I’ve had social aggregating and user reviews buzzing around my mind for a couple of days now so I decided to compare IMDB’s chart of its top 250 movies against the same chart from 2007.

Using www.archive.org I pulled this top 10 list from 2000:

1)    The Godfather
2)    The Shawshank Redemption
3)    Schindler’s List
4)    Casablanca
5)    Citizen Kane
6)    American Beauty
7)    The Godfather: Part II
8)    Star Wars: A New Hope
9)    Shichinin no samurai (Seven Samurai)
10)  One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest

 And the current top 10:

1)    The Godfather
2)    The Shawshank Redemption
3)    The Godfather: Part II
4)    IL Buono, il brutto, il cattivo (The Good, the Bad and the Ugly)
5)    Pulp Fiction
6)    Schindler’s List
7)    Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back
8)    One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
9)    Casablanca
10)  The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King

Considering that the current top 10 only has one movie that was released after 2000 (Lord of the Rings) we would expect both lists to be pretty similar and a comparison between two short top 10 lists like these doesn’t provide us with the largest sample from which we can draw significant insights, but even so there are some trends that we can pick up.

In my opinion, Citizen Kane’s fall from 5th to 25th can in part be attributed to the pasting that it’s taken on TV shows. Often touted as the film connoisseur’s movie, it’s been referred to disparagingly time and time again in popular sitcoms by the shows’ easy going, everyday characters and this has surely influenced viewer opinion.

American Beauty was released about a year before the first list, so what we’re probably witnessing is the wear-off of the social hype surrounding the flick. This would explain why the movie, that featured at number 6 on the 2000 list, is currently “languishing” at 35th.

Having The Empire Strikes Back overtake its parent film is probably due to the poor reception that the prequels received. Lucas came in for some heavy criticism over his direction of the Jar-Jar / Hayden Christensen laden trilogy, most of which follow the same style and structure as the first film – even if they share little of its magic. Much of the negative goodwill was probably transferred to the original due to it sharing the same director, while its sequel has become an example of everything that’s right in the 6-film series.

And as for the most significant movement - The Good, the Bad and the Ugly shooting up 38 places to its current standing at fourth on the list – I’m clueless. Any takers?