What Movies Do My Friends Like?
Yeah that title kind of blows, but I’ve been trying to make my titles more cohesive. Let me explain. I have a series I do on my YouTube channel where I ask my friends & family to send me a list of their Top 10 favorite movies and I watch the films, rate them from 1-10, and give a quick review. I have just completed my 20th episode of this series and wanted to share the statistics of the series so far. Why? Because I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again I love movies & I love statistics about things that don’t matter. These films come from 20 individuals, some friends, some family. All of the episodes can be found HERE
So this project has resulted in me watching 200 movies, however the list is not made up of 200 unique movies as there were some repeats. So our field that we’ll be looking at today contains 160 different movies. For the pool of 160 movies you can click HERE
First my scoring of the movies. I’ve been told I’m (too) generous with my scores. Which is probably a true fact both in this series and just in my own personal scoring of movies. But I just love movies so it has to be pretty bad or pretty boring for it to not do well in my book. To date, the highest total score I have given out in an episode was a 90 (to my brother-in-law, Grant) and the lowest was a 70 (to my close family friend, Mr. Craig). Random note, but Mr. Craig’s list is also the only one that features 10 movies with no overlap to other lists! Everyone else has fallen somewhere in that range, with most people scoring an 80 or higher. That should show how nice I am since the lowest score was 7/10 average. The average score that I’ve given the 160 films is an 8.1, while the average total score my friends have received out of 100 is an 82.4.
When it comes to the spread of appearances, a majority of films have only appeared once with 128 single appearance films. I’m not going to list all those here, so I guess if you’re curious you should go watch those videos or check out that list (both linked above). There have been 25 movies that have appeared twice and I honestly hesitate to list all those out too just because that’s a lot of titles to throw out, but I will, so prepare yourself. In alphabetical order they are ‘50 First Dates,’ ‘(500) Days of Summer,’ ‘Breakfast at Tiffany’s,’ ‘The Dark Knight,’ ‘Dead Poets Society,’ ‘Dirty Dancing,’ ‘Good Will Hunting,’ ‘E.T.- The Extra-Terrestrial,’ ‘Elf,’ ‘Father of the Bride,’ ‘Finding Nemo,’ ‘Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire,’ ‘The Holiday,’ ‘Julie & Julia,’ ‘Jurassic Park,’ ‘The Notebook,’ ‘Once Upon a Time in Hollywood,’ ‘The Parent Trap,’ ‘Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl,’ ‘Pretty Woman,’ ‘Rocky,’ ‘Shutter Island,’ ‘Star Wars: Return of the Jedi,’ ‘Star Wars: The Revenge of the Sith,’ & ‘Tommy Boy.’
Now there are 6 films that have been mentioned thrice across various lists. ‘The Devil Wears Prada,’ ‘Forrest Gump,’ ‘How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days,’ ‘Interstellar,’ ‘The Lord of the Rings- The Fellowship of the Ring,’ & ‘Pride & Prejudice’ are all of our triple crowners. But standing above them all is one film that has appeared 4 times! Appearing on Hayden Hasty, Kyle Major, Dalin Nguyen, & Olivia Wilson’s lists is ‘La La Land.’ I knew people loved ‘La La Land’ and honestly I enjoy it quite a bit myself, but I’m shocked that it is the all-time leader in appearances.
If you look at the range of years, you see a very heavy lean towards more modern films. The oldest film on the list is the 1944 film, ‘Gaslight’ and it is the only film from the 1940s that made the cut. The 1950s also see only one appearance with 1952’s ‘Singin’ in the Rain.’ The 1960s feature 3 films: ‘Breakfast at Tiffany’s,’ ‘Cool Hand Luke,’ & ‘Sabata.’ We then pick it up a bit with 7 films from the 1970s and 18 films from the 1980s. The 1990s features 31 different films and the 2010s come in similarly with 33 different films. The 2000s beats out all other decades with 58 total films appearing. Interestingly, the 2020s also feature 6 films, with 4 coming from 2022: ‘The Batman,’ ‘Bullet Train,’ ‘Everything Everywhere All at Once,’ & ‘Top Gun: Maverick,’ and 2 coming from 2023: ‘Barbie’ & ‘Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem.’ The single year that features the most films is 2003, which has 8 different films.
