You probably already knew about IMDB for its movie reviews on upcoming, recent and even older movies, but when you have that wide of a movie selection available, it’s good to have more streamlined ways to help you narrow down which films are worth your while and which most likely aren’t. Good starting places would be movie recommendation sites (such as Criticker or Filmaster), places that aggregate movie ratings from different sites, or reputable sources’ guides to the best and worst movies of all time.
Here’s our list of the latter, which includes the better known sites (that you read about on Saikat’s skillfully written free e-book, The Awesome Internet Guide to the Movie Addict) where you can find great lists to the top (and not-so-much) movies.
All-Time Best and Worst Reviewed Film Guides
The site name refers to movies that suffer from a rating of less than 60%, while the movies that get good ratings and reviews are called fresh (tomatoes). Since it has such a large number of reviews, it of course has compiled lists for movie buffs who are eager to watch excellent movies, and want to know which are the worst movies of all time.
For superb films, RT has ranked the best 50 films of all time in the form of a countdown to keep you more excited (though you can skip clicking on Next 49 times with PageZipper’s bookmarklet).
RT also has the top 50 TV series-to-movie adaptations of all time in the form of a countdown as well.
RT also honors every year’s best-reviewed movies (by users and RT staff critics) with the Annual Golden Tomato Awards. On this page, you can browse best-reviewed movies by year, genre, release site (UK, Australia, limited release) and user rating.
Now when it comes to bad movies, RT knows terrible films so much it even made a whooping list of the worst 100 films of the 2000-2009 decade, titled Worst of the Worst.
For a list of each year’s least favorably-reviewed films, RT’s Golden Tomato Awards, which were mentioned above to honor best reviewed films, apparently also honors Moldy films; which are the worst of the worst for a specific year.
If you visit RT frequently, be sure to make use of RT’s feed which will bring you the latest on upcoming movies and release dates.
IMDb features a gigantic list with the 250 best-reviewed films by IMDb user votes. While RT and IMDb both take into account users’ votes to create these lists, IMDb also packs 200 more films in the list and features commercially successful movies so you can browse the lists of box office-topping movies in the U.S. and UK by week and of all time. You can also browse movies by most DVD rentals, by decades and even gender.
IMDb also has a list, named IMDb Bottom 100, of the 100 lowest-rated movies that have gotten the most votes from IMDb users.
If you frequently check Rotten Tomatoes and IMDb, check out these Firefox addons which are designed to liven up your RT and IMDb visits.
Metacritic offers a Metascore (where the maximum is 100) for each movie based on reviews by national critics, and also displays user scores (with a maximum of 10) for each movie. However, for the lists the site compiled to present the best movies of the decade and of all time, MC only takes into account the Metascores.
This list of the best movies of the decade actually contains many foreign and indie films so MC also supplies us with a list of the Best-Reviewed Wide-Release Films of the Decade, 2000-09, and also a second part of the article that’s dedicated to sorting the best movies by genres and categories. And now onto the list of all-time winners.
While this is an impressive list with 200 of the all-time high scoring movies, the site also compiled a humongous list of the 200 worst-reviewed movies of all-time (since it’s actually 100 more than either Rotten Tomatoes or IMDb’s terrible movie lists, now you have more movies to avoid).
Exclusively Best Movie Guides
As if those lists from the sources above aren’t enough, New York Times’ Film Critics have published an astounding alphabetical list on NYT’s website, which is actually extracted from a book, The New York Times Guide to the Best 1,000 Movies Ever Made.
If you’re into classic movies, you will definitely enjoy this list as it seems to include a lot of older movies (there’s only about 37 or so titles from the 2000’s).
Oscar-winning Films
When it comes to moving and thought-provoking films, the Academy (of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences) might know a thing or two. Its official site lists all the movies that have earned the award of Best Picture from 1927 and on.
TIME Magazine – ALL-TIME 100 Movies
Two TIME magazine film critics created this easier-to-manage list of 100 best movies, sorted alphabetically here.
If you want a general list with reviews of the best movies aggregated from different sources, check this Wikipedia article.
Exclusively Worst Movies Guides
Maybe you’re trying to avoid wasting your precious time, money and effort the next time you get a movie, or you’re looking to have a fun night with your friends laughing at some bad acting. Whatever your reason, you won’t be disappointed with Empire’s guide to the 50 “most disastrous films ever made.”
Razzie-winning Films
According to its site, the Golden Raspberry (Razzie for short) Awards have been presenting “dis-honors for Worst Achievements in Film since 1980.” Although voters include journalists, film industry professionals and users of the website, the Razzies are meant to be a “light-hearted parody of award shows in general (and the Oscars in particular)” according to the author’s site. Either way, the list of the movies that got recognized as Worst Pictures is worth a look.
Here’s a general list of the worst-reviewed movies on Wikipedia, aggregated from a number of sources.
Now It’s Your Turn
If you’re feeling as excited as I am after such a variety of movie recommendation sites, you can start watching movies on the web (if you can’t play those movies on legal movie sites such as Hulu because you live outside the US, read this piece on how to solve that), create your own Top Movies of All Time list and even blog about your movie-watching experience. Believe it or not, this man was recently featured on ESPN for trying to watch IMDB’s top 250 movies in 1 year.
Feel free to comment on your own list of recommended movies and have fun watching!
Photo credit: Andres Rueda
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