Flickchart at 80,000

I've written about Flickchart a number of times on my blog, but I don't think I've written about it very much since I started getting more followers. Therefore, I thought it was definitely time for another plug.

Flickchart (www.flickchart.com) is a brilliantly addictive site where you can rank all the movies you've ever seen, in the form of an endless succession of one-on-one duels. You get one movie poster presented on the left, and one on the right. You click the movie you like better. It's that simple (or deliciously complicated, depending on how much you want to agonize over your choices). Over time, these choices develop into a list of preferences ranked from highest to lowest, and using filters, you can get beyond the list of the most popular movies, into Flickhchart's bottomless database of obscure films you've never heard of. Which is getting bigger all the time. (How can something with no bottom get bigger? I digress.)

The obsession for me started last October, and since then, I've been writing about the site at intervals on my blog. I've been stopping to record my rankings offline every 10,000 duels -- you know, just in case Flickchart goes dark one day -- and usually pick those stopping points as a time to praise some aspect of the site. But as I just passed 80,000 duels and couldn't think of anything particularly interesting to say, I thought I'd use this milestone to take you on an abbreviated tour of my rankings, just to get some discussions flowing and show you where I stand on a random selection of the films I've seen.

But since I'm ranking 2,876 films at the moment, it's going to necessarily be a pretty cursory tour. What I thought I would do is give you my top-ranked film, then give you the films ranked every 100th film from there on out (#100, #200, etc.). When I get to 2,876, I'll stop.

Ready?

1) Raising Arizona (1987, Joel & Ethan Coen). There are possibly 10-20 films that could legitimately take the top spot. For now, I'm comfortable with this one.

100) The Godfather (1972, Francis Ford Coppola). Many will consider this too low. I may consider it too high -- for me personally, anyway. Discuss.

200) Natural Born Killers (1994, Oliver Stone). Ostentatiously stylish film. Ranked about right.

300) Waking Ned Devine (1998, Kirk Jones). Before the Full Monty knockoffs started going downhill.

400) The Triplets of Belleville (2003, Sylvain Chomet). Delightfully outside-the-box animated film that's almost dialogue-free. Could go higher in these rankings.

500) The Man With Two Brains (1983, Carl Reiner). "It's pronounced 'Hfuhruhurr.'"

600) The Day After (1983, Nicholas Meyer). Technically a TV movie. Its inclusion on this list should make me feel shame. Then again, it's scary as shit.

700) Ordinary People (1980, Robert Redford). Don't really remember this. #700 is probably too high, but it's being accorded a general level of respect for winning best picture, I guess.

800) The House Bunny (2008, Fred Wolf). Oddly enough, I think this could be higher on this list.

900) The Earrings of Madame de ... (1953, Max Ophuls). Watched in film class back in college. Don't remember.

1000) Hedwig and the Angry Inch (2001, John Cameron Mitchell). First movie I saw in the theater after 9/11. Also saw it performed live off Broadway, which I liked better.

1100) A Perfect World (1993, Clint Eastwood). Remember this simultaneously being sort of interesting and very flawed.

1200) Australia (2008, Baz Luhrmann). Contrary to the popular sentiment, I actually have a decent affection for this film.

1300) What Happened Was ... (1994, Tom Noonan). Second title on this list that ends in an ellipses. Weird little indie about an awkward date. Pretty good.

1400) Bruce Almighty (2003, Tom Shadyac). I like this film less the more I think about it.

1500) Boys Don't Cry (2000, Kimberly Peirce). I'm sensing some shock from you. I wanted to like this movie more than I actually liked it.

1600) Torch Song Trilogy (1988, Paul Bogart). Paul Bogart was also the name of my high school drama teacher, but I don't think it's the same guy. Hey, two gay-themed movies in a row.

1700) Michael (1996, Nora Ephron). Uninspired but inoffensive middle-of-the-road pap from Nora Ephron.

1800) All Over the Guy (2002, Julie Davis). And that's three out of four gay-themed movies. You'd think I was gay, but I'm not. Then again, they're ranked in the second half of my list. So, I saw them, but I gave them uninspired rankings. What does that mean?

1900) Down With Love (2003, Peyton Reed). Forgettable romantic comedy set in the 1950s, starring Ewan McGregor and Renee Zellwegger.

2000) Blindness (2008, Fernando Mereilles). I expected a lot more from the director of City of God and The Constant Gardener.

2100) I Spit on Your Grave (1978, Meir Zarchi). As discussed here, I may actually like this infamously hated movie better than this ranking suggests.

2200) The Hurricane (1999, Norman Jewison). A ranking anomaly caused by this film being entered into the database very recently, and not having had many duels. Could be a thousand spots higher.

2300) Primal Fear (1996, Gregory Hoblit). I don't really like this movie that's known as Edward Norton's breakout, but this ranking is probably too low.

2400) The Man in the Iron Mask (1998, Randall Wallace). This movie should have gotten a box office bounce by being the first theatrical release for Leonardo DiCaprio after Titanic. It didn't.

2500) Wrongfully Accused (1998, Pat Proft). One of Leslie Nielsen's horrible late-career spoof movies. Just about perfectly ranked.

2600) Rambo: First Blood Part II (1985, George P. Cosmatos). This movie is probably not quite as moronic as I remember it being. Or maybe it's even more moronic. But hey, I really liked First Blood.

2700) The Lawnmower Man (1992, Brett Leonard). Ha, I just talked about this on my blog two weeks ago.

2800) One Missed Call (2008, Eric Valette). Simply abysmal.

And, drum roll please ...

2876) Lord of War (2005, Andrew Niccol). Lord of War is not the worst movie I've ever seen, but it's very, very bad. Even when all the horrible movies above it have filtered down to their correct spots through the ongoing duel process, this could still be in the bottom 20.

That was fun. Maybe I'll do it again at 90,000.