If you are just joining us, this is article two in a series where I look at the movies that I have in my collection, and how they are rated from the Internet Movie Database (IMDb.com). The first article in this series was posted on Monday July 8th and goes into my reasons for starting this grouping of posts about movies and ratings. I should also mention that since ratings will sometimes change (When I first started researching this series a month+ ago, I've seen Blade Runner go from an 8.9 down to an 8.2), so these scores are current as of July 12th, 2019 (which I realize is now over a month ago). So assuming that you all have now read why we are all here, let us get to it.
Top 5 Films (Hypothesized)
- Aliens (1986)
- Akira (1988)
- The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003)
- Seven Samurai (1954)
- Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back (1980)
IMDb Top 5 Films That I Own
- The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003) [8.9]
- The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001) [8.8]
- The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (2002) [8.7]
- Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back (1980) [8.7]
- The Matrix (1999) [8.7]
Based on IMDb rankings, I have a couple of things I want to cover.
The first being that we apparently do not have any of movies that are ranked 9.0 or higher on IMDb. By school standards, we only own B+ and lesser movies. By that rational too, only four movies in all of cinema history have an A- or higher: The Shawshank Redeption (9.2), The Godfather (9.2), The Godfather, Part II (9.0), and The Dark Knight (9.0). I guess I just did not realize how harsh (if that is the right word I am looking for) IMDb ratings could be. That is not a bad thing mind you, but only four movies in all of cinema have a 9.0 or higher? Yeesh. Makes me feel a bit better about my poorly rated movies.
I am a little surprised that all three The Lord of the Rings movies made it to the top five, but at the same time, I'm not because I love 75% of that trilogy. I'm not surprised though that Return of the King is currently the highest rated of the three, even though for me that was the entry that I liked the least for at least 14 different reasons (I sat down one afternoon and made a list of all of the things that bothered me while watching the movie). I probably should have also considered The Matrix for a top spot, but I really thought that Seven Samurai would have been higher up on the list (it currently has an 8.6, right below The Matrix).
Bottom 5 Films (Hypothesized)
- Beowulf (2007)
- The Happening (2008)
- Jackhammer Massacre (2004)
- The Postman (1997)
- Waterworld (1995)
IMDb Bottom 5 Films That I Own
- Your Highness (2011) [5.5]
- Daredevil (2003) [5.3]
- Shrunken Heads (1994) [5.2]
- The Happening (2008) [5.0]
- The Jackhammer Massacre (2004) [3.3]
This group of "bad" movies surprised me a bit too. The main surprise was around Your Highness, which I thought was received a lot better than a (currently 5.5) by the general public. Maybe I am wrong and a medieval stoner flick just wasn't and isn't what a good/entertaining movie "is." I shouldn't also be surprised about Daredevil since I feel like the CGI doesn't hold up very well, not that it was great when the film first came out, but the extended cut (which I have and which is not technically rated) is so much better than the theatrical cut, but again. Admittedly I have not seen Shrunken Heads as I received a copy of it when I put myself down for the "New Forbidden Zone DVD" tier for Richard Elfman's Indiegogo to fund Forbidden Zone 2. It was a nice little bonus that I have yet to watch. The Happening, yeah. I own it. @ me all you want. I wasn't at all surprised about Jackhammer Massacre, mainly because it is a low budget indie slasher/horror indie film, but I know one of the actors in the movie and it's pretty amusing to watch.
I was very much surprised that The Postman did not make it to the IMDb list, but it is sitting strong with other 6.0 films apparently and just a bit higher was Beowulf sitting at 6.2. Waterworld, for all of the crap I have heard/seen it get over the last 24 years, also received a 6.2.
So my hypothesized bottom five was somewhat correct (two out of five ain't bad), and considering I have a wide variety of tastes when it comes to movies, I think a 1.7 point jump between two of my worst rated films isn't too bad.
In the next article, we will look at the ratings from Rotten Tomatoes, a site that I typically stay away from since I think (thought?) that their ratings are much harsher and pompous than how I would normally regard movies.
~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian
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