The following directors had two unique films appear on the list:
Clint Eastwood: ‘Gran Torino’ & ‘Unforgiven’
Damien Chazelle: ‘La La Land’ & ‘Whiplash’
David Fincher: ‘The Curious Case of Benjamin Button’ & ‘The Social Network’
David Frankel: ‘The Devil Wears Prada’ & ‘Marley & Me,’ with the former appearing three times.
Denis Villeneuve: ‘Arrival’ & ‘Prisoners’
Dennis Dugan: ‘The Benchwarmers’ & ‘Happy Gilmore’
Frank Darabont: ‘The Green Mile’ & ‘The Shawshank Redemption’
Garry Marshall: ‘Pretty Woman’ & ‘The Princess Diaries 2,’ with the former appearing twice.
Greta Gerwig: ‘Barbie’ & ‘Little Women’
John Hughes: ‘The Breakfast Club’ & ‘Ferris Bueller’s Day Off’
Jon Turteltaub: ‘Cool Runnings’ & ‘While You Were Sleeping…’
Kevin Costner: ‘Dances with Wolves’ & ‘Open Range’
Mel Gibson: ‘Hacksaw Ridge’ & ‘The Passion of the Christ’
Nancy Meyers: ‘The Holiday’ & ‘The Notebook,’ both of which appear twice.
Nora Ephron: ‘Julie & Julia’ & ‘You’ve Got Mail,’ with the former appearing twice.
Peter Segal: ‘50 First Dates’ & ‘Tommy Boy,’ both of which appear twice.
Peter Weir: ‘Dead Poets Society’ & ‘The Truman Show,’ with the former appearing twice.
Shawn Levy: ‘Cheaper by the Dozen’ & ‘The Internship’
Sylvester Stallone: ‘Rocky III’ & ‘Rocky IV’
The following directors had three unique films appear on the list:
John Lasseter: ‘Cars,’ ‘Cars 2,’ & ‘Toy Story 2’
Martin Scorsese: ‘Shutter Island,’ ‘Taxi Driver’ & ‘The Wolf of Wall Street,’ with the first of these making two appearances.
Quentin Tarantino: ‘Django Unchained,’ ‘Pulp Fiction,’ & ‘Once Upon a Time in Hollywood,’ with the last of these making two appearances.
The following director had four unique films appear on the list:
Christopher Nolan: ‘Inception,’ ‘Memento,’ ‘The Dark Knight,’ & ‘Interstellar’ with the latter two appearing two and three times, respectively, marking 7 total appearances for Nolan.
But standing above the rest is the GOAT himself with 5 different films appearing:
Steven Spielberg: ‘Catch Me If You Can,’ ‘Duel,’ ‘E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial,’ ‘Jurassic Park,’ & ‘Schindler’s List,’ with ET & ‘Jurassic Park’ both appearing twice., meaning Spielberg has appeared 8 total times.
When you look at the genre breakdown you will find some even split between the 8 narrative genres that I have personally dubbed as the ‘main genres.’ It is important to note on this one that this is a lot more subjective because films can be classified into different genres by different people. So this is just based on my own classification of them. The breakdown is as follows, with the number of films signifying the primary genre:
Action- 16
Animated- 10 (7/10 come from Disney or Pixar, with ‘Coraline,’ ‘The Land Before Time,’ & ‘Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem’ being the exceptions)
Comedy- 61
Drama- 43
Fantasy- 6
Horror- 3
Sci-Fi- 12
Western-9
If you look deeper into the sub-genres, the most prevalent sub-genre is romantic comedy, which has 20 different films appearing. The other sub-genre stats that stand out to me are that there are 4 different Christmas movies, 5 musicals, 3 prison dramas, 13 sports movies, 2 spy films, 7 superhero films, & 4 war films.
The average runtime of the 160 films is 118.67 minutes. According the Google, the average runtime of a movie is 98 minutes, so we beat that out by an extra 20 minutes. Go us!
