20 Year Weighted and Consolidated IMDB Top 250 List (1996 – 2015)

Of all the tracking lists on this site, this one is a unique creation of my own.  I first discovered IMDB back in 1997.  At the end of the year 1998 I printed off the Top 250 list in order to have as a list of recommended movies to possibly see in the coming year.  I have continued to do this at every year end since.  I have also found year end lists for 1996 and 1997.  The result is a look back at the past and the trends among the movies that have made up the list.

One of the solid criticisms of the current Top 250 list is that it is too heavily weighted towards movies that have just been released.  Because the number of votes a movie gets affects its overall position on the list, new movies will always have an advantage in appearing there.  I decided to counter some of this voting bias by weighting movies by their position in the list across the entire 20 years that I have been tracking them.

You can view this result in the “Combined – Weighted” tab.  At the top are the movies that have appeared on all 20 years’ lists.  After that are the movies that appeared on 19 of the 20 lists, then 18 of the 20, etc.  Within each of these year groupings are the average position of each movie across those years.  The highest ranked film of each of these groupings is highlighted in green.

The entire list is comprised of 670 unique movies that have appeared on the year end Top 250 lists.  These range all the way from The Shawshank Redemption with an average ranking of 1.70 across 20 years to Departures and Le Samourai which appeared on a single list in the 250^th position.

The result is a Top 10 comprised of The Shawshank Redemption, The Godfather, Schindler's List, The Godfather Part II, Star Wars, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Pulp Fiction, Casablanca, The Empire Strikes Back, and Seven Samurai.

You may be wondering, “Why average the position in the list and not the overall rating?”  The answer again goes back to the voting in recent years.  There has been a tremendous amount of inflation in the ratings as more and more votes of “10” are given to movies. 

In the 1998 list the top 4 movies had a rating of 8.4 and by position 28 on the list they were already down to 7.9.  A rating of 7.6 got you in the Top 100 and a 7.4 got you in the Top 250.  In the 2012 list the top two films had ratings of 9.2, it took an 8.3 to make the Top 100, and at least an 8.0 to even make the Top 250 list.  Averaging the ratings would have meant the Top films from 1998 would barely even make the Top 100.

In addition to the "Consolidated – Weighted" list I also have tabs with the same films listed alphabetically, and I have tabs for each of the 20 years’ Top 250 lists.

This is really far more than just a tracking sheet.  You could do any number of different analyses on the trends over the years.  For instance, where possible I included the number of votes a movie had received.  In 1998 The Shawshank Redemption had received 9,461 votes.  In 2004 it was 135,457.  In 2012 it was 881,947.  What has been the growth rate of voting over the years?  Is it higher among a certain genre of films?

Because I include columns for all 20 years in the main combined lists, you can also see trends such as that with Almost Famous.  It appeared on the 2000 list at position 52.  It dropped a little each year until last appearing in position 214 in the 2005 list.  This is an example of why I don’t get too worked up about new movies appearing on the list right away.  My years on the site have allowed me to see the big picture.  The films that are not that good (relative to the overall list) have a life cycle where they drop some each year before leaving the list.

Another trend you can see is the rise of a classic film as more and more movie lovers discover it.  An example of this is The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.  It has been on all 20 years’ lists, but it was in position 62 in 1998.  By 2003 it was in position 25 and in 2007 it was in position 4, where it remained until 2012.

Finally, you will likely find these lists to be the answer to your question, “Why isn’t [insert movie name] on the list?”  It may very well have been at one time.  It may also return at some point.  The 400 Blows is a good example.  It was on the list from 1999 to 2007, dropped off in 2008, then returned in 2010, and even raised its position slightly in 2011, 2012, and 2013.

Feel free to use all of this information I have provided for your own analysis.  Just please give credit to where you got it from.

If you see any mistakes, typos, etc., or have suggestions on how to improve these tracking sheets, please let me know in the comments.