Welcome to the ICM Forum. If you have an account but have trouble logging in, or have other questions, see THIS THREAD.
NOTE: Board emails should be working again. Information on forum upgrade and style issues.
Podcast: Talking Images (Episode 22 released November 17th * EXCLUSIVE * We Are Mentioned in a Book!!! Interview with Mary Guillermin on Rapture, JG & More)
Polls: TV-series (Results), Directors (Jan 2nd), 1980 (Jan 24th), <50 checks (Jan 31st)
Challenges: 1000<400, Sci-Fi/Fantasy, Central American/Andean
Film of the Week: Les croix de bois, February nominations (Jan 29th)
NOTE: Board emails should be working again. Information on forum upgrade and style issues.
Podcast: Talking Images (Episode 22 released November 17th * EXCLUSIVE * We Are Mentioned in a Book!!! Interview with Mary Guillermin on Rapture, JG & More)
Polls: TV-series (Results), Directors (Jan 2nd), 1980 (Jan 24th), <50 checks (Jan 31st)
Challenges: 1000<400, Sci-Fi/Fantasy, Central American/Andean
Film of the Week: Les croix de bois, February nominations (Jan 29th)
Official lists updates
Jeez....I haven't seen "Claudine," but it sure doesn't sound "Criterion-worthy" to me.
- GruesomeTwosome
- Donator
- Posts: 3343
- Joined: February 3rd, 2017, 7:00 am
- Location: Industrial Wasteland, USA
- Contact:
Why not? I also have not seen it, but among these latest announcements, it interests me the most.
I’m to remember every man I've seen fall into a plate of spaghetti???
My IMDB profile
ICM
Letterboxd
My IMDB profile
ICM
Letterboxd
- funkybusiness
- Donator
- Posts: 10886
- Joined: January 22nd, 2013, 7:00 am
- Contact:
-Legendary actors
-Oscar-nominated
-4k restoration
-blacklisted director exiled to France
oh it's another Jules Dassin film?
-Curtis Mayfield sountrack.
oh woah sounds even bette-
- 70s comedy starring black actors featuring not a single mention of World War Two!
oh no, nevermind. not a Criterion film.
-Oscar-nominated
-4k restoration
-blacklisted director exiled to France
oh it's another Jules Dassin film?
-Curtis Mayfield sountrack.
oh woah sounds even bette-
- 70s comedy starring black actors featuring not a single mention of World War Two!
oh no, nevermind. not a Criterion film.
- GruesomeTwosome
- Donator
- Posts: 3343
- Joined: February 3rd, 2017, 7:00 am
- Location: Industrial Wasteland, USA
- Contact:
Hehefunkybusiness wrote: ↑July 15th, 2020, 9:46 pm -Legendary actors
-Oscar-nominated
-4k restoration
-blacklisted director exiled to France
oh it's another Jules Dassin film?
-Curtis Mayfield sountrack.
oh woah sounds even bette-
- 70s comedy starring black actors featuring not a single mention of World War Two!
oh no, nevermind. not a Criterion film.

I’m to remember every man I've seen fall into a plate of spaghetti???
My IMDB profile
ICM
Letterboxd
My IMDB profile
ICM
Letterboxd
- Lonewolf2003
- Donator
- Posts: 10478
- Joined: December 29th, 2012, 7:00 am
- Contact:
List is updated.Traveller wrote: ↑July 15th, 2020, 4:28 pm Criterion October updates: https://www.criterion.com/shop/browse?p ... oming-soon
Parasite (2019)
The Gunfighter (1950)
Claudine (1974)
The Hit (1984)
Pierrot le Fou (1964)
The Hit (1984) and Pierrot le Fou (1964) are upgrades and already were on the list.
I bet if I watched "Claudine," I'd think "Was this made for TV?"
The director's next two films.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0076815/
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0077199/
Then he did some TV movies. Which I didn't even realize when I wrote my first sentence above.
The director's next two films.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0076815/
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0077199/
Then he did some TV movies. Which I didn't even realize when I wrote my first sentence above.
- PeacefulAnarchy
- Moderator
- Posts: 25920
- Joined: May 8th, 2011, 6:00 am
- Contact:
He talks about the future of CGI and its effect on film. It's a weird inclusion, I agree, but entry with clip and title in the documentary is the criteria that makes most sense and matched the core of the list as it was, and there's no consistent reason to exclude besides "it's weird."
On another unrelated note, watch out for the new film that just entered the imdb Top 250. Controversial, I expect, on a number of fronts.
- funkybusiness
- Donator
- Posts: 10886
- Joined: January 22nd, 2013, 7:00 am
- Contact:
is it a D'Souza "documentary"?
- PeacefulAnarchy
- Moderator
- Posts: 25920
- Joined: May 8th, 2011, 6:00 am
- Contact:
It's Hamilton.
- funkybusiness
- Donator
- Posts: 10886
- Joined: January 22nd, 2013, 7:00 am
- Contact:
- xianjiro
- Donator
- Posts: 8763
- Joined: June 17th, 2015, 6:00 am
- Location: Kakistani Left Coast
- Contact:
sometimes I wonder if studios/distributors have 25000 bot accounts (or whatever the number) since these new releases always zoom on to the list. If it were me, I'd require a delay of 6 months or something before a title could make a list such as Top 250. But the funny thing is, I only see Neon Genesis Evangelion on the new tab (and don't remember other anime series on the list). Guess it will take another run before it populates on iCM.
