People take IMDB way too seriously. The message boards being wiped away are proof positive of that. The miserable little trolls that navigated those boards were just awful, turning the site into such a cesspool that IMDb got rid of them all together.
There were conscious efforts to over-rate or under-rate movies ratings on the site. Newer releases get a higher rate of reviews than older ones, so there was a discrepancy in that regard. IMDb can be a useful tool but it is also one with its own learning curve. How to figure out what is right and what was fooled with. Their Top 250 Movies list is one of those things that is not entirely accurate.
There are some good movies and accurate choices, but there are also some decent movies that are overrated by neckbeards and those blinded by the sheen of a new release. Here are the 10 most egregious examples of movies that shouldn’t be on the top 250.
10. The Sixth Sense
M. Night Shyamalan blew up with this massive hit in 1999. An R-rated thriller about a boy being haunted by ghosts, the twist ending became the talk of the town. Shyamalan got everybody with that little switcheroo. Except as time has gone on, the movie has revealed itself to be equipped with just that one thing. The twist is the only memorable element of it, and it actually doesn’t really work.
The movie cheats pretty massively to get this twist, as Bruce Willis goes throughout the movie doing things and interacting with people while apparently being a ghost the whole time. So the movie’s entire reputation is built upon a phony foundation.
The movie may have its charms and may still work for some, but to go out and place it in the running for one of the 250 greatest movies ever is nonsense. Especially since Shyamalan would immediately follow it up with a much better movie that doesn’t trip over itself to pull the rug out from under the audience.
9. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2
The Harry Potter franchise was a phenomenon in print and then became a once-in-a-lifetime phenomenon on screen. Making a movie a year to mimic the year long time frame of each book so we can see our actors grow up was an ingenious move, but a massive gamble. It paid off as these movies slayed at the box office.
Although a dirty little secret about these movies is they are average at best and never really captured what worked about those books, which is living with these characters for a good amount of time without rushing through the down time to get through the plot.
Not a single one of these movies should be put in the top 250. It’s absurd to even think so. Especially this one, the second half of a clear cut way to milk more money out of the series. It’s the ending of the franchise but it doesn’t land perfectly.
It hinges on a massive deus ex machina that just doesn’t make sense and continues the tradition of Harry being a massive dunce who lucks into everything. And then to end on that hilarious scene of them older with kids is such a dumb, fan servicey way to end things. The movie is fine, but it wasn’t even the best blockbuster the year it came out.
8. V for Vendetta
That this movie is even watchable is miracle. Kind of a Wachowski joint, it has the style and the action to make it watchable, but the story is pretty good too. They had to really narrow things down from Alan Moore’s book, yet they seemingly did it.
It’s got some great moments and some great acting. Yet as time goes on, the movie drifts from memory. Because as we think on it and the more we compare the book to the movie, the movie comes off as a much dumber, Hollywood version of the story that just misses some of the things that Moore was going for.
It doesn’t help that every 5th of November we gotta deal with every Bernie Bro-esque jerk who likens themselves to an Anonymous type revolutionary quoting this movie. So while the movie is definitely watchable, its grasp of its material is shaky at best and has left an annoying tase in our mouths with its fanbase.
7. Forrest Gump
The movie that snatched the best picture crown from “The Shawshank Redemption” and “Pulp Fiction,” this movie is maybe the ultimate dad movie.
Watching a simple man go through history, affecting the biggest moments in 20th century American history, while just waiting for the girl he loves to come back to him is an immensely watchable movie and tricks the near-retired into thinking it’s a masterpiece. But if you think about the movie for a bit, it kinda doesn’t have a lot to it.
It really is just scenes of Tom Hanks just existing while things happen and he keeps getting rewarded. There’s no real drama to anything. Not to mention the woman he loves is an absolute monster, a free love caricature who essentially rapes Forrest in college, disappears for years, comes back to have sex again, disappears, and then shows up while dying of AIDS to dump a child in his lap. None of this is romantic. It’s honestly horrifying and the movie treats it like a sweet romance.
Put together with the seeming theme of “don’t ever try or you will be punished like a character in the bible,” it’s kind of an ugly movie with the sheen only a technical master like Robert Zemeckis can put on it.
6. Interstellar
There is some real magic within this movie. Christopher Nolan, even at his weakest (stay tuned) is able to wring some genuine moments of cinematic magic. But what really hinders this movie is that he is too busy trying to be somebody else. Here he is trying to be Spielberg and it is not a touch that works with Nolan.
Nolan is a cold filmmaker, more interested in clockwork style technical achievements over genuine human emotions. He tried to reach those moments here and some of them worked, but mainly because of the wonderful work by Matthew McConaughey. It doesn’t help that the narrative at hand is such a big concept and is handled with his typical over-explaining, and the emotions get bogged down in science.
Especially by the end when we go into some fourth dimension time-hopping insanity that gets a little too expostion-y, which then goes into an epilogue that doesn’t match the thematic journey we had been following thus far. The movie is big and out of control, beautiful and messy. There’s some real joy to be had here and plenty of people can make the case for it. But top 250 material? Not really.