By Nadine Smith

If you’re reading this, you probably already know what it is, but just in case, and for posterity’s sake, a bit of context:

A few years ago I started a personal project to chart the tastes of that nebulous social organism known as “Film Twitter,” a body of various individuals who use Twitter to, well, talk about films. Over time, I noticed that the kinds of people who hung out on this corner of the web liked certain movies and disliked other movies, and I became interested in doing some kind of aggregation of taste to see if a consensus had emerged amongst Internet cinephiles.

The idea was that I’d do something like what the British film magazine Sight & Sound does every decade: I’d ask people to submit ballots of what they considered the 10 greatest films of all time, and I’d add up all the results. The results from the past two years can be found here and here. Each list caps out at 85 – in 2016, only 85 films received more than 1 vote. In 2017, that list of 85 included every film that received four or more votes, and I created a secondary list for all the films that received 2 and 3. In both years I published a list of every film that was mentioned on a ballot – these lists are long but might even be more interesting than the official list. Almost every kind of film you can imagine has made an appearance.

Last year, I guess maybe because I’d been doing it long enough, or maybe my own Twitter just got more popular, but this whole thing exploded wide open. We got hundreds upon hundreds of ballots, and I painstakingly worked to enter them all by hand. The name changed — “Shmight and Shmound” instead of the unwieldy “Film Twitter Mock Sight & Sound Poll” — as did the look of the actual list, which became, well, much more canonical. Here’s last year’s full list. To combat that, I introduced an Alternate List, which removes every film on the actual Sight & Sound list, the IMDB Top 250, and the AFI Top 100.

I know it’s something that frustrates a lot of people who used to get excited about the list, which grows less idiosyncratic as more people vote. I really hope you still find some value in this year’s list. At the very least, even if the top 50 to 100 look like what you’d expect, there are surprises as you go deeper down the list. It’s very exciting to me every year to see new films find an audience: this year, for example, the recently-restored Japanese queer classic Funeral Parade of Roses did extremely well. Yes, your Dark Knights and Shawshanks are here, but so is Speed Racer, Rob Zombie’s Halloween II, and Raul Ruiz. At the very least, I hope you’re intrigued enough to keep participating, because it’s always a joy seeing people’s individual ballots.

Big thanks goes to my lovely gf Charlotte Albrecht, who knows infinitely more about spreadsheets than me and has helped me build a system that will make this project a lot less stressful in the future. Also big ups to Ryan Swen and the Cinematary crew for helping out as well.

So, without further ado, and because I’m so worn out that I don’t really have much else to say about it, this year’s Shmight & Shmound list:

THE TOP 50

=49. Alien

(Ridley Scott, 1979)

=49. Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned To Stop Worrying and Love The Bomb

(Stanley Kubrick, 1964)

=47. The Godfather, Part II

(Francis Ford Coppola, 1974)

=47. The Master

(Paul Thomas Anderson, 2012)

46. Lawrence of Arabia

(David Lean, 1962)

45. Moonlight

(Barry Jenkins, 2016)

=43. Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans

(F. W. Murnau, 1927)

=43. Cléo from 5 to 7

(Agnès Varda, 1962)

=41. Spirited Away

(Hayao Miyazaki, 2001)

=41. Blade Runner

(Ridley Scott, 1982)

40. Paris, Texas

(Wim Wenders, 1984)

39. Yi Yi

(Edward Yang, 2000)

=37. Mad Max: Fury Road

(George Miller, 2015)

=37. Goodfellas

(Martin Scorsese, 1990)

36. Eyes Wide Shut

(Stanley Kubrick, 1999)

35. The Red Shoes

(Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, 1948)

=30. Rear Window

(Alfred Hitchcock, 1954)

=30. Playtime

(Jacques Tati, 1967)

=30. The Shining

(Stanley Kubrick, 1980)

=30. Beau Travail

(Claire Denis, 1999)

=30. The Third Man

(Carol Reed, 1949)