- mightysparks
- Site Admin
- Posts: 31283
- Joined: May 5th, 2011, 6:00 am
- Location: Perth, WA, Australia
- Contact:
Never heard of Hamilton, why is it controversial?
- PeacefulAnarchy
- Moderator
- Posts: 25920
- Joined: May 8th, 2011, 6:00 am
- Contact:
Hamilton is a very popular broadway show from a few years ago. This movie is
a) the stage show filmed, I've only seen the trailer but it doesn't seem very cinematic, in fact the camerawork seems distracting
b) I don't think it was actually released theatrically (thanks CoViD), it's on Disney+
c) the voting is definitely fan skewed by all the fans of the show voting for it.
I haven't seen it so I don't have an opinion on it, but fanboy driven voting of something that may or may not really count as a film in the eyes of many is a bit controversial. It's at #19 by the way, so baseline it's going to get the same annoyance as when Endgame debuted.
This one is definitely fanboy/girl driven no bots needed. I guess the ICM update came in just before it made the list, but it's definitely there on imdb.xianjiro wrote: ↑July 20th, 2020, 4:47 am sometimes I wonder if studios/distributors have 25000 bot accounts (or whatever the number) since these new releases always zoom on to the list. If it were me, I'd require a delay of 6 months or something before a title could make a list such as Top 250. But the funny thing is, I only see Neon Genesis Evangelion on the new tab (and don't remember other anime series on the list). Guess it will take another run before it populates on iCM.
- GruesomeTwosome
- Donator
- Posts: 3343
- Joined: February 3rd, 2017, 7:00 am
- Location: Industrial Wasteland, USA
- Contact:
Hamilton is a hugely popular stage musical in the US, and Disney+ recently started streaming a “film” version, which is really just a filmed performance of the stage musical.
EDIT: ^^ Woops, Peaceful just got there right before me...
I’m to remember every man I've seen fall into a plate of spaghetti???
My IMDB profile
ICM
Letterboxd
My IMDB profile
ICM
Letterboxd
- mightysparks
- Site Admin
- Posts: 31283
- Joined: May 5th, 2011, 6:00 am
- Location: Perth, WA, Australia
- Contact:
Well, that's kinda stupid. I don't think it should be under the same category as a regular feature film if it's just a filmed live show. Most things like that are categorised as 'video' and I don't think they can get into the Top 250.
Also, they censored two of the three "fuck"s! Big drama there!
My Top 675 (2021 Edition) on: Onderhond | ICM | Letterboxd
- xianjiro
- Donator
- Posts: 8763
- Joined: June 17th, 2015, 6:00 am
- Location: Kakistani Left Coast
- Contact:
yeah saw that so expect it'll be official in due course and waiting six months probably won't help much - wonder how many have actually watched it and how many are just basing their votes on their love of the stage show. Maybe this will slowly slide down the rankings as the rest of us get to see it, you know, like all those films from a certain south Asian countryPeacefulAnarchy wrote: ↑July 20th, 2020, 5:15 amHamilton is a very popular broadway show from a few years ago. This movie is
a) the stage show filmed, I've only seen the trailer but it doesn't seem very cinematic, in fact the camerawork seems distracting
b) I don't think it was actually released theatrically (thanks CoViD), it's on Disney+
c) the voting is definitely fan skewed by all the fans of the show voting for it.
I haven't seen it so I don't have an opinion on it, but fanboy driven voting of something that may or may not really count as a film in the eyes of many is a bit controversial. It's at #19 by the way, so baseline it's going to get the same annoyance as when Endgame debuted.
This one is definitely fanboy/girl driven no bots needed. I guess the ICM update came in just before it made the list, but it's definitely there on imdb.xianjiro wrote: ↑July 20th, 2020, 4:47 am sometimes I wonder if studios/distributors have 25000 bot accounts (or whatever the number) since these new releases always zoom on to the list. If it were me, I'd require a delay of 6 months or something before a title could make a list such as Top 250. But the funny thing is, I only see Neon Genesis Evangelion on the new tab (and don't remember other anime series on the list). Guess it will take another run before it populates on iCM.

- Tasselfoot
- Posts: 465
- Joined: May 6th, 2014, 6:00 am
- Contact:
I've seen the show live (will watch the film at some point) and it's really damn good. The fact that it's damn good has made it so popular in the US... tickets are $500+, sold out for months, etc. And I don't doubt that the voters have seen it... it's that popular, and because of price and demand, tons and tons of people who have wanted to see it haven't been able to (until now).
To me, however, it does fall into the same category as music documentaries that are just filmed versions of concerts. That's exactly what this is.
To me, however, it does fall into the same category as music documentaries that are just filmed versions of concerts. That's exactly what this is.
Pretty sure that the votes for Hamilton are genuine, it is super popular even as a Disney+ thing. Tricky whether it belongs on a film list, the camerawork does allow you to see things, such as the actors' expressions, that one would not have been able to see in the theater. So it is not exactly the same thing as a live performance (obviously). While I am quite open to what I call a film or not, I'm not sure Hamilton is a good fit for the imdb lists and what they are supposed to be and what people expect of them.
