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.
You mentioned that you were using a standard 44% rental figure uniformly across the years and you have now listed the average annual variations. Do you know the current average renntal to gross ratio?.
Hey Robert….at the bottom of this page is a breakdown of the ratio I have been using since January. It goes from 1928 to 2015. https://www.ultimatemovierankings.com/sorry-i-was-so-wrong/
All of these numbers by year are now plugged into my database….I am still only 33% updating all the pages with the new numbers. Hope that helps.
Dear Ultimatemovieranking (in lack of Your personal title)!
Thanks for an EXCELLENT site feeding many need of us number and list addicted movie buffs.
I do have some question regarding the nubers though:
1. The annual box-office ranking stated for several of the stars, do they origin from the Variety top 100 annual listing? There is a plethora of confusing and contradiciting numbers of bos-office and rentals for many films, the reason of which I guess is due to many sites using and re-using other sources. Just check out Wikipedia entry on 1976 in films and You see that almost every data entry on each movie gross origins from DIFFERENT sources. Not satisfying at all for me. To me, the most relaible source concering the movie earnings in North America for films in say 1950 to 1980, would be the ones collected by Variety.
2. Being an avid Liz Taylor fan I am curious about the actuall admissions of her lesser known films, that by many biographers and cineasts were all dismissed as bombs. However, I am surprised to see several o them rankning in on the top 100; as an example “Seceret Ceremony” is said to gross in 1968 money about 8 M$ . However, whne clicking for Robert Mitchum, costarring, it is insetad stated a figure of 6.6 M$. In spite of this inconsistent numebr, the film is stated as being ranked 31st on the annual list in both entries. Is this discreapncy caused by an updated inflation adjustment?
Thanks agian, knowing this email make me appear as over-pedantic. I had attempted to get the oriignal copies of Variety on e.g. ebay, but they are fasciantingly difficult to catch. Hence, I rely on other avid nuber eaters sources.
Sincerely
Christopher
Hey Christopher….great comment and great questions.
1. Glad you found our site and glad you like all the numbers listed here.
2. The annual box-office rankings come from many different sources. If the movie is made after 1982….Box Office Mojo is used. For movies before 1982…Variety is mostly used. When we use Variety it is using the rank that Variety published for that year…it does not necessarily mean it finished in that spot when all the numbers finally came in. For example…a movie released in October of a year…might make the Variety list…..but it is still earning money well into the next year.
3. We have Variety’s Top Grossers from 1940 to 1980….with 1944 and 1945 being the only missing years. There are lots of differences in their totals when comparing their year ending pages to their pages that look at movies that grossed over a certain amount. Variety- February 24th 1992 is an excellent Variety issue to find. It lists the top grossers by decade….3 million in rentals is threshold for the 1920s, 1930s, 1940s and 1950s.
4. I agree with you that all the lists our there are very frustrating…and all over the place. Ultimately we agree with the way Susan Sackett wrote her book…. Hollywood Reporter Book Of Box Office Hits. They listed their Top 5 based on when the movie was produced. For 1966 they give the number one spot to Hawaii….when you look at other sources…like Variety….their number one movie is Thunderball….wiki says it is The Bible: In The Beginning. My database which has 187 movies made in 1966 and it has Hawaii as the top grossing movie.
5. As for Secret Ceremony…..earlier this year we found a better way to calculate how to take box office rentals into box office grosses…for a better explaination check out this page…https://www.ultimatemovierankings.com/sorry-i-was-so-wrong/ . We have been updating these pages…but our pace is pretty slow. When you were looking at the Elizabeth Taylor you were seeing an updated page….when you were looking at the Robert Mitchum pages you were seeing a page using our old calculations. Well your comment motivated us to update our Mitchum page…and you will see the two now match. The easiest way to know if the page is updated is if the co-stars have attached links….as that is part of our update.
6. Secret Ceremony was made in 1968….but released late in the year…..so it does not show up on the Variety lists until the 1969 list.
Hope that answers your questions….if you have any others…fire away….thanks for stopping by.
Cogerson
Thanks Cogerson so much for Your swift and yet detailed reply!
And once again, thanks for the great work You do to bring consistency and rigour in the movie rankings that in many sources are “all over the place”!
Cordially
Christopher
One day I will get all the pages back lined up……since your first e-mail….I have updated 12 more pages….only 300 to go….lol. Thanks for the kind words on our website….it is greatly appreciated.
It is brave of you to make the enormous and comprehensive efforts that you have to calculate grosses from the classic era. Box Office Mojo for example openly washes its hands off that exercise. However as my comments on your rental/grosses% post illustrate some refinement of calculations may still be necessary for the older films. Also it should be noted that the figures quoted by both you and Box Office Mojo are more a reflection of ticket sales that of a movie’s actual dollar earnings record or potential. That is because ticket prices have inflated faster over the years than prices in general. For example if Brando and Sinatra’s Guys and Dolls which had a near 20$ million US gross in 1955/56 was shown today and was watched by the same number of people as it was back then your 301$ million gross would indeed apply. However according to the Consumer Price Index 20$ million in 1956 would be worth only about 175 $ million today. Accordingly for most of the 30’s and 40’s movies the value of their grosses in today dollars would be about only half of the figures that you quote when calculating solely on the basis of ticket price inflation. Nevertheless you and Box office Mojo have brought to the situation a degree of consistency that historically was non-existent.
