Flickchart is yet another one of those sites that is supposed to help you choose the next movie to watch, as well as share with your friends the list of movies that you’ve enjoyed. The interface is somewhat simple and straightforward, even though the functionality is plenty.
Basically, you are presented with the two movies next to each other and you have to click on the one you think is better. If you haven’t seen either one of the given movies, you can skip it for the next. Flickchart computes your voting into a Top 20 Movies of all times list, as well as a bunch of other sub-lists – by genre, by decade, etc.
Overall, that’s a much needed site with some really cool features. There is only one problem with it. It doesn’t work. I mean, it doesn’t work as I expected it to. It keeps throwing unknown weird films that I’ve never heard of at me. It keeps giving me movies for voting which I clearly marked as I haven’t seen. And the resulting Top 20 Of All Time list is weird at best. Some of the movies which I want there – are there, yet not at the places I’d put them manually at. The other movies seem to not make it there at all.
There is a “By Title” voting mechanism which one could use to move things around, but that is not very useful at this stage either. For example, I had “Avatar” at position #2. I thought, even though it’s a nice movie, #2 is a bit too high for it. So I took the “By Title” tour and in just a five or six clicks “Avatar” ended at #46. Seriously, WTF is going on?
As much as I’d love to use this site, I think it’s still too early. I need to give it some time to mature. But I’ll definitely be back to check out later. Have you tried it yet?
I’ve been using Flickchart for a couple of years now, and have picked the winner in over 19000 match-ups during this time. Needless to say, I’m a fan. I tend to view it as more of a fun time-killer than as a list-making tool, though. It has made me think about and reevaluate a lot of movies in ways I may not have done otherwise, and through the pondering between difficult pairings, I’ve come to realize what qualities in a movie I value higher than others. I enjoy the random match-ups more than the resulting lists. Even with all the time I’ve spent on the site, I still wouldn’t call my list “accurate”. But then again, my tastes can change from day to day, so that’s not surprising.
If you just rank randomly, the chance that you’ll end up with a top 20 that you agree with is miniscule. If you pick Movie A over Movie B, A will move to the spot right above B on your list – unless it’s already ranked above B, in which case it simply remains. There are no deeped mechanisms involved, so even if you end up picking a film to win in lots of match-ups, it won’t climb your list unless it beats something that’s ranked higher than it.
Ranking By Title pits the chosen film against whatever is at the middle of your chart. If it wins, it goes against the middle one of your chart’s upper half. Then it keeps dividing, until the film is at its “correct” place. Ranking By Title is essential if you have an idea of what your chart should look like and need to adjust it. I tend to just go with the flow of random match-ups and not worry too much about the small oddities, but the By Title option is useful for when I spot a film that’s way off from what sounds right to me. A film I really enjoy shouldn’t be near the bottom of my chart, so when I see something like that, I rerank it.
Whether you use it as a tool or a toy, I hope you’ll end up liking the site. I know the people behind it are working diligently to make it as user-friendly and useful as possible, so definitely check back at some point.
Thanks for the comment, Emil. Re-evaluating criteria for movie ranking in random comparisons – is an interesting point. I’ll play more with the site to see if it actually applies to me. :)