The Best Movie Ever

There has been a lot of debate around in the movie world recently, well at least over at IMBD anyway, about the best movie ever created. For those of you unfamiliar with the Internet Movie Database, it allows users to rate movies based on a scale of 1 through 10, one being the worst and ten clearly then being the best. For a long time, The Godfather has been sitting in the number one spot on the IMDB top 250 movies of all time, but has recently been dethroned by the Dark Knight and then managed to drop farther down the list to number three thanks to a voting war between the two films. The question I have been asking myself through this hole interesting situation is, "How does one determine the greatness of a movie?"

Now personally, I never really enjoyed The Godfather, and I haven't seen the Dark Knight yet, but that's okay. To be one of the greatest movies ever in my book, there must be an amazing combination of acting, vision, creativity, and landmark breakthrough techniques. By these measures, I'm not sure either movie would actually be a top movie in my book. By my standards, movies such as Citizen Kane, who pioneered a movie style we still see today, or Star Wars and Jurassic Park for taking the next step in effects, creating new worlds. Clearly the IMDB top 250 is judged more open overall enjoyment and acting, and if we are going to measure a movie by those measures, by personal top goes to the Shawshank Redemption (which is currently number two).

In light of these two revelations, I've begun to think about movies as more than an art form. What is more important is judging a movie, mass appeal or quality content? Originally I thought that they were mutually exclusive, however I know realize this is not true in many cases. Now clearly The Dark Knight, who has broken records and has money coming in from all over the place seems to have both, which would make it a great movie, however let's take a movie like Young Frankenstein. It ranks on the top 250, but at 239 at the publishing of this post. It has fairly good acting and is arguably one of the funniest movies of all time. But it also appeals to a lot of people. I have never met anyone who didn't enjoy the movie, and anyone I debuted it to enjoyed it as well. Now take Citizen Kane, ranked at 28 currently, but most people I have talked to about do not enjoy the movie. Arguably, in today's time, Young Frankenstein would be a greater movie than Citizen Kane.

I suppose only history will tell on what impact a movie will make and where it will rank. While I enjoy the idea of ranking the movie, I have had a final revelation that movies are just fun emotion filled windows into different lives that are simply here to induce feelings and take us away from the everyday grind. So when it comes down to it, who cares? Just enjoy your movies and explore new horizons, unless you think the movie Monkeybone was the greatest film ever made. Then you need to take a cinematography class.