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My 10,000th ranking: Batman Returns vs. Tomorrow Never Dies.  I chose Batman Returns.  All Bond films before Casino Royale are just too tame for me, and besides, I loved Danny DeVito as The Penguin and Michelle Pfeiffer was smoking hot as Catwoman.

I have 1150 movies in my list now but there’s a great deal of ones I said I haven’t seen but actually have.  I didn’t want to rank movies that I’d seen but couldn’t remember very well.  I thought it would lead to an imperfect list.

As for how I make my choices, I base them on three tests.  The first test was which movie I enjoyed more.  If the choice was easy then this was how the selection was made.  If I had a hard time deciding which I enjoyed more I then looked to which was a better film (however it is that my mind makes that qualification).  If I still couldn’t decide then I based my choice on which one I thought should probably win.  For example, Braveheart v A Beautiful Mind are both films which I didn’t really enjoy so I can’t base my decision on enjoyment, however both are well made films so that doesn’t help the decision either.  That means the third tests was followed and I’d choose Braveheart because it should probably win out.  Ultimately making the one on one decisions required by Flickchart is an imprecise exercise for those films in the latter part of your list because they ultimately don’t matter that much.  The decision making is both easier and more painful for the first 100-250 films in your list.  The real difficulty lies in trying to organise the films in your top 50.  I’ve screamed at my monitor so many times.

Below is my current top 50 films.  There’s probably a little rearranging that could happen in there, but for the most part I think these are the ones that I’d keep in my top 50.  Of course, there are also some in the 50-100 range that could creep in as well as a few movies from this year that I haven’t seen yet (500 Days of Summer and Avatar being two that come to mind).

My Current Top 50

1. Back to the Future: Part 2
2. Almost Famous
3. Terminator 2
4. The Goonies
5. Wall-E
6. Home Alone
7. Casino
8. Back to the Future
9. Forrest Gump
10. Goodfellas
11. Brewster’s Millions
12. Lethal Weapon 3
13. LA Confidential
14. Home Alone 2
15. Brick
16. Lost in Translation
17. Titanic
18. Die Hard 2
19. Back to the Future: Part 3
20. Scrooged
21. Heat
22. Natural Born Killers
23. The Fifth Element
24. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
25. Groundhog Day
26. The Dark Knight
27. Lethal Weapon
28. Anchorman
29. Out of Sight
30. Who Framed Roger Rabbit
31. Die Hard
32. The Truman Show
33. Collateral
34. Shaun of the Dead
35. The Lost Boys
36. Boogie Nights
37. Halloween (1978)
38. Clue
39. The Professional
40. Splash
41. Toy Story 2
42. True Lies
43. Into the Wild
44. Children of Men
45. Seven
46. Black Book
47. The Last Boy Scout
48. Talladega Nights
49. Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang
50. Fight Club

I found out about Flickchart from a post on Cinematical and quickly signed up for the beta.  I got my invite a few days later and have now been using the site for about a week.  To say that I’m addicted to it is a massive understatement.  I’ve lost hours sitting infront of my computer deciding who should win in the matchups it throws my way.  Some have been easy and some have been painful, but they’ve all been fun.  So far I have 958 movies in my list and I’ve done 4036 rankings.  There are plenty of films I said I haven’t seen which I actually have, but I wanted to be able to give an honest opinion in each and every matchup so I decided to disregard those that I’d seen but could not recollect very well.

I think my current top 20 is pretty complete.  There may be a little rearranging possible within the top 20 but for the most part they’re the right films.  The figure in the parenthesis is the global ranking so you can see where my pick matches up with the Flickchart community as a whole.  I’ve also listed the top 10 on Flickchart along with where they rank in my rankings for comparison.

My Top 20
1. Back to the Future: Part 2 (77)
2. Almost Famous (119)
3. Wall-E (26)
4. Casino (148)
5. Back to the Future (13)
6. Terminator 2: Judgment Day (807)
7. Forrest Gump (25)
8. Goodfellas (34)
9. Home Alone (262)
10. The Goonies (114)
11. Brewster’s Millions (3035)
12. Home Alone 2: Lost in New York (2291)
13. Brick (505)
14. Lost in Translation (108)
15. Die Hard 2 (1746)
16. Scrooged (670)
17. L.A. Confidential (96)
18. Lethal Weapon (150)
19. The Fifth Element (59)
20. The Lost Boys (481)

The Flickchart Top 10
1. The Dark Knight (25)
2. Star Wars (34)
3. The Empire Strikes Back (56)
4. Fight Club (50)
5. The Matrix (934)
6. Raiders of the Lost Ark (206)
7. Pulp Fiction (58)
8. The Shawshank Redemption (111)
9. Return of the Jedi (62)
10. The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (942)

On my top 20 I think that LA Confidential should be higher, probably around the 11 or 12 spot but it hasn’t matched up with those ones yet.  As for the Flickchart top 10 the only ones that are drastically wrong in comparison to my list are The Matrix and LOTR.  Neither of those should be as low as the 900’s but I don’t think they’ll ultimately make my top 150 either.