9 movies clock in at under 90 minutes:
‘Four Christmases’ 89 min.
‘Zoolander’ 89 min.
‘The Wicker Man’ 88 min.
‘Space Jam’ 88 min.
‘The Benchwarmers’ 85 min.
The shortest live action film: ‘Chronicle’ 83 min.
‘The Emperor’s New Groove’ 78 min.
‘A Goofy Movie’ 78 min.
And the shortest film: ‘The Land Before Time’ 69 min.
5 movies clock in at 180 minutes (3 hours) or over:
‘The Wolf of Wall Street’ 180 min.
‘Avengers: Endgame’ 181 min.
‘Dances with Wolves’ 181 min.
‘The Green Mile’ 189 min.
And the longest film: ‘Schindler’s List’ 195 min.
However, I feel that it is worth mentioning I pretty much exclusively watch The Lord of the Rings extended cuts, so the version of ‘The Lord of the Rings- The Fellowship of the Ring’ that I watch clocks in at 208 minutes.
I am currently working on my own Top 100 List (because I deserve 10x the spotlight of everyone else) and many movies from here appear on my list. This is subject to change because my list isn’t final, but I believe 47 of the movies here appear on my list, so just about half of my list is also beloved by at least on person in my life. How comforting.
The entire goal of this exercise was to learn more about the people I love, while also watching movies I may not typically watch. This has resulted in me watching 75 different movies that I hadn’t seen before I started this series & kicked up some fun dialogue with my friends, so I’d call that a success!
Only two of the films on this list are non-English language films: Best Picture winner ‘Parasite’ which is in Korean & the Spaghetti Western ‘Sabata’ which is mostly in Italian. Some other random notes are that ‘Chronicle’ is the only found footage style film on the list & ‘Duel’ is the only made-for-TV movie to make the list, with both of these films appearing on Edmund Rocks’ list.
Next, I want to look at franchises that appeared multiple times. Some franchises that I’m shocked only had one film appear are: Fast & Furious (with ‘Tokyo Drift’ being the only film to appear), Harry Potter (with ‘Goblet of Fire’ being the only film to appear, though it does appear twice), & Toy Story (with ‘Toy Story 2’ being the only film to appear, which is weird since it’s the worst of the first three, though still a great film). I also need to mention that Lord of the Rings has only one film appear in ‘The Fellowship of the Ring,’ but there is a caveat. Of it’s three appearances, it was only designated once as specifically Fellowship, with the other two list submitters just saying ‘Lord of the Rings’ as a whole. I personally elected Fellowship because it is my favorite of the franchise and it doesn’t really matter because any of the three films would get a 10.
Now the franchises that had two different films appear are:
Batman (if that counts since the films don’t actually have any relation other than source material) with ‘The Dark Knight’ & ‘The Batman’ both appearing, the former appearing twice
Cars with ‘Cars’ & ‘Cars 2’
Mamma Mia! with both films appearing
Top Gun with both films appearing
And these three franchises had three films each appear:
The Marvel Cinematic Universe with ‘The Avengers,’ ‘Avengers: Endgame,’ & ‘Guardians of the Galaxy’
Rocky with ‘Rocky,’ ‘Rocky III,’ & ‘Rocky IV’ with the first one appearing twice, equaling 4 total appearances.
Star Wars with ‘Revenge of the Sith,’ ‘Return of the Jedi,’ & ‘Rogue One,’ with the first two appearing twice each, equaling 5 total appearances, unsurprisingly making it the most represented franchise.
I’m a big believer that a movie doesn’t need to be popular, critically acclaimed, or even considered good to be someone’s favorite. People can enjoy whatever they enjoy! But let’s see how these films measure by popularity, awards, & critical scores.
To rank popularity, I’m using the film logging app Letterboxd (of which I’m an avid user). There is a tool to rank films by popularity and here is what it says are the top 10 most popular movies of the 160 (based on number of logs by Letterboxd users), with ‘Barbie’ taking the #1 spot.
