Ranking the Movies of 2018: How it Works

Someone was asking me how I rank the movies for my "Ranking the Movies" of 2018 column. First and foremost, I recognize the futility and downright silliness of ranking movies. Subjectivity is deeply embedded in this column, it’s not meant to be scholarly, and it’s intended for entertainment and as an excuse for me to share my thoughts on a bunch of movies all at once.

That said, I do have some parameters that I do account for when writing "Ranking the Movies." The concept of the column came from a conversation with my Everyone’s a Critic Movie Review Podcast co-hosts, Bob Zerull and Josh Adams as we were putting our end of year lists together back in December of 2017. I joked that next year, 2018, I was going to keep a running list of every movie I see so that I wouldn’t have to work so hard at the end of the year.

I see nearly 350 movies a year give or take, and so I initially was just cracking wise. However, the more I thought about the idea and the specific challenge of such a list, the more interested I became in the idea. I’ve always wanted to develop my own feature column and the Geeks.Media forum has offered me the freedom to try and develop this concept. I’ve always envied those who could write something weekly, just sharing their thoughts, and now I am no longer envious.

The concept is actually quite simple, thanks to the good folks at FlickChart. For those who are not aware of FlickChart.com, the website pits movie against movie, and forces movie fans to make tough choices regarding their favorite movies. The combinations to choose from are completely random and, while you may have to skip through movies you’ve never seen or even heard of, the site is still a lot of fun and quite a surprising challenge.

I brought Flick Chart to the Everyone’s a Critic Movie Review Podcast just last year and it has become a staple of the show. At the end of each week’s podcast, we debate Flick Chart choices and the debates are some of the most fun we have on the show. We’ve even begun producing Patreon exclusive, Flick Chart only episodes to satisfy demands of listeners who subscribe to our Patreon. That’s how much we love Flick Chart.

I have not been physically making use of Flick Chart for this column, but I have adopted their conceit. Essentially, I Flick Chart each week’s new addition to the Rankings in my head and that’s where each movie lands. Take, for instance, Ready Player One, which just arrived in the Rankings. I placed the film against fellow new release The Death of Stalin and it was no contest, I preferred The Death of Stalin.

I then began comparing Ready Player One to everything under The Death of Stalin on my list and settled it where it was essentially ahead of the first movie it beat, Flick Chart style. In the end, I chose Ready Player One over the indie flick Los Angeles Overnight, but not over the Pussy Riot documentary, Act & Punishment, and it was that simple—sort of. I debate a lot over these choices in my head and sometimes these debates aren’t as simple, as I like Red Sparrow more than I like 12 Strong.

I ask myself a lot of questions when I am writing the column and forming the final rankings. The most prominent question I ask is which movie I would rather watch again. That’s often going to favor movies that are breezier and more fun, movies that go down easy. Thus, a movie like Foxy Brown, which is a sheer delight in it’s bizarre way, hangs high on my list ahead of 12 Strong or Red Sparrow, which are objectively more accomplished movies, but are not nearly as fun.

Emotional reactions play a huge role, as well. My current number one movie, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, is an incredibly artful movie and I can defend the artistic merits of the movie, but it is number one because I connect with it so deeply on an emotional level, far more than I did for movies like Black Panther, which while it moved me and still moves me, it moved me in a much different way than Eternal Sunshine.

Artful accomplishment does play a significant role, as well, but it’s very much secondary to the emotions the movie evokes. Movies like Just Charlie, which floored me with its powerful story of a young trans girl, Becks, with its deeply felt romance, and Are We Not Cats, which struck me with its soulful oddity, are weighted over movies such as Red Sparrow, which I feel is among the most accomplished movies of 2018, just not a movie I need to see again this year, or any time soon.

For a time, I did consider coming up with some sort of points system to aid in the rankings. Rating the movies on a star system based on Re-Watchability, Emotional Resonance and Artistic Accomplishment, but that quickly became convoluted. Thus, I settled on the Flick Chart approach, and that is how Ranking the Movies of 2018 came to be what it is now.

That the rankings column has given me a forum to explore my thoughts on a diverse selection of movies is, for me, the best ancillary benefit I could have imagined. I have come to enjoy writing the column even more than I enjoy putting the weekly rankings together, which is really just slotting in the new movies every week. The column is giving me a forum I had always wanted to explore and you reading the column has given me new life as a writer and as a lover of movies.