It's possible, but IMDb does have an enormous number of "real" users - that real is in quotes because I'm sure there are still plenty of fake accounts, as there always have been, and most of them just from individuals or small groups, not any grand studio conspiracy or anything. As somebody who was a regular on the forums from 2005 on and has used the site since 1996 or so I have to say I'm always amused when people seem surprised that there's something weird about the Top 250, or anything else ratings-related from the site; ratings integrity has NEVER mattered to IMDb, or to Amazon for that matter, except insofar as it might help or hurt their business model, and the IMDb lists are undoubtedly the most blatantly trolled/rigged official lists we have, with the POSSIBLE exception of Reddit and other lists based on large, completely unregulated userbases. There just isn't any integrity to any of it so I'm not sure why people get up in arms over frankly anything that happens on it -- and IMDb as far as I know has never made public in any detailed way it's ratings methodology, so we don't have anything like the knowledge we have about most of the other official lists, any way to meaningfully argue about whether the list is "correct" or not as people so often do over UNESCO or Box Office or any number of other hot topics.xianjiro wrote: ↑July 20th, 2020, 4:47 am sometimes I wonder if studios/distributors have 25000 bot accounts (or whatever the number) since these new releases always zoom on to the list. If it were me, I'd require a delay of 6 months or something before a title could make a list such as Top 250. But the funny thing is, I only see Neon Genesis Evangelion on the new tab (and don't remember other anime series on the list). Guess it will take another run before it populates on iCM.
I get why the lists are on the site, and I wouldn't argue for their removal - at least, not for the top 250's removal - since they are such a big part of what a lot of newer movie fans first experience, list-wise, and since they're so omnipresent in the culture still. But treating them as anything other than a marketing tool for Jeff Bezos is no more useful IMO than buying stock in Trump Steaks.
- Fergenaprido
- Donator
- Posts: 4916
- Joined: June 3rd, 2014, 6:00 am
- Location: Canada
- Contact:
Do you mean something like this? Or something else?OldAle1 wrote: ↑July 20th, 2020, 1:51 pmAs somebody who was a regular on the forums from 2005 on and has used the site since 1996 or so I have to say I'm always amused when people seem surprised that there's something weird about the Top 250, or anything else ratings-related from the site; ratings integrity has NEVER mattered to IMDb, or to Amazon for that matter, except insofar as it might help or hurt their business model, and the IMDb lists are undoubtedly the most blatantly trolled/rigged official lists we have, with the POSSIBLE exception of Reddit and other lists based on large, completely unregulated userbases. There just isn't any integrity to any of it so I'm not sure why people get up in arms over frankly anything that happens on it -- and IMDb as far as I know has never made public in any detailed way it's ratings methodology, so we don't have anything like the knowledge we have about most of the other official lists, any way to meaningfully argue about whether the list is "correct" or not as people so often do over UNESCO or Box Office or any number of other hot topics.
From IMDB Help
How do you calculate the rank of movies and TV shows on the Top Rated Movies and Top Rated TV Show lists?
The following formula is used to calculate the Top Rated 250 titles. This formula provides a true 'Bayesian estimate', which takes into account the number of votes each title has received, minimum votes required to be on the list, and the mean vote for all titles:
weighted rating (WR) = (v ÷ (v+m)) × R + (m ÷ (v+m)) × C
Where:
R = average for the movie (mean) = (rating)
v = number of votes for the movie = (votes)
m = minimum votes required to be listed in the Top Rated list (currently 25,000)
C = the mean vote across the whole report
Please be aware that the Top Rated Movies Chart only includes theatrical features: shorts, TV movies, miniseries and documentaries are not included in the Top Rated Movies Chart. The Top Rated TV Shows Chart includes TV Series, but not TV episodes or Movies.
The following formula is used to calculate the Top Rated 250 titles. This formula provides a true 'Bayesian estimate', which takes into account the number of votes each title has received, minimum votes required to be on the list, and the mean vote for all titles:
weighted rating (WR) = (v ÷ (v+m)) × R + (m ÷ (v+m)) × C
Where:
R = average for the movie (mean) = (rating)
v = number of votes for the movie = (votes)
m = minimum votes required to be listed in the Top Rated list (currently 25,000)
C = the mean vote across the whole report
Please be aware that the Top Rated Movies Chart only includes theatrical features: shorts, TV movies, miniseries and documentaries are not included in the Top Rated Movies Chart. The Top Rated TV Shows Chart includes TV Series, but not TV episodes or Movies.
Also, there are these two
Weighted Average Ratings
IMDb publishes weighted vote averages rather than raw data averages. Various filters are applied to the raw data in order to eliminate and reduce attempts at vote stuffing by people more interested in changing the current rating of a movie than giving their true opinion of it.
The exact methods we use will not be disclosed. This should ensure that the policy remains effective. The result is a more accurate vote average.
- - - -
Why doesn't a title with the average user vote of 9.4 appear in your top 250 Movies or TV list?
As indicated at the Top Rated Movies page, only votes from regular IMDb voters are considered when creating the top 250 out of the full voting database. This explains any difference between the vote averages reported in the top 250 lists and those on the individual title pages. This also explains why movies or shows you might think from their averages ought to appear on the list yet do not actually appear there.
To maintain the effectiveness of the top 250 lists, we deliberately do not disclose the criteria used for a person to be counted as a regular voter.
Please be aware that the Top Rated Movies only includes theatrical features. Shorts, TV movies, miniseries and documentaries are not included.
IMDb publishes weighted vote averages rather than raw data averages. Various filters are applied to the raw data in order to eliminate and reduce attempts at vote stuffing by people more interested in changing the current rating of a movie than giving their true opinion of it.
