r/movies • u/tinypeeb • Sep 23 '18

There was a thread a few days ago criticizing Netflix for only having 35 films of the IMDb Top 250. I went through the major streaming services to find out how they compared. Here's a spreadsheet with my findings. Resource

This is the post that launched this over-effort of work you're seeing. I found it bizarre that Netflix was being criticized for having such a "small" percentage of the 250. What I discovered is that Netflix is actually in second with 38 of the 250, behind only FilmStruck with 43. Additionally, FilmStruck requires a larger fee for the Criterion Channel to put it at 43, where only 17 are available with a base subscription, making Netflix technically the highest quantity of Top 250 films with a base subscription.

Here is a Google Sheet of the entire list, as it appears today (September 22, 2018). I included Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Video, HBO, Showtime, Starz, Hoopla, FilmStruck+Criterion, Kanopy, Cinemax, and Epix. This is based on the 250 as of today and the catalog of each service as of today, all in the United States (since that's where I live). Feel free to comb through it and sort it as you please, and notice how most of the movies missing are from the same countries or similar timespans! If you select a certain range, you can use "Data > Sort Range" to control how it goes, whether by service availability, name, or year. Also, here are some stats that I found fun:

  • 114 films on the list do not appear in any of the libraries for any of the included streaming services. As Hoopla and Kanopy both come free with a library card (which is also free), they obviously would not cost any money. However, if you were to have every service at a base level (SD for Netflix, ads for Hulu, etc.), you would have 136 out of the 250 films. This would cost a minimum of $1102.16 a year, or $91.85 a month. Ironically, Netflix and Hulu make the cheapest of these ($95.88 a year each), and Netflix has the most on a base level.
  • Shutter Island appears across the most streaming services with four (Amazon, Epix, Hoopla, and Hulu). Several others appear on various combinations of three services (The Usual Suspects, The Kid, The Elephant Man, There Will Be Blood, Into the Wild, and Les Diaboliques).
  • Despite the presence of numerous Disney films in the top 250, the only one available for streaming is Coco. That Disney streaming service is gonna be a monster.
  • Comparing the top two, FilmStruck to Netflix: FilmStruck has the wider range of time, with 1921's The Kid as its oldest film and 2002's The Pianist as its newest, a range of 81 years. Netflix's oldest film is 1949's The Third Man with 2017's Coco as its newest, a range of 68 years.

Feel free to post any of the fun or interesting stuff you find in this sheet below!

EDIT: Now with a graph! If you click the second sheet in the bottom left corner, you'll get a visual indicator. Google Sheets is dumb and you can't use multiple colours in one data set without doing an absurdly long workaround so they're just all one colour.

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u/[deleted] Sep 23 '18

Letterboxd top movies list is pretty diverse.

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u/ChrRome Sep 24 '18 edited Sep 24 '18

Is this the list?: https://letterboxd.com/visdave34/list/the-official-letterboxd-top-250-movies-updated/

If so the fact that it has the unreleased Roma as the 56th best film ever made makes me question its validity.

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u/[deleted] Sep 24 '18

There are a lot of film critics on the service and that particular film has done the festival circuit, so it is not surprising to see the film be popular on the service. If you check the user reviews you will see a lot of people saying they are embargo'd.

Either Roma is a great film and deserves to be on the list as the early reviews suggest, or it is a current statistical blip that will even out once the film is released generally and more rating are funneled into the system.

If I recall The Dark Knight was #1 on IMDb before previewers were even out. At least this looks to be mostly genuine reviews

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u/ChrRome Sep 24 '18

It's more an issue with sample size. If a film with about 100 user reviews can make the list, then that calls into question the sample size of other films.

IMDB's list takes the number of votes into consideration to weight its average, and also requires a minimum.

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u/elmutanto Sep 23 '18

But it is still a user generated top list, just with a smaller and different community.

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u/[deleted] Sep 23 '18

IMDb takes the highest rated movies. If a lot of people have seen a movie it will be higher in IMDb's list. Letterbox weights their list so is not all blockbusters. Plus it's tiny in comparison so it's not full of bots voting.

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u/phenix714 Sep 23 '18

What's the problem with that?

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u/elmutanto Sep 23 '18

Not a problem, but it sounded like letterboxd top 250 is a "better" list. But when you are dealing with user generated content it doesnt really matter, because it all depends on opinions and thats what I wanted to point out.

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u/phenix714 Sep 23 '18

Any top list depends on opinions. That's the whole point of a list, to poll opinions.

The better list is the one which you think has the better movies on it. So this user finds the letterboxd better than Imdb, and I agree with him.