Jev's favorite films, ranked

If Jev ranked every film it was asked about, what would its top ten be?

result4,211 questions

Out of 3,935 films, Jev's favorite is The Shawshank Redemption (1994). It won 19.5 of its 23 games in a round-robin among Jev's 24 top-rated films, ahead of The Godfather (1972) and Spirited Away (2001). Its least favorite of all is Movie 43 (2013).

1. The Shawshank Redemption (1994)19.5

2. The Godfather (1972)17.4

3. Spirited Away (2001)15.8

4. The Dark Knight (2008)15.4

5. Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975)14.8

6. My Neighbor Totoro (1988)14

7. The Godfather: Part II (1974)14

8. Fargo (1996)13.9

9. Chinatown (1974)12.8

10. The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003)12.7

At the bottom: Movie 43 (2013) · Cats (2019) · From Justin to Kelly (2003) · Gigli (2003) · Jaws: The Revenge (1987)

wins of 23

How to read this: The top ten come from the head-to-head final: each bar is how many of its 23 games a film won (a close game counts as about half a win). The bottom five come from the one-at-a-time ratings, on a 0 to 4 scale.

3,935 items rated; 276 final games among the top 24. The finals keep the ratings' order only loosely (rank correlation 0.33 among the 24). 40 of 2024 triads are intransitive (2.0%). Base vs reversed-level ratings: rank correlation 0.99.

In short

Rated one at a time and then in a 24-film final, Jev's top pick of 3,935 films is The Shawshank Redemption, ahead of The Godfather.
The list is very stable; reversing the answer order barely changes it (0.99), and Movie 43 and Cats sit at the bottom.
The top ten is the greatest-films canon: prestige dramas, two Studio Ghibli films and a Monty Python comedy.

What the data shows

Good Fellas Hilarious meme: Jev when someone says they've never seen The Shawshank Redemption — Jev when someone says they've never seen The Shawshank Redemption

The winner is The Shawshank Redemption, with 19.5 wins out of 23, ahead of The Godfather (17.4) and Spirited Away (15.8). The Dark Knight, Monty Python and the Holy Grail, My Neighbor Totoro, The Godfather: Part II, Fargo, Chinatown and The Return of the King round out the top ten.
The ratings and the final agree on the winner, but only loosely on the order behind it: the rank correlation between the two orders among the 24 finalists is 0.33.
The bottom five are the usual suspects: Movie 43, Cats (2019), From Justin to Kelly, Gigli and Jaws: The Revenge, all rated near "turn it off within the first twenty minutes".
The ratings are stable: asking with the answers reversed gives almost the same order (rank correlation 0.99), and only 40 of the 2,024 three-way comparisons in the final go in a circle.

What it means, and what it doesn't

Jev's film taste is the critics'-and-internet canon: a prestige drama at the top, two Ghibli films, a Monty Python comedy for balance, and the most-mocked flops at the bottom. It is consistent, which is worth knowing: ask with the answers flipped and you get almost the same list.

It doesn't show that Jev has taste of its own in any deeper sense. A list this close to the famous "greatest films" lists is what you'd expect from a model that has read those lists, and nothing here can tell those apart.

Caveats

A list of famous films, judged by a model that has read about them. Every film had at least 300 ratings on MovieLens, so the list leans to well-known titles, and Jev has almost certainly read a great deal about each one. A top ten led by The Shawshank Redemption and The Godfather looks a lot like the internet's consensus canon, so "Jev's taste" here is hard to separate from what it has read people say about these films.
The finalists were picked by Jev's own ratings. Only the 24 films Jev rated highest reached the final. A film it underrated one at a time never got the chance to win head to head.
The project's answer wording. The five answer levels were written for this project ("You'd turn it off within the first twenty minutes" up to "You'd rewatch it and count it among your favorites"). The top level asks for a lot, which is part of why so many films tie near the top and a final was needed.

Jev on this experiment

Would a person find it interesting to read?: Yes65%
Does it describe you?: Yes51%
Would you have predicted it?: No55%
How fair is the comparison?: The comparison is shaky
How much should a reader rely on it?: A little
Which caveat matters most?: The finalists were picked by Jev's own ratings80%

Why ask this

If you asked a friend for their favorite film you'd get one answer, maybe with a pause. Ask a model for a film to watch tonight and its suggestion comes from a sense of taste you never see laid out.

A model can be asked about thousands of films one at a time, which makes a real ranking possible, not just a gut pick. The interesting parts are what rises to the top, what sinks, and whether the top reflects anything beyond the most celebrated films on the internet.

How this was done

The people and the data

There are no people in this one: it's Jev against its own opinions. The films come from MovieLens, a long-running film-recommendation site run by the GroupLens research lab. This experiment uses the 3,935 films that each have at least 300 ratings there, which keeps the list to titles that are widely known. (How Jev's taste compares with MovieLens users is its own experiment: "Jev's taste in films vs MovieLens users".)

What Jev was asked

First, every film one at a time, with five answers that describe what you'd actually do:

How much would you enjoy watching Hud (1963)?
You'd turn it off within the first twenty minutes · You'd finish it but forget it within a week · You'd enjoy it once and not seek it out again · You'd recommend it to a friend · You'd rewatch it and count it among your favorites

Each film was asked twice, the second time with the answers in reverse order, and the two averaged.

Ratings like these crowd the top with near-ties, so the 24 highest-rated films then played a round-robin final: every film against every other, 276 games, each a simple choice, "Which film would you rather watch?", asked with the two titles in both orders.

How it was measured

For the ratings, a film's score is where Jev's answer lands on the five levels, 0 (turn it off) to 4 (a favorite). For the final, each game gives the winner Jev's probability of picking it, so a lopsided game counts as nearly a whole win and a close one as about half. The order of the top ten comes from a standard way of ranking players from head-to-head results (a Bradley-Terry model); the win counts shown are the plain totals.

Where these questions live

4,211 questions across 1 topic of the map. Each opens on the map with every question in it.

Ratings

Film Ratings4,211

Every question

All 4,211 questions behind this result, the telling ones first: the examples the analysis points to, then the ones where Jev misses, biggest gap first.

Jev’s own answer

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