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PopGap #13: Peer Review, Part Three, Completed!

PopGap #13: Peer Review, Part Three, Completed!

Written by dorrk
01 February 2016

Peer Review: Ranking the movies and the users who rank them.

After three months of selecting movies I hadn't seen from near the tops of the charts of friends over at the movie-ranking website Flickchart, I have completed the Peer Review project. I watched 47 movies and one 10-part TV series totaling 106 hours, and ranked 51 different Flickchart users according to how well their Top 20 movies scored on my own Flickchart. the data is in, and the results are: useless.

Really, all that number-crunching is largely beside the point. I do PopGap as a way of forcing myself to watch "good" movies that I otherwise would never have seen, and this seemed as good a gimmick as any, but my most significant finding during the process has been thus: compiling data on different movie fans takes time away from watching and writing about movies, which is far more enjoyable and interesting to me and probably anyone who reads this. Conclusion: I will be picking much simpler sources of new movies in the future. This was kind of a drag.

For anyone who does care about the data, it's not very interesting. Generally, the users who had top-scoring charts for compatibility at the beginning of the process also had them at the end, and vice versa. In the two rare cases of significant score changes, each was determined by those individual Flickcharters making significant changes to which movies were ranked in their Top 20s, with no relation to the movie I picked from their chart. It was far more common for a Flickchart user's score to drop and not rise over the course of the three months, because with each new movie I ranked, all the movies below it would drop lower on my chart, thereby naturally lowering the compatibility scores even for movies that I love. 

Here's how the final results panned out for all three months of Peer Review:

Rank Movie Flickcharter User Score User Rank
#107. The Human Condition I: No Greater Love (1959) broganreynik 545 (+6) #12 (+5)
#116. Das Boot (1981) Harlequin68
Emerwin
671 (+17)
1373 (-51)
#27 (+4)
#50 (0)
#162. Army of Shadows (1969) Quirky 434 (-28) #4 (+1)
#191. Jean de Florette (1986) basvanstratum 713 (+15) #31 (+2)
#192. Manon of the Spring (1986) basvanstratum 713 (+15) #31 (+2)
#351. Nights of Cabiria (1957) KingofPain 979 (+21) #43 (+3)
#364. Wake in Fright (1971) Rac 614 (+16) #21 (+7)
#408. Me and Earl and the Dying Girl (2015) mr_steve 629 (+16) #25 (+5)
#414. Winter Light (1963) rickyfitts 695 (+15) #30 (+2)
#419. The Guard (2011) The1Cusack 559 (-15) #13 (+3)
#511. Come and See (1985) Celldweller7 782 (+17) #36 (+2)
#634. Muriel's Wedding (1994) bookhouse88 416 (+127) #3 (+12)
#649. The Cook, the Thief, His Wife and Her Lover (1989) NicholasVargo 614 (-23) #20 (+2)
#740. The Big Chill (1983) WillHunting 841 (-12) #39 (+1)
#773. Hedwig and the Angry Inch (2001) nomargin 627 (-8) #24 (+2)
#778. Buffalo '66 (1998) topichtennis 616 (-20) #22 (+1)
#800. Band of Outsiders (1964) faithx5 622 (-9) #23 (+2)
#805. Inside Out (2015) IcallItFutile 742 (0) #33 (+3)
#843. Band of Brothers (2001) hondito 573 (-19) #15 (+3)
#853. Django (1966) barrylutz 735 (-4) #32 (+3)
#856. Princess Mononoke (1997) fishbiscuit
joemovies
543 (-27)
560 (-1)
#11 (0)
#14 (+5)
#917. Kiki's Delivery Service (1989) DavidConrad 520 (-84) #9 (-3)
#940. The Weather Man (2005) SirStuckey 600 (-25) #17 (+3)
#1123. La Strada (1954) ubermusings 605 (-66) #18 (-4)
#1156. Forbidden Planet (1956) Nononsense 510 (-14) #8 (+1)
#1197. Running on Empty (1988) Myargonauts 273 (-3) #1 (0)
#1270. Why Don't You Play in Hell? (2013) FilmOdyssey 955 (0) #42 (+2)
#1336. White Heat (1949) DukeOfOmnium 584 (-55) #16 (-3)
#1349. Boy A (2007) figureitout 894 (-124) #40 (-3)
#1379. Galaxy Quest (1999) Brother+Reed
johnmason
343 (+18)
1396 (+33)
#2 (0)
#51 (0)
#1545. The Abyss (1989) Zampa
Blott
Yojimbo28
goat6boy
768 (-40)
841 (-35)
1220 (-15)
1266 (-11)
#35 (-1)
#38 (+1)
#47 (+1)
#49 (0)
#1571. Beautiful Girls (1996) csschneider 686 (-51) #28 (+1)
#1627. Ivan the Terrible, Part II: the Boyars’ Plot (1958) fish_beauty 540 (-157) #10 (-7)
#1727. Short Circuit (1986) butthorn 815 (-310) #37 (-27)
#1731. Mary Poppins (1964) PurpleCow17 689 (-65) #29 (-2)
#1744. Ivan the Terrible, Part One (1944) fish_beauty 540 (-157) #10 (-7)
#1756. The Human Condition III: A Soldier’s Prayer (1961) broganreynik 545 (+6) #12 (+5)
#1793. Holy Motors (2012) LittleSocrates 484 (-31) #6 (+1)
#1837. The Human Condition II: Road to Eternity (1959) broganreynik 545 (+6) #12 (+5)
#1939. Maverick (1994) Prophasi 1041 (-78) #45 (0)
#1969. The Rock (1996) HillJackBob 995 (-49) #44 (-1)
#1983. Mystery Train (1989) benshoemaker 463 (-68) #5 (-1)
#2010. Boys Don't Cry (2000) Donegan 937 (-51) #41 (0)
#2133. Miracle (2004) Caesar 493 (-13) #7 (+1)
#2167. Jacob's Ladder (1990) Zebula77 609 (-12) #19 (+5)
#2835. Equilibrium (2002) thelastdisciple 1176 (-257) #46 (-4)
#2877. Seabiscuit (2003) sodacreekfilm
Kramerica124
755 (-177)
1227 (-122)
#34 (-13)
#48 (-1)
#2924. Bound (1996) Vancetastic 637 (-117) #26 (-14)

Trailers for January's Peer Review marathon