I now have 1440 movies listed in my Flickchart, and I thought I’d do a little breakdown through the use of graphs to see if there was any pattern to my viewing habits.
You can see from this graph that the majority of the films I’ve seen fall in the 2000s. That, not coincidentally, matches up with the when I really became interested/obsessed with watching films. I’m pleased with the 120 films I’ve seen so far this decade, because we’re only 21 months into the 2010s so far, so that projects out to be around 685 for the decade. Although with my ever increasing viewing I think I might be able to surpass 700. The thing these numbers can’t take into account is the fact that I’ll still be watching films from previous years that I haven’t seen yet, so the total for each previous decade should increase as well.
On the downside, it’s obvious that my pre-1980s viewing is very average. I know there are a number of great films from the 60s and 70s that I should of seen by now, and as someone who likes to think of himself as a cinephile (but not an art house nerd or film snob), I’m a little disappointed in myself that the 60s and 70s numbers are so low. Then again, I’m only 33, so I should have a lot of time to make up for this.
An equal 37% split between 1990s and 2000s in my top 100 ranked films isn’t that surprising to me considering those are the two decades from which I’ve seen the most films. I think as time goes along the figures will change to an almost 3-way divide between 1990s, 2000s, and 2010s. With a few select titles from the 70s and 80s, most notably Halloween, Back to the Future, and The Goonies sticking around.
The Top 100 by Genre, as shown above, was a little harder to prepare due to the fact that a film can really fall into multiple genres. For example, would you classify Who Framed Roger Rabbit as animation, comedy, or crime? For the sake of making the above pie chart I felt I needed to put each of my top 100 films into just one genre. That obviously made for some difficult choices, and may have skewed the results slightly.
The results show a clear preference for the wider, and more common, genres of action, comedy and drama. It’s possible that the genres of crime, coming of age, biopic, and noir could all fit within the larger drama genre, but I felt that they needed to be separated. Likewise, there are a number of films in my top 100 which have comedic elements, Lost in Translation is just one example, however I tried to only include films of an almost purely comedic nature in this category (eg Anchorman, or The 40 Year Old Virgin). In addition, animation could just as easily have been broken up into either family or fantasy.
Finally, my Top 100 by classification. You can see there’s an obvious preference for R rated films, although I think that might have more to do with the studios’ desire to avoid an NC-17 rating at all costs. My understanding is an NC-17 rating is a terrible outcome and films will be edited down to achieve an R rating (to open them up to a wider audience and the resulting higher box office), than stick with the original rating. This in my opinion leads to far more R rated films due to the studios’ goal of tapping into that key young demographic. Besides, sex and violence is good.
Conclusion
So, can I reach a conclusion on my viewing habits after doing a basic examination of my top 100 films? Well, I’d say that I probably prefer dramas to any other genre. When you take into account not only the purely dramatic films but also those sub-genres of crime, coming of age, and biopic it appears that around 36% of my top 100 could fall into the drama category. Of course, comedy could be adjusted as well to include those films which have clear comedic elements.
I don’t necessarily think I have a preference when it comes to watching or enjoying films based on classification. Sure, the majority seem to be R rated, but my top 10 are mostly PG. I just think that based on the studios’ desire to attract as many teenagers to spend their money as possible, there are simply more R rated films than other classifications. I have no evidence to back that up, but it’s just a hunch.
In the end I’m happy to watch almost any type of film, and regardless of the year it came out, the genre, or the classification, if it’s done well there’s no reason it can’t make it into my top 100.