The exact methods we use will not be disclosed. This should ensure that the policy remains effective. The result is a more accurate vote average.
- - - -
Why doesn't a title with the average user vote of 9.4 appear in your top 250 Movies or TV list?
As indicated at the Top Rated Movies page, only votes from regular IMDb voters are considered when creating the top 250 out of the full voting database. This explains any difference between the vote averages reported in the top 250 lists and those on the individual title pages. This also explains why movies or shows you might think from their averages ought to appear on the list yet do not actually appear there.
To maintain the effectiveness of the top 250 lists, we deliberately do not disclose the criteria used for a person to be counted as a regular voter.
Please be aware that the Top Rated Movies only includes theatrical features. Shorts, TV movies, miniseries and documentaries are not included.
The regular voters element is the main problem I was thinking of, yeah. Virtually any other list on the site (excluding Reddit as I mentioned, maybe a couple of others) it's possible to get an idea of who/what kind of people voted for the films on a list. I wouldn't expect a list of millions of names from IMDb but if we knew for example that "regular voter" meant you'd been a user for at least a year and had logged at least 100 feature film ratings, that'd be at least a bit helpful.
But the larger issues are trolling on the part of users, and manipulation of data on the part of IMDb. As to the first part - I don't have hard data for most of this but some of it's pretty easy to source - time and again potential top 250 films are killed for political/racial/gender issues. Black Panther, Captain Marvel and Wonder Woman for example were never on the list, not for a day, and given their generally good to excellent (outstanding in the case of BP) reviews and massive box office, they belong in the same category as most of the other superhero films of the last decade - a great many of which including all 4 Avengers films were on the list (some still are), often very high. But BP for example had 20-30% "1" votes the instant it was eligible for voting. So do a great many other films (but not all to be fair - 12 Years a Slave is a notable outlier) that have primarily black casts, black directors, etc. And the same goes for the two female-centric films. To this day BP has one of the lowest average ratings of any MCU films - despite being arguably the most critically lauded, the only one nominated for major Oscars, and the third-highest grossing in the series. And if you look at the reviews on the site it's pretty impossible not to conclude that IMDb has just allowed the racists to win the day, and that little angry white Trumpkin boys continue to hold a huge influence on ratings and reviews on the site. There are innumerable other examples of this kind. Now to counter that one might say, "but what about all the Indian films, they allow those to sit on the list unmolested". Ah but they never used to, and that brings us to the manipulation of data element - up until maybe 6-8 years ago Indian films would show up on the top 250, near the bottom usually but not always, and inevitably get dropped the next day - and if you looked at the ratings and numbers and compared them from one day to the next there was almost no difference. People talked about this in the forums all the time and the general consensus was that IMDb was tweaking their algorithms ever so slightly on a regular basis to remove certain voters that rated these films highly from the rolls of the "regulars" and thus cancel their importance in the top 250 determination. What changed? India became a more important part of Amazon's global business, that's what happened, and probably also so many Indians started to use IMDb that they no longer could blatantly wipe out all the Indian films without seeming overtly racist.
Of course it's not all about race/gender, etc. Sometimes it's all about fanboyz getting their way - whether honestly or not. Anybody on the IMDb forums 12 years ago will remember the whole Dark Knight dustup when for months there was a little war raging between partisans of that brand-new film and the longtime #1, The Godfather, with users making up huge numbers of fake accounts to upvote their favorite and downvote the other guy. There was a guy who had a site - some other longtime IMDber will remember the name - where he (somehow) kept track of other IMDb user names - and there was a user or group called THEDARKNIGHTSUCKS I think, with (if I'm remembering correctly) over 10,000 separate accounts, all created just to vote down TDK and presumably upvote The Godfather. Of course when the dust settled neither film was #1 and of course it's hard to tell how much IMDb actually got involved in this by removing accounts or their influence - but the fact that this kind of shit happened all the time (usually a little less publicly of course) tells me all I need to know about how much the site really cares about "honesty", "fairness', etc.
There's also other stuff going on that doesn't impact the top 250 - though perhaps it did at one time when the minimum vote requirement was lower. At some point around 10 years ago I noticed - or it may have been pointed out to me - that a huge chunk of the better-known 1910s films and a few 1920s films like Napoléon had extremely low ratings. I started doing some checking and found that a big percentage of these films - including the three most-rated Feuillades, several Chaplins, Griffiths, etc, had 25-60% "1" votes. Judex still has over 21% "1". This is a phenomenon that simply doesn't happen with films that are overall highly rated and considered major parts of film history - not over a long period of time anyway. You're not going to see 10-20-30% 1s on Vertigo or Star Wars or It's a Wonderful Life. Even a film that came in for enormous abuse across many of the forums, with multiple users bragging about keeping it off the top 250 - The Searchers - only has 2% 1 votes. So something quite deliberate was going on - I suspect a user with many accounts, or a few users, were tying to manipulate the 1910s list and put their own favorites on top, or just had some other weird agenda. And of course the opposite happened a lot too - there was a concerted push to put My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic in the top 250 and it was pretty close until they upped the vote limit.