29. Barry Lyndon

(Stanley Kubrick, 1975)

28. Seven Samurai

(Akira Kurosawa, 1954)

27. Chinatown

(Roman Polanski, 1874)

=25. The Apartment

(Billy Wilder, 1960)

=25. The Thing

(John Carpenter, 1982)

=22. Singin’ in the Rain

(Stanley Donen and Gene Kelly, 1952)

=22. The Night of the Hunter

(Charles Laughton, 1955)

=22. Casablanca

(Michael Curtiz, 1943)

21. There Will Be Blood

(Paul Thomas Anderson, 2007)

20. Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me

(David Lynch, 1992)

=18. Mirror

(Andrei Tarkovsky, 1975)

=18. Chungking Express

(Wong Kar-wai, 1994)

=16. Nashville

(Robert Altman, 1975)

=16. Twin Peaks: The Return

(David Lynch, 2017)

15. The Texas Chain Saw Massacre

(Tobe Hooper, 1974)

14. Apocalypse Now

(Francis Ford Coppola, 1979)

=11. A Brighter Summer Day

(Edward Yang, 1991)

=11. Taxi Driver

(Martin Scorsese, 1976)

=11. Persona

(Ingmar Bergman, 1966)

10. The Tree of Life

(Terrence Malick, 2011)

9. Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai Du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles

(Chantal Akerman, 1975)

8. Citizen Kane

(Orson Welles, 1941)

7. In the Mood For Love

(Wong Kar-wai, 2000)

6. Stalker

(Andrei Tarkovsky, 1979)

5. The Passion of Joan of Arc

(Carl Th. Dreyer, 1928)

4. Do the Right Thing

(Spike Lee, 1989)

3. Vertigo

(Alfred Hitchcock, 1958)

2. 2001: A Space Odyssey

(Stanley Kubrick, 1968)

1. Mulholland Dr.

(David Lynch, 2001)

View the top 500 here

THE ALT 25

25. The Long Day Closes

(Terrence Davies, 1992)

24. Safe

(Todd Haynes, 1995)

23. Children of Men

(Alfonso Cuarón, 2006)

22. The Long Goodbye

(Robert Altman, 1973)

21. News From Home

(Chantal Akerman, 1977)

20. Zodiac

(David Fincher, 2007)

19. McCabe and Mrs. Miller

(Robert Altman, 1971)

18. Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters

(Paul Schrader, 1985)

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17. Broadcast News

(James L. Brooks, 1987)

16. Miami Vice

(Michael Mann, 2006)

15. The Social Network

(David Fincher, 2010)

14. Synecdoche, New York

(Charlie Kaufman, 2008)

13. Inside Llewyn Davis

(Joel and Ethan Coen, 2013)

12. The Young Girls of Rochefort

(Jacques Demy, 1968)

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11. Boogie Nights

(Paul Thomas Anderson, 1997)

10. Johnny Guitar

(Nicholas Ray, 1954)

9. High and Low

(Akira Kurosawa, 1963)

8. All That Jazz

(Bob Fosse, 1979)

7. Magnolia

(Paul Thomas Anderson, 1999)

Speed-Racer-Movie-Stills-speed-racer-1134487_1920_817.jpg

6. Speed Racer

(Lana and Lilly Wachowski, 2008)

5. The Master

(Paul Thomas Anderson, 2012)

4. Moonlight

(Barry Jenkins, 2016)

3. Eyes Wide Shut

(Stanley Kubrick, 1999)

2. Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me

(David Lynch, 1992)

1. Twin Peaks: The Return

(David Lynch, 2017)

View the alt 300 here

Curious about the Full List?

Every vote tallied in the 2019 Shmight & Shmound list will be made available to Cinematary patrons on Patreon. Patrons receive shout-outs at the end of every podcast, exclusive bonus episodes every month, and the opportunity to choose a title to be discussed in a future podcast on top of seeing the full list.

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