The IMDB 250 challenge

“How have you never seen...”

In the Summer of 2010 I embarked upon what many would consider to be a pointless task. It was becoming more and more apparent that I couldn't really call myself a film fan when there were so many classics I'd never even attempted to watch. I was also getting fairly sick of having to say “I've actually never seen that”, leading to the above quote. Its fairly likely that anyone reading this will know both what the Internet Movie Database (IMDB) is, and also what the IMDB Top 250 is.

For those who don't. The IMDB is a website with a very fitting title. It is an online database of almost every film ever made. One of its features allows registered users to rate films between 0 and 10 stars. The average of all those ratings (with some special secret mathematics as a garnish) is used to rank them. The top 250 films based on these rankings is the IMDB Top 250.

One day shortly after being told off for not having seen something or other I decided to see how many of the greatest films ever I'd not seen. Magazines such as Empire or Total Film print “100 Films You Need to See” and “50 Best Movies Ever” lists, but at the time my destination of choice was the IMDB. One spreadsheet later (as you will come to learn there are many facets to my geekiness) I discovered I'd seen 105 of them.

A poor level of completion by any measure at 42%, and it prompted me to set myself an open ended challenge. To watch them all!

Omissions at the time included Schindlers List, American History X, One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest, various Akira Kurosawa, most of Alfred Hitchcock and a boatload of Charlie Chaplin. Not to mention a whole load of other interesting prospects. Of those there were also however also a few daunting obstacles in my path; Gone With the Wind, M and Ben-Hur to name three. I must confess one of them remains unwatched to this day, but for a very good reason.

My version of the IMDB was frozen in time at the point I copied it to the spreadsheet, and a fair few films have moved up or down as average ratings have changed and new films have come out.

I've now seen 228 including the entire top 100. For a comparison I've only seen 216 of the current IMDB 250. Trying to watch every film on an ever changing list would have been a much harder task and since I'm trying to watch the classics, slightly pointless too as most of the new entries are of the flavour of the month style.

With only 22 films to go, and the discovery that I can actually sit through not only silent cinema, but also German Expressionism. I am very much on the home straight. 22 films to go with the intention of closing the whole thing with Gone With the Wind, as I was only going to end up putting it off until the end anyway I decided to make it the final mile. (I told you there was a reason for my still not watching it).

The answer to the question I started this post with by the way is: “I was probably watching Star Wars, but its on the list.”