IMDb just doesn't give a shit about this stuff in general - once it a while they will pull a particular film's ratings - there was an Indian film around 2015-6 (I think), shortly before the forums were killed, that had something like a 9.8 average and nearly 25k votes - it would have debuted at #1 in all likelihood - and they suddenly removed it from contention and it's votes were hidden. But the fact that so much trolling goes on and they bother with only the occasional issue is what makes me unable to take their voting data seriously at all, at least when it comes to the top 250 and more recent (post-1990 or so) and high profile films; when you look at older films' ratings - apart from those silents I mentioned in the last paragraph - they usually don't fall that far outside expected numbers. The highest rated films-noir for example include the usual suspects like Out of the Past and don't really have any ringers. But the films that have appeared in the internet era that the fanboyz want to push up or down? Pretty unreliable and largely meaningless ratings IMO.
And people pointed this stuff out to them pretty frequently. There was a whole thread on the "Silent" forum about the 1910s films I mentioned, and several people including me contacted them about it - and got back typical useless form emails saying in effect "we've looked into this and see no cause for alarm".
I could go on but what's the point? My experience over now decades is that IMDb and Amazon essentially spend much more effort coddling to the worst of users/buyers and care very little about the racism, misogyny, trolling, data manipulation, etc, going on on their sites - one of the top 10 reviewers (when that meant something) for many years was a guy who put overtly racist language into every single review he wrote. I am not exaggerating much to say that he'd maybe write a review of a Beatrix Potter book and would include some line like "and then the spearchuckers came and took poor Peter and fried him up with some watermelon, before they went off to rape white women". They did nothing about this guy for at least 5 years. They did nothing about another user who physically threatened me and several other Amazon forum members and attempted to doxx us because we found out that he had plagiarized virtually 100% of his reviews. This is a probably a big part of why Amazon in fact has grown the way it has - because they will take money, and reviews, and ratings, from everybody, Nazis and criminals and liars included. Because the people who care about such things are much smaller in numbers than the assholes - and because most of us are hypocrites and keep using AmazIMDb anyway.
And most people just don't care, and assume that in this era, facts and reality are whatever the guy with the most money says it is. I'm not suggesting that you, or anybody in particular on this forum or icheckmovies believes this, but it just pisses me off that we keep accepting these manifestly bad and dishonest lists. Long as Bezos can buy another country this year and two more in 2021, it's all good. Capitalism the way it's meant to be.
But the larger issues are trolling on the part of users, and manipulation of data on the part of IMDb. As to the first part - I don't have hard data for most of this but some of it's pretty easy to source - time and again potential top 250 films are killed for political/racial/gender issues. Black Panther, Captain Marvel and Wonder Woman for example were never on the list, not for a day, and given their generally good to excellent (outstanding in the case of BP) reviews and massive box office, they belong in the same category as most of the other superhero films of the last decade - a great many of which including all 4 Avengers films were on the list (some still are), often very high. But BP for example had 20-30% "1" votes the instant it was eligible for voting. So do a great many other films (but not all to be fair - 12 Years a Slave is a notable outlier) that have primarily black casts, black directors, etc. And the same goes for the two female-centric films. To this day BP has one of the lowest average ratings of any MCU films - despite being arguably the most critically lauded, the only one nominated for major Oscars, and the third-highest grossing in the series. And if you look at the reviews on the site it's pretty impossible not to conclude that IMDb has just allowed the racists to win the day, and that little angry white Trumpkin boys continue to hold a huge influence on ratings and reviews on the site. There are innumerable other examples of this kind. Now to counter that one might say, "but what about all the Indian films, they allow those to sit on the list unmolested". Ah but they never used to, and that brings us to the manipulation of data element - up until maybe 6-8 years ago Indian films would show up on the top 250, near the bottom usually but not always, and inevitably get dropped the next day - and if you looked at the ratings and numbers and compared them from one day to the next there was almost no difference. People talked about this in the forums all the time and the general consensus was that IMDb was tweaking their algorithms ever so slightly on a regular basis to remove certain voters that rated these films highly from the rolls of the "regulars" and thus cancel their importance in the top 250 determination. What changed? India became a more important part of Amazon's global business, that's what happened, and probably also so many Indians started to use IMDb that they no longer could blatantly wipe out all the Indian films without seeming overtly racist.
Of course it's not all about race/gender, etc. Sometimes it's all about fanboyz getting their way - whether honestly or not. Anybody on the IMDb forums 12 years ago will remember the whole Dark Knight dustup when for months there was a little war raging between partisans of that brand-new film and the longtime #1, The Godfather, with users making up huge numbers of fake accounts to upvote their favorite and downvote the other guy. There was a guy who had a site - some other longtime IMDber will remember the name - where he (somehow) kept track of other IMDb user names - and there was a user or group called THEDARKNIGHTSUCKS I think, with (if I'm remembering correctly) over 10,000 separate accounts, all created just to vote down TDK and presumably upvote The Godfather. Of course when the dust settled neither film was #1 and of course it's hard to tell how much IMDb actually got involved in this by removing accounts or their influence - but the fact that this kind of shit happened all the time (usually a little less publicly of course) tells me all I need to know about how much the site really cares about "honesty", "fairness', etc.
