Challenged myself to write a new page for each day in March. Happy to say, I not only reached that mark, but, exceeded that by one movie. 32 new movie pages appeared in the month of March. Already over 50 movie pages in 2025. Last year, I did not even crack 100. That was the first time since we started this web page that I did not write many new pages in a single year.
Ok, this is out in leftfield, the Saturn awards just happened last weekend. Do you have any information on who won and what category’s they won in? I know it’s not the Oscars, but it is awards season.
I often get asked why I rank movies using statistics versus just sharing my personal preferences. When asked this question, Judd Nelson immediately pops into my mind. His role as John Bender in 1985’s The Breakfast Club made a huge impression on me during high school. While attending college I worked at a video store and my Nelson admiration went with me. When customers would ask for recommendations, I would somehow figure out a way to recommend Nelson’s St. Elmo’s Fire, Making the Grade, Fandango, and of course The Breakfast Club. Shortly thereafter, his Blue City was released.
Blue City received not just bad reviews but horrible ones. I remember a reviewer saying, “….it looks like it was edited with a chainsaw.” Its box office results were dismal. Yet, when the movie reached my video store, I treated it like Citizen Kane had arrived. I recommended it to anybody that walked into the store. Even though my customers would return the movie and say it was not very good, I stuck to my guns and kept enthusiastically recommending it. It literally took years before I realized that not only was Blue City not great, but that it was awful.
When I started ranking movies on UltimateMovieRankings.com back in 2011, my memory of steering so many people wrong with regards to Blue City laid heavily on me. To get my personal preferences and biases out of the way, I figured it was best to rank movies using statistics. Using box office grosses, critic reviews, movie goer reviews, and award recognition I created a mathematical formula to rank movies.
My statistical ranking formula generally pushes good movies to the top and bad movies to the bottom of the rankings. Is it perfect? Heck no, but it is very consistent. Will you question some of the rankings found in this book? I would be shocked if you did not. There are many times when I question the results.
So now that you know why I use statistics to rank movies, let’s talk about this book. Amazingly, this is my third book. I find it amazing because I do not really know what I am doing. My first book was called Top 50 Movie Stars…. Statistically Speaking. It featured 50 actor and actresses that had the best movie careers based on their statistics. Thousands of thespians were researched with Spencer Tracy earning the top ranked spot. I think that book turned out well, but younger readers wanted to read more about current stars than classic stars. That feedback led me to my second book, Ranking Today’s Movie Stars. It featured a breakdown on almost 400 modern stars with Tom Hanks earning the top ranked spot.
While those two books looked at movie stars, this book will look at categories of movies. Movies will be ranked by genres, franchises, and other categories. So, if you ever wanted to know which James Bond, Sports, Computer Animated, or Zombie movie is the best statistically then you have found the right book.
Cogerson – Summer 2021
Looks good. Don’t forget to italicize the titles when you put it in Word.
Challenged myself to write a new page for each day in March. Happy to say, I not only reached that mark, but, exceeded that by one movie. 32 new movie pages appeared in the month of March. Already over 50 movie pages in 2025. Last year, I did not even crack 100. That was the first time since we started this web page that I did not write many new pages in a single year.
Ok, this is out in leftfield, the Saturn awards just happened last weekend. Do you have any information on who won and what category’s they won in? I know it’s not the Oscars, but it is awards season.
I often get asked why I rank movies using statistics versus just sharing my personal preferences. When asked this question, Judd Nelson immediately pops into my mind. His role as John Bender in 1985’s The Breakfast Club made a huge impression on me during high school. While attending college I worked at a video store and my Nelson admiration went with me. When customers would ask for recommendations, I would somehow figure out a way to recommend Nelson’s St. Elmo’s Fire, Making the Grade, Fandango, and of course The Breakfast Club. Shortly thereafter, his Blue City was released.
Blue City received not just bad reviews but horrible ones. I remember a reviewer saying, “….it looks like it was edited with a chainsaw.” Its box office results were dismal. Yet, when the movie reached my video store, I treated it like Citizen Kane had arrived. I recommended it to anybody that walked into the store. Even though my customers would return the movie and say it was not very good, I stuck to my guns and kept enthusiastically recommending it. It literally took years before I realized that not only was Blue City not great, but that it was awful.
When I started ranking movies on UltimateMovieRankings.com back in 2011, my memory of steering so many people wrong with regards to Blue City laid heavily on me. To get my personal preferences and biases out of the way, I figured it was best to rank movies using statistics. Using box office grosses, critic reviews, movie goer reviews, and award recognition I created a mathematical formula to rank movies.
My statistical ranking formula generally pushes good movies to the top and bad movies to the bottom of the rankings. Is it perfect? Heck no, but it is very consistent. Will you question some of the rankings found in this book? I would be shocked if you did not. There are many times when I question the results.
So now that you know why I use statistics to rank movies, let’s talk about this book. Amazingly, this is my third book. I find it amazing because I do not really know what I am doing. My first book was called Top 50 Movie Stars…. Statistically Speaking. It featured 50 actor and actresses that had the best movie careers based on their statistics. Thousands of thespians were researched with Spencer Tracy earning the top ranked spot. I think that book turned out well, but younger readers wanted to read more about current stars than classic stars. That feedback led me to my second book, Ranking Today’s Movie Stars. It featured a breakdown on almost 400 modern stars with Tom Hanks earning the top ranked spot.
While those two books looked at movie stars, this book will look at categories of movies. Movies will be ranked by genres, franchises, and other categories. So, if you ever wanted to know which James Bond, Sports, Computer Animated, or Zombie movie is the best statistically then you have found the right book.
Cogerson – Summer 2021
Looks good. Don’t forget to italicize the titles when you put it in Word.