And more interestingly, here are the 20 films it said were the LEAST popular with ‘The Crocodile Hunter: Collision Course’ being the ‘least popular.’ Shoutout Marley Scott for what I’d call the most obscure pick.
Now when it comes to critical appeal, I typically differ to Rotten Tomatoes. For those unfamiliar, what Rotten Tomatoes does is takes the scores of a handful of critics and gives a percentage based on how many of the reviews are positive. The average score of our pool on Rotten Tomatoes is a 75.5%, based on 159 movies. Why 159? Because the film ‘Sabata’ has not been reviewed enough on RT to earn a score, which is kind of cool in itself. There were 4 films that have earned perfect 100% scores ‘Before Sunrise,’ ‘Cool Hand Luke,’ ‘Singin’ in the Rain,’ & ‘Toy Story 2.’ There were also 3 films that earned a near perfect 99%, ‘E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial,’ ‘Finding Nemo,’ & ‘Parasite,’ plus ‘Schindler’s List’ which accrued a 98%. There were 37 films that earned a score between 90-97, 37 films in the 80-89 range, 30 films in the 70-79 range, 15 films in the 60-69 range, 13 films in the 50-59 range, & 10 films in the 40-49 range. There were 3 films in the 30s, ‘Cars 2’ at 39%, ‘The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift’ at 38%, & ‘The Internship’ at 34%. 4 films scored in the 20s, ‘The Princess Diaries 2: Royal Engagement’ at 26%, ‘Four Christmases’ at 25%, ‘Cheaper by the Dozen’ at 24%, & ‘The Last Song’ at 21%. The lowest score was a tie at 13% between ‘The Benchwarmers’ & ‘Safe Haven.’
Now the Oscars. Because of course I have to bring Oscar into this. Combined, these films were nominated for 435 Academy Awards (average of 2.7/film) & they won a total 131 (average of 0.8/film). 71 films received 0 Oscar nominations, so these stats come from the other 89 movies. Of these 89, 17 earned a single nomination, 16 earned 2 nominations, 7 earned 3 nominations, 12 earned 4 nominations, 6 earned 5 nominations, 5 earned 6 nominations, 2 earned 7 nominations, 7 earned 8 nominations, & 4 earned 9 nominations. You follow that easy enough? There were 13 films that earned 10+ nominations. ‘Rocky,’ ‘On Golden Pond,’ ‘1917,’ & ‘Once Upon a Time in Hollywood’ each earned 10, ‘The Godfather’ & ‘Everything Everywhere All at Once’ both earned 11 (though ‘The Godfather’ had one nomination revoked), ‘Schindler’s List,’ ‘Dances with Wolves,’ & ‘Gladiator,’ each earned 12,’ ‘The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring,’ ‘Forrest Gump,’ & ‘The Curious Case of Benjamin Button’ each earned 13. ‘La La Land’ once again led the pack with 14 nominations.
When it comes to Oscar wins, 49 of these films can label themselves as Academy Award-winning. 17 of them won a single Oscar, 10 of them won 2, 8 of them won 3, & 8 of them won 4. The 6 films that won 5+ Oscars are: ‘Gladiator’ which won 5, ‘Forrest Gump’ & ‘La La Land’ which both won 6, and ‘Everything Everywhere All at Once,’ ‘Schindler’s List,’ ‘& Dances with Wolves’ which each won 7.
There were 27 Best Picture nominees (that didn’t win) in the field with an additional 12 films that did actually win the award. The 12 Best Picture winners on the list are: ‘The Godfather,’ ‘Rocky,’ ‘Rain Man,’ ‘Dances with Wolves,’ ‘Unforgiven,’ ‘Schindler’s List,’ ‘Forrest Gump,’ ‘Gladiator,’ ‘No Country for Old Men,’ ‘Birdman,’ ‘Parasite,’ & ‘Everything Everywhere All at Once.’
And that’s all I’ve got for you. I’ll think about who else in my life’s movies I could evaluate so this series can continue on, because I’ve truly had such a good time with it. I’m sure more episodes of this series will drop inconsistently, but that’s it for now!