There's also other stuff going on that doesn't impact the top 250 - though perhaps it did at one time when the minimum vote requirement was lower. At some point around 10 years ago I noticed - or it may have been pointed out to me - that a huge chunk of the better-known 1910s films and a few 1920s films like Napoléon had extremely low ratings. I started doing some checking and found that a big percentage of these films - including the three most-rated Feuillades, several Chaplins, Griffiths, etc, had 25-60% "1" votes. Judex still has over 21% "1". This is a phenomenon that simply doesn't happen with films that are overall highly rated and considered major parts of film history - not over a long period of time anyway. You're not going to see 10-20-30% 1s on Vertigo or Star Wars or It's a Wonderful Life. Even a film that came in for enormous abuse across many of the forums, with multiple users bragging about keeping it off the top 250 - The Searchers - only has 2% 1 votes. So something quite deliberate was going on - I suspect a user with many accounts, or a few users, were tying to manipulate the 1910s list and put their own favorites on top, or just had some other weird agenda. And of course the opposite happened a lot too - there was a concerted push to put My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic in the top 250 and it was pretty close until they upped the vote limit.
IMDb just doesn't give a shit about this stuff in general - once it a while they will pull a particular film's ratings - there was an Indian film around 2015-6 (I think), shortly before the forums were killed, that had something like a 9.8 average and nearly 25k votes - it would have debuted at #1 in all likelihood - and they suddenly removed it from contention and it's votes were hidden. But the fact that so much trolling goes on and they bother with only the occasional issue is what makes me unable to take their voting data seriously at all, at least when it comes to the top 250 and more recent (post-1990 or so) and high profile films; when you look at older films' ratings - apart from those silents I mentioned in the last paragraph - they usually don't fall that far outside expected numbers. The highest rated films-noir for example include the usual suspects like Out of the Past and don't really have any ringers. But the films that have appeared in the internet era that the fanboyz want to push up or down? Pretty unreliable and largely meaningless ratings IMO.
And people pointed this stuff out to them pretty frequently. There was a whole thread on the "Silent" forum about the 1910s films I mentioned, and several people including me contacted them about it - and got back typical useless form emails saying in effect "we've looked into this and see no cause for alarm".
I could go on but what's the point? My experience over now decades is that IMDb and Amazon essentially spend much more effort coddling to the worst of users/buyers and care very little about the racism, misogyny, trolling, data manipulation, etc, going on on their sites - one of the top 10 reviewers (when that meant something) for many years was a guy who put overtly racist language into every single review he wrote. I am not exaggerating much to say that he'd maybe write a review of a Beatrix Potter book and would include some line like "and then the spearchuckers came and took poor Peter and fried him up with some watermelon, before they went off to rape white women". They did nothing about this guy for at least 5 years. They did nothing about another user who physically threatened me and several other Amazon forum members and attempted to doxx us because we found out that he had plagiarized virtually 100% of his reviews. This is a probably a big part of why Amazon in fact has grown the way it has - because they will take money, and reviews, and ratings, from everybody, Nazis and criminals and liars included. Because the people who care about such things are much smaller in numbers than the assholes - and because most of us are hypocrites and keep using AmazIMDb anyway.
And most people just don't care, and assume that in this era, facts and reality are whatever the guy with the most money says it is. I'm not suggesting that you, or anybody in particular on this forum or icheckmovies believes this, but it just pisses me off that we keep accepting these manifestly bad and dishonest lists. Long as Bezos can buy another country this year and two more in 2021, it's all good. Capitalism the way it's meant to be.
- Fergenaprido
- Donator
- Posts: 4916
- Joined: June 3rd, 2014, 6:00 am
- Location: Canada
- Contact:
Thanks for the detailed response OldAle. I agree with your points, though I place more onus on the users than on imdb itself for the unreliability of the ratings for certain films (granted, you could chalk that up to me being naive/wistfully positive). I absolutely wish that they would take voter manipulation more seriously, and I've also seen their lack of a useful response on the getsatisfaction platform when trying to rectify these (I remember the OogieLoves movie in particular, which, while the weighted average now appears to be "corrected" to 2.1, was as high as 8.0 a few years ago, so much so that I kept delaying adding it to my spreadsheet until 2017 when the rating was 6.5). I think the My Little Pony example you gave might be wrong, though, since that's a TV show so wouldn't have been on the Top 250 anyway (unless you're referring to the Top 250 Television, which I didn't realize had been around for that long).
I'm not quite ready to write off the imdb lists in their entirety; I do believe that the vast majority of users are giving honest ratings, and that the general trend of ratings and averages is accurate and useful. For me, it's still the most useful site in terms of user rating data, in that it's got the most (well, perhaps aside from Douban now, but I don't understand Chinese so it's not useful to me personally) information, it's increasingly more global than many sites, and it's relatively easy to add and update information while still having some quality controls (though those controls often piss me off when they don't accept my updates on the first try for "lack of evidence" reasons
). I'm sorry to hear about your experiences in the former forums (and it makes me glad that I never joined them), and I appreciate you taking the time to explain this more fully to me.
I'm not quite ready to write off the imdb lists in their entirety; I do believe that the vast majority of users are giving honest ratings, and that the general trend of ratings and averages is accurate and useful. For me, it's still the most useful site in terms of user rating data, in that it's got the most (well, perhaps aside from Douban now, but I don't understand Chinese so it's not useful to me personally) information, it's increasingly more global than many sites, and it's relatively easy to add and update information while still having some quality controls (though those controls often piss me off when they don't accept my updates on the first try for "lack of evidence" reasons

I think the MLP example was listed as a movie originally - that may have been the issue; or I'm confusing it with another MLP title. Bronies of the world, unite! Good call on the OogieLoves, I remember talk about that back in the day.
