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.
TEST
Hey Dan…I think it is working.
Hey Bruce, any chance of talking to you more about possibly getting access, or at least more information, on your database? I have a research project I’m working on that could really use a large, clean box office database like this.
Hey Bobby, this is actually Wife of Cogerson, AKA tech support. It is a local Access database that Bruce has spent many years updating, and I’ve spent many years supporting. If you tell us what you need, perhaps we could export something for you. It isn’t possible to give you the entire database.
Hey Bobby…so this is Bruce and not WoC…..I will be glad to help you anyway I can. Just let me know what type of information you are interested in….and I will see what I have…and figure out a way to get you the information. Looking forward to your request.
Thanks to both of you for responding! Sorry I took a few days. I’m doing a project on the history of originality in Hollywood films, and I’d really like to have access to the top 30 box office films for as many years as you have, both domestic box office and global if you have it. I’m not sure if you have access to the email address for these comments, but if you do feel free to email me.
Hey Bobby….how about I send you some stuff from the 1950s…..I will use the gmail address on the comment.
The 50s would be great. I also see that you have a few scattered pages of top box office movies for individual years, but I haven’t quite figured out the navigation for this site yet. Is there a list somewhere of all the “by year” pages you’ve already posted?
Hey Bobby…..the Site Index is the best place to find everything. There is a section that lists all of the yearly reviews. 1939, 1946 and 1952 are the classic years done there…plus all years since 2011…though the 2016 page needs to be updated.
Oh right, and it’s probably worth saying that I don’t actually need most of the columns if that makes your life any easier for this request. I really only need the Name, Domestic Box Office, Global Box Office (when available), and US Release Year.
And nvm, I found the year review links on the site index. I got a good laugh/cry moment out of you guys writing about how hard it was to get good information on those early years like 1939 since I’ve gone through the same struggles the last few months.
Hey Bobby….I will see what I can do in the next day or two. Glad your search found this website. I am trying to make it the best source for classic box office on the Internet.
Hey Steve, Bob and Laurent…..WoC has taken a quick look at your request….and it seems it is something that will take more time than she currently has…but will try and get to it next week when she gets a break from college. Meanwhile…we have moved the “shown” comments from 9 to 30….that should help until we get it a comment page going in the next week or two. As we said before….greatly appreciate your suggestion.
Hey Bruce,
It’s already good. At least we still see comments yesterday, today. And thanks to WoC.
Bruce old chum, I see you’ve expanded that comments box just in time… there’s been a tsunami of comments since my last peek here some of them entertaining, I would have missed most of them otherwise. 😉
Yep…Saturday was pretty quiet…but Friday and Sunday were very very busy. This sure is different than CogersonMovieScore.com was….that was like you, me and a few others that randomly commented. In the end….this is a good problem to have.
Hi Bruce, I’m starting to lose track of the comments here. I’m sure I missed a few of your replies, and Bobs too, in the past few days. The only way to track them down is hit every page on the site index which would take forever. How about a comments page, if it’s do-able? Basically the entire page containing all the links to comments made over the past few weeks with the most recent ones on top, constantly updating. So it will be like the current comment box but taking up an entire page or several pages. Worth considering?
BRUCE
1 I agree with Steve here. When the flag up of comments leaves the Recent Comments box you with presumably the expert help of W o C can clearly quickly pick up ‘hidden’ comments from the point where you last left off but the rest of us do not have your advantage.
2 You are providing us with so much easy to access information that it seems churlish to press you on the point but given the different time zones under which for example you and I operate it would be of enormous assistance to me if a system could be devised by which I could quickly ID comments made in say the last 24 hours in any days.
Many thanks BOB
Hello Bruce,
I agree 100% with Steve and Bob. I think it would be a good thing
Hey laurent…thanks for the feedback…..hopefully WoC will be able to create a comment page.
Hey Bob…..working on getting a comment page….or in other words I am asking WoC very nicely if she can figure out how to do it……working on Sidneys….currently…a new page on Greenstreet and an updated page on Poitier…..if we don’t go to Deepwater Horizon…I might be able to knock out both today/tonight. Thanks for the feedback on the comment concern.
Hey Steve….just talked to the tech side of website team….and WoC says it is possible to have a comments page….now I just have to get her to find the time to do it. Thanks for the suggestion. Granted some days the comments come fast and furious while other days it is easy to keep up with them. I would not think it would take too long to load up each UMR page and look for new comments….1 or 2 days tops…lol. Going to nicely ask WoC to take a look.
Cheers!
(Debbie must be cursing my name.) 🙂
But tell her Bob will be eternally grateful as he was thinking to changing his sleeping habits
to daytime slumber and living by night so as to miss nothing ! You know the saying: “Cometh the hour cometh The Man.”
any newsletter updates/
Hey Spencer….I pretty much treat the post section as our newsletter….tried to update that every day…thanks for the visit and the comment