Been meaning to post this for a while, but things kept coming up: Last month, during our trip back East to marry Joey Jerusalem and Jessie Napoli (and also our first visit to Dr. Needles, who was profiled on ABC news here) Jason Kottke posted this tasty bit about the Netflix prize and how some of the folks who have entered it in an attempt to make Netflix recommend better movies to me and you win a million dollars took the data and began delineating some interesting bits of information.

First, a user found that the Top Five most frequently rated movies on Netflix are:

• Miss Congeniality
• Independence Day
• The Patriot
• The Day After Tomorrow
• Pirates of the Caribbean

A second user couldn’t believe that Miss Congeniality was at the top of the list so he set out in a search for truth and to test out his hypothesis that it was rented often but “universally hated by anyone with a clue.” He found that the top 25 most hated movies on Netflix are:

• The Stepford Wives
• Gigli
• Full Frontal
• Solaris
• Birth
• Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow
• Hollow Man
• Battlefield Earth
• In the Cut
• One Hour Photo
• House of the Dead
• The Ladykillers
• Alexander: Director’s Cut
• Starsky & Hutch
• The Real Cancun
• Wild Wild West
• Open Water
• Phone Booth
• Intolerable Cruelty
• Envy
• Le Divorce
• The Big Bounce
• Alfie
• Hulk
• Look Who’s Talking Now

My Anaylsis: Wow, that’s unexpected. Steven Soderbergh, with his two films on the most universally hated list, is now officially America’s Most Universally Hated Filmmaker^TM.

Miss Congeniality was #195 on the list. The programmer then produced a most loved query which resulted in: (the different versions of LoTR came up a few times so I deleted recurrances)

• The Shawshank Redemption: Special Edition
• Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King
• The Green Mile
• Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers
• Finding Nemo (Widescreen)
• Raiders of the Lost Ark
• Forrest Gump
• Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring
• The Sixth Sense
• Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
• Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl
• The Godfather
• Shrek (Full-screen)
• The Incredibles
• The Silence of the Lambs
• Monsters, Inc.
• Star Wars: Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back
• Schindler’s List
• Saving Private Ryan
• Gladiator
• Braveheart
• The Usual Suspects

Analysis: There is a qualitative difference between the full-screen and wide screen editions of Shrek and if you consider the “LoTR” trilogy as one film and disqualify Steven Spielberg and George Lucas for being obvious, then Frank Darabont is America’s Most Loved Filmmaker^TM.

Miss Congeniality was #171 on the list which troubled our fearless programmer. How can a movie he so hated be ranked similarly in both the most loved and most hated lists?Â

To find out, he produced a list representing the most polarizing movies (with my thoughts in parenthesis):

• The Royal Tenenbaums (loved it)
• Lost in Translation (lukewarm)
• Pearl Harbor (my Bruckheimer oeuvre crush is forcing me to say that I liked it)
• Miss Congeniality (harmless fun)
• Napoleon Dynamite (fell asleep)
• Fahrenheit 9/11 (liked it)
• The Patriot (The real “independence day”)
• The Day After Tomorrow (the only movie I’ve ever seen in Canada)
• Sister Act (My dad loves this one)
• Armageddon (loved it)
• Kill Bill: Vol. 1 (hated it)
• Independence Day (I screamed, “kill that motherfucker” in the theaters when the alien in the lab came to life)
• Sweet Home Alabama (never saw, but Mary Milan has a great story about it)
• Titanic (feh. Mary Milan TiVo’d it the other night)
• Gone in 60 Seconds (Again, my Bruckheimer crush. Seriously, I don’t know how this movie can inspire great love or great hate)
• Twister (While sitting through this movie, all I could think of was, “Man, I wish I was watching The Rock.”)
• Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy (didn’t like it)
• Con Air (yeah, I’ve seen it a couple times)
• The Fast and the Furious (Mary Milan thinks Paul Walker is hot)
• Dirty Dancing (if Dirty Dancing is what we have to live with to have Road House, I can handle it)
• Troy (hated it)
• Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (it’s on the queue)
• The Passion of the Christ (dude, we know how it ends already)
• How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days (disappointing)
• Pretty Woman (my mom liked it)

Anaysis: Close readers will note that Jerry Bruckheimer takes the title as America’s Most Polarizing Filmmaker^TM by beating the Devlin/Emmerich producing team’s output of three (who had already taken home the title of America’s Most Rated Filmmakers^TM and Mel Gibson’s two (I’m counting The Patriot as his too).

Any of your favorites on the hated list? Any hated ones on the loved list?

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