And I don't disagree that there's useful stuff on IMDb, and I do find ratings for older films generally worthwhile, though again there's lots of stuff that's impacted heavily by trolling or perhaps "campaigning" - i.e. all the Russian and Turkish comedies that have infested the comedy top 50 and the 60s-80s decade lists in particular. It's this kind of stuff that will keep me from ever making a real effort to complete most IMDb official lists, but no biggie - there are plenty of other lists to work on. It's just sad to me that IMDb and Amazon are such bad examples in the digital mediasphere - and they're so ubiquitous. And I don't think they HAD to be so bad; the IMDb forums are a great example, lots of little, inexpensive steps could have been taken to keep them from being so overrun by trolls, but management never cared. It's an amoral corporation and I think it's getting to this point in the world where we shouldn't be supporting such things - and the last few months have convinced me of this more than ever.
And I don't disagree that there's useful stuff on IMDb, and I do find ratings for older films generally worthwhile, though again there's lots of stuff that's impacted heavily by trolling or perhaps "campaigning" - i.e. all the Russian and Turkish comedies that have infested the comedy top 50 and the 60s-80s decade lists in particular. It's this kind of stuff that will keep me from ever making a real effort to complete most IMDb official lists, but no biggie - there are plenty of other lists to work on. It's just sad to me that IMDb and Amazon are such bad examples in the digital mediasphere - and they're so ubiquitous. And I don't think they HAD to be so bad; the IMDb forums are a great example, lots of little, inexpensive steps could have been taken to keep them from being so overrun by trolls, but management never cared. It's an amoral corporation and I think it's getting to this point in the world where we shouldn't be supporting such things - and the last few months have convinced me of this more than ever.
I just looked at the IMdb top 250 for the first time in ages (because I was bewildered to get a message saying "P.K." had dropped out of the list), and now I see it is freshly discussed by coincidence.
Whew, what a disaster. It's about 25% embarrassing. In addition to all the "cool" modern films woefully overrated by Comic-Con fanboys, the list also includes obscurities like.....
78. 3 Idiots (2009)
83. Like Stars on Earth (2007)
115. Anand (1971)
150. My Father and My Son (2005)
183. Klaus (2019)
184. Andhadhun (2018)
187. Eskiya (1996)
210. Hachi: A Dog's Tale (2009)
227. Rang de Basanti (2006)
233. Gangs of Wasseypur (2012)
240. Drishyam (2015)
242. The Invisible Guest (2016)
250. Munna Bhai M.B.B.S. (2003)
And "2001: A Space Odyssey" ranks a middling #89? Because of course it's 45 slots below "The Intouchables."
I've never paid any attention to how many films from this list I've seen, and I'm not going to start now. In fact, even looking at this list on ICM just now, it now occurs to me that I didn't note how many of the 250 I've seen.
Whew, what a disaster. It's about 25% embarrassing. In addition to all the "cool" modern films woefully overrated by Comic-Con fanboys, the list also includes obscurities like.....
78. 3 Idiots (2009)
83. Like Stars on Earth (2007)
115. Anand (1971)
150. My Father and My Son (2005)
183. Klaus (2019)
184. Andhadhun (2018)
187. Eskiya (1996)
210. Hachi: A Dog's Tale (2009)
227. Rang de Basanti (2006)
233. Gangs of Wasseypur (2012)
240. Drishyam (2015)
242. The Invisible Guest (2016)
250. Munna Bhai M.B.B.S. (2003)
And "2001: A Space Odyssey" ranks a middling #89? Because of course it's 45 slots below "The Intouchables."
I've never paid any attention to how many films from this list I've seen, and I'm not going to start now. In fact, even looking at this list on ICM just now, it now occurs to me that I didn't note how many of the 250 I've seen.
- blueboybob
- Donator
- Posts: 2518
- Joined: March 11th, 2013, 6:00 am
- Location: DC
- Contact:
This is some gatekeeping level stuff.
You know people are allowed to like things you dont like and that is ok
You know people are allowed to like things you dont like and that is ok
- Tasselfoot
- Posts: 465
- Joined: May 6th, 2014, 6:00 am
- Contact:
Ebby: Klaus and Hachi are both kids movies in English, and Invisible Guest is Spanish. In case you were trying to call out all the Indian/Turkish films. And I found all 3 to be enjoyable, in very different ways.
No, I was just calling out movies that obviously are nothing like films deserving rank in the top 250 of all time.Tasselfoot wrote: ↑July 21st, 2020, 2:45 am Ebby: Klaus and Hachi are both kids movies in English, and Invisible Guest is Spanish. In case you were trying to call out all the Indian/Turkish films. And I found all 3 to be enjoyable, in very different ways.
- Fergenaprido
- Donator
- Posts: 4916
- Joined: June 3rd, 2014, 6:00 am
- Location: Canada
- Contact:
How is it obvious? Have you seen any of them?Ebbywebby wrote: ↑July 21st, 2020, 4:35 amNo, I was just calling out movies that obviously are nothing like films deserving rank in the top 250 of all time.Tasselfoot wrote: ↑July 21st, 2020, 2:45 am Ebby: Klaus and Hachi are both kids movies in English, and Invisible Guest is Spanish. In case you were trying to call out all the Indian/Turkish films. And I found all 3 to be enjoyable, in very different ways.
What deserves to rank in the Top 250 of all time according to you?