Hey Robert Roy. Did some major computer programming studies on using box office tickets sold versus using the consumer price index….and using the tickets is the way to go. To earn $19.64 million in 1956 Guys and Dolls had to sell 35.7 million tickets. Guys and Dolls was the number one hit of 1956 when more people went to see movies than today. A adusted gross around $300 million is much more likely than $175 million. Looking at 2015 actuals…..the $300 million we are estimating would have been the 7th biggest hit (right behind Minions) of the year….the consumer index calculation of $175 million would put it at as the 16th biggest hit (right behind Home)….if anything I would say Guys and Dolls is estimated too low…..versus too high.
In the end…there is no right answer….as the correct grosses will never be known…..but I like our calculations a lot….even better than Box Office Mojo’s. That being said we are always looking for better information….and always willing to change. Thanks for two great comments today.
Thanks Bruce. Nobody knows how many people would go to see Guys and Dolls today even if it was exactly the same and with (impossibly!) the same actors: tastes have changed and there are many more entertainment outlets, against which populations have expanded. My point was that your figure seems a fair representation of the movie’s VOLUME OF TICKET SALES BACK THEN. However the near 20$ million gross you quote would have the PURCHASING POWER TODAY of just 175 million dollars according to the United States Bureau of Labour Statistics. And so it is in the case of most stars of the classic era. For example the top 25 grossing movies in your Bette Davis page amount to I think around 4 billion in total ticket inflation adjusted grosses. You usefully provided actual grosses for all of those movies so I was able to do a purchasing power analysis for all of the grosses using the Bureau of Labour Statistics figures. The total purchasing power today of those 25 grosses would be just 2.1 billion – still a massive figure but only little more than half of the VALUE of what 25 films with identical audiences would earn today. As you have mentioned elsewhere there is the general problem of conflicting sources for box office information. For example you quote a meagre gross figure of $1.87 million for 1950’s The Men. That could rise to about 2.5 if the adjustments you make elsewhere are used. However BOX OFFICE STORY a respectable French box office analysis that is detailed on the internet puts The Men’s total gross carried into 1951 at a then-massive 7.1 million.
Hey Robert Roy…I understand your thinking about the purchasing power….but in this case it greatly reduces just how much a movie earned at the box office. As for The Men…..I am 100% sure that they have their box office number wrong on that site. I use Box Office Story as one of my sources…..but they like us make a fair amount of mistakes. Variety does not even give The Men credit for 1 million in box office rentals….the Brando biographies I own all talk about that the movie being well received by credits….but ignored at the box office….one those books listed the rentals just under $900,000. If The Men would have had 7.1 million in rentals in would have been the second biggest hit of 1950…and the 11th biggest hit of the 1941-1950 (the Variety breaks it down) decade….there is no way….it accomplished those levels. Now maybe it did that internationally….but the column that they listed the 7.1 is the domestic total. Thanks again…for checking out our pages….since yesterday….we finally got back to updating more pages…to avoid that consistency errors….Ryan Reynolds, Fred Astaire and Katharine Hepburn are now updated. Trying to knock out three more today…as well as publishing a new page today.
Don’t apologize for being pedantic. Your enthusiasm is fun.
Thanks…but it is frustrating that not all the numbers match when going to different performers….Debbie is working on making the site….”dynamic” which would allow me to change the information once…..and it would go to all the places in the website automatically versus me having to manually update each page. One day that will be a reality.
is cogerson movie score the same ? I try and use the link it will not let me go there to see?
That site no longer exists. It is the same man though, yes.
Hey Flora….hopefully that is the last link to CogersonMovieScore.com. I know you never got a chance to see that page….but this one is better. The only thing I miss from those tables was that the lines in the table were different colors….but you could not sort or search. I think sort and search and better than mulit-colors.
Hey Anonymous…..that link has been fixed. Cogerson Movie Score was the website before this one. Thanks for checking out this page.
WOW My sister Jane came to your site and checked out your Robert Mitchum section and she linked your site to hers.. I’m a HUGE Spencer Tracy fan and I also have a webpage but it’s a photo gallery. I’ve collected almost all images of Spencer including posters, ads and more. Here is my link:
http://thespencertracywebsite.webs.com/
I’m going to add your page there. Can you add my page as well? Keep up the great work!!!!!
Georgette
Here is my LINKS page where I added your Spencer Tracy page:
http://thespencertracywebsite.webs.com/apps/links/
Thanks!
Georgette
Hey Georgette….thanks for sharing my link….I will do the same when I am not on a mobile device which will be later this evening….Glad you like my Tracy page.
I added a link to your Spencer Tracy page on my Spencer Tracy page. It is listed as the #10 of possibly interesting facts about Tracy.
https://www.ultimatemovierankings.com/spencer-tracy-movies/
Hope we can help each other out. I just got through moving to this website….so hopefully the Google gods will like this Tracy page….which should help get some traffic to your website.
New site is looking great!
Thank you Bryan