Using data from three major movie websites we try to analyse how good the films have been during the first quarter of 2011.
To begin with we entered every film listed on the Wikipedia entry for 2011 in film, which means every film that has got a US release from January 1st to March 31st.
Then we checked out what score each film got on the two major review sites Metacritic and Rotten Tomatoes.
To balance out critical opinion with the views of the wider cinema-going audience we also added the IMDb user rating and then combined all these scores to give each film a mark out of 100.
We had five bands which correspond to each score, marked Excellent (100-80), Good (80-60), Average (60-40), Bad (40-20) and Awful (20-0).
So, after entering all this data into a spreadsheet we came up with an average score for each film and then arranged them in ascending order:
You can download a larger version of this graphic here.
The general picture seems to be that average films rule the roost (47%) and that good ones (25%) just about outweigh the bad (20%), three films were deemed excellent (8%) and there were no awful films.
A few points that struck me looking at the data:
- With Fox Searchlight behind it, Win Win could be an early awards season contender
- Jane Eyre seems to have an impressive amount of critical and user support for a period piece
- Sucker Punch was reviled by the critics but has a lot more IMDb love, which suggests a younger audience dug it more
- The Dilemma is something of an embarrassment for a major studio comedy with (relatively) well known actors.
- It doesn’t look like there will be a Big Momma’s House 4
On a personal note I would say that Win Win and Cave of Forgotten Dreams (soon to be released in the US) are my two favourite films of the year so far.
N.B. A few notes on the data.
We used US release dates as it was a mess trying to track 2010 releases that got a UK release in 2011 (e.g. The King’s Speech, 127 Hours).
Also, the numbers were compiled a week ago, so the Rotten Tomatoes percentages may have slightly altered since then, plus a few films (Anuvahood, Chalet Girl, The Heart Specialist and The 5th Quarter) were left out because they didn’t have full scores on all three sites.
Barney’s Version and The Way Back presented a problem because although they are technically 2010 films, they only had very limited runs to qualify for the awards season so in the end we treated them as 2011 releases.
> 2011 in Film at Wikipedia
> US box office stats for 2011
> UK cinema releases for 2011