does it count?!
4 All of the foregoing are just individual opinions but the fact that they exist and at times diverge is one of the things that puzzles me in your apparent conviction that Joel is the font of all knowledge relating to movies and acting and why you can’t let your viewers have more diverse opinions at least on occasions is hard to understand. I sent you extracts of other prominent critics disagreeing with for example Joel’s opinion of Jane Russell but you never responded and I cannot now find the extracts on Jane’s site.
I have read those extracts….but have yet to find the time to really breakdown those extracts. Brando is a legend….and anybody that argues that is not is confused or purposely trying to start an argument.
Interesting that his movie collection was silent movies….he must have gotten a kick when he got to work with Chaplin.
Joel gets some comments…do to his simple rating system that is easy to find….if your Shipman has a breakdown of an actor’s whole career….then I have no issues sharing that on the website. I would love to do the same 4 star movies using Roger Ebert’s reviews…..but tracking down the information takes too much time…..while….Joel’s top films only takes a couple of minutes.
But like I say…..if you have a breakdown of Shipman’s ratings….share them…..I just do not think…people are interested in reading full reviews of movie critics here on the comment page at UMR. Roger Ebert.com is a very popular website….and can be used easily. Not sure where Shipman’s reviews are easy to find.
Good feedback as always.
GOODBYE JOEL: PART ONE
1 WORK HORSE I have previously mentioned that Jack Palance claimed that his longest screen role was in the 1955 The Big Knife about which he said “It lasts 1 hour and 51 minutes, I’m on screen for all but one minute to go to the washroom and in that minute they’re all talking about me!”
2 Having noticed the three-way exchanges between illustrious people like David Shipman, Joel Hirschhorn [now apparently officially installed as the Father of the Site] and your good self in which my name repeatedly comes up I almost feel that for this weekend at least I have been given a Jack Palance kind of role on Cogerson.
3 Unfortunately the last time that I can remember my name being dropped so often was when a work colleague who wished to praise me kept mentioning me in my absence at top-brass business discussions so that finally my boss, a Lee J Cobb explosive type figure who disliked me [and I’m sure that admirers of Mr Hirshhorn will be wondering how the boss made that mistake!] finally snapped and said “What’s the big deal about that c*** Roy?”
4 Anyway the exchanges over the past week about Joel have dragged in other albeit worthy figures like The Duke, Mr Mumbles and Mr Willis Moore and although as I like all 3 I would wish to continue mentioning them as the occasion arises I think it is now time for me at least to say goodbye to Joel on this site so a three part post today is my last will and testimony in the matter so to speak.
5 I hope it is made in the friendly manner in which I have always tried to conduct disagreements with someone whose personal grasp and articulate expression of movie matters, whose management of this wonderful and complex site and whose own willingness to debate tolerantly I much admire.
Hey Bob…..so Joel gets a three part farewell….4 counting the add on. Good quote from Jack. Joel is an influence….but not the almighty power over us…..his book is a reference point. I would say Roger Ebert is the most influential movie critic/writer on me….and like Joel….many times I disagreed with Ebert. Many many times I watched one of his 4 star movies….and thought…..what was Ebert thinking.
Mr. Hirschhorn appreciates the final thoughts you have shared today.
Pretty sure we figured out what has been happening to those “lost comments”…..steps have been made…that hopefully have corrected that problem…..do not want to go into too much detail…..but the “spammers” were the cause of the problem. So….crossing figures that the issue is fixed….and our spam defense is still effective.