Ebbywebby hasn't seen any of them.Fergenaprido wrote: ↑July 21st, 2020, 5:37 amHow is it obvious? Have you seen any of them?Ebbywebby wrote: ↑July 21st, 2020, 4:35 amNo, I was just calling out movies that obviously are nothing like films deserving rank in the top 250 of all time.Tasselfoot wrote: ↑July 21st, 2020, 2:45 am Ebby: Klaus and Hachi are both kids movies in English, and Invisible Guest is Spanish. In case you were trying to call out all the Indian/Turkish films. And I found all 3 to be enjoyable, in very different ways.
What deserves to rank in the Top 250 of all time according to you?
When big Netflix releases can be categorize as "obscure", it must be a great time to be alive for a cinephile.
My Top 675 (2021 Edition) on: Onderhond | ICM | Letterboxd
- TraverseTown
- Posts: 363
- Joined: January 25th, 2013, 7:00 am
- Location: USA
- Contact:
Klaus is on the same level as any recent Disney-type release, better than many in my opinion.
But do you think it's the 184th greatest movie ever made? Or even the 1,184th?TraverseTown wrote: ↑July 21st, 2020, 7:41 pm Klaus is on the same level as any recent Disney-type release, better than many in my opinion.
That goes for 99% of the list.Ebbywebby wrote: ↑July 21st, 2020, 8:14 pmBut do you think it's the 184th greatest movie ever made? Or even the 1,184th?TraverseTown wrote: ↑July 21st, 2020, 7:41 pm Klaus is on the same level as any recent Disney-type release, better than many in my opinion.
My Top 675 (2021 Edition) on: Onderhond | ICM | Letterboxd
I'm not sure what point you're trying to make. Why do you think it's obvious that these movies aren't good enough to be on the list, when you haven't watched them? How did you come up with this list of movies?Ebbywebby wrote: ↑July 21st, 2020, 8:14 pmBut do you think it's the 184th greatest movie ever made? Or even the 1,184th?TraverseTown wrote: ↑July 21st, 2020, 7:41 pm Klaus is on the same level as any recent Disney-type release, better than many in my opinion.
- TraverseTown
- Posts: 363
- Joined: January 25th, 2013, 7:00 am
- Location: USA
- Contact:
No, but I can see it being a favorite.Ebbywebby wrote: ↑July 21st, 2020, 8:14 pmBut do you think it's the 184th greatest movie ever made? Or even the 1,184th?TraverseTown wrote: ↑July 21st, 2020, 7:41 pm Klaus is on the same level as any recent Disney-type release, better than many in my opinion.
These devil's-advocate responses are really too much.mjf314 wrote: ↑July 21st, 2020, 8:26 pmI'm not sure what point you're trying to make. Why do you think it's obvious that these movies aren't good enough to be on the list, when you haven't watched them? How did you come up with this list of movies?Ebbywebby wrote: ↑July 21st, 2020, 8:14 pmBut do you think it's the 184th greatest movie ever made? Or even the 1,184th?TraverseTown wrote: ↑July 21st, 2020, 7:41 pm Klaus is on the same level as any recent Disney-type release, better than many in my opinion.
- xianjiro
- Donator
- Posts: 8763
- Joined: June 17th, 2015, 6:00 am
- Location: Kakistani Left Coast
- Contact:
One point though, the list is billed as "Top Rated". They also have a list for Most Popular that no one ever mentions.Ebbywebby wrote: ↑July 21st, 2020, 8:14 pmBut do you think it's the 184th greatest movie ever made? Or even the 1,184th?TraverseTown wrote: ↑July 21st, 2020, 7:41 pm Klaus is on the same level as any recent Disney-type release, better than many in my opinion.
But given who rates movies on IMDb, it's not a surprise to me that recent favorites do well.
If we really wanted the Greatest 250 films of all time, we'd have to look to a different source: one capable of judging cinematic work by it's technical qualities and artistic appeal. For me, IMDb is mostly about emotion, people enjoy the film. While that doesn't hurt and is a component of most great films, it's part. On IMDb, it's most of the equation.
The problem is thinking Imdb top 250 is supposed to be a list of the best films of all time. It's just a collection of movies highly rated by people on the internet, mostly young males.
It happnes with the Best Pictures Oscars. Some people say stuff like "Green book is good but it doesnt deserve best picture" when it's prisicely the nature of the Oscars that that kind of movie wins Best Picture, because that is simply the taste of the Academy. Green Book is not good in my opinion but it fits perfectly in that list. At least that's the way I think about this kinds of lists. After 200+ movies seen on the top250, I decided to stop following that list, because I stopped caring about the kind of films that make it to that list , if I happen to watch one of those it's because I was drawn to that movie from somewhere else. I don't know what that spanish films is about, but one can guess, it's probably very cool or very emotional or has a twist ending, I don't care really if I'm wrong about that, I have a so many spanish films that I feel will be better than that that I will watch first.
It happnes with the Best Pictures Oscars. Some people say stuff like "Green book is good but it doesnt deserve best picture" when it's prisicely the nature of the Oscars that that kind of movie wins Best Picture, because that is simply the taste of the Academy. Green Book is not good in my opinion but it fits perfectly in that list. At least that's the way I think about this kinds of lists. After 200+ movies seen on the top250, I decided to stop following that list, because I stopped caring about the kind of films that make it to that list , if I happen to watch one of those it's because I was drawn to that movie from somewhere else. I don't know what that spanish films is about, but one can guess, it's probably very cool or very emotional or has a twist ending, I don't care really if I'm wrong about that, I have a so many spanish films that I feel will be better than that that I will watch first.