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.

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.