Flickchart is Crack for Movie Geeks

Back in the '90's I used to come up with embarrassingly nerdy ideas, like when my buddy and I tried to create a computer program to track what CDs we were listening to and chart our musical tastes and which would give us a kind of personal Top 20. While at the time it was super lame, it looks like society has finally caught up with my geekyness. What I'm saying is, I basically invented iTunes and am waiting for my big check to come in the mail. Another great nerdy idea that is catching on is the website Flickchart, which is designed for movie geeks with OCD.



The basic idea of Flickchart is very simple, it presents you with a series of choices between pairs of movies. You can either pick one over the other, or indicate that you haven't seen one or both of them, in which case it presents you with different choices. Rinse and repeat. The website keeps track of your selections and compiles a master list, which becomes refined as you rank more movies. The opposite is also true, if you don't rank a lot of movies, your list will probably not accurately reflect your tastes.

Sometimes the choices are obvious. Problem Child vs. No Country For Old Men? Easy. The Dark Knight vs. Iron Man? Harder. Alien vs. Aliens? Yikes. Some pairings present you with cases of Apples and Oranges that make your head spin. Crash vs. Blades of Glory. I loathe Crash but can appreciate that in most ways it is better than the silly Will Farell ice skating comedy. For me, it usually comes down to which movie I would rather watch at that moment. Blades of Glory, flawless victory!

Not perfect, but close.

Flickchart also allows you to filter movies by genre, date, actor, and director. Want to know what your all time favorite Horror movie is? Filter your list for Horror movies. Curious to see which Arnold Schwarzenegger movie ranks highest on your list? Or what your top movies of 2010 are to date?

No disrespect meant to fans of Eraser.

The site also allows features some limited social utilities. You can friend people and comment on their lists or choices. Flickchart also allows you to export your Top 5's to Facebook. If your favorite movie is an obscure, oddball choice you can look on that movie's profile and see who else ranked it at number 1. Thanks to Flickchart, two people who's favorite movie is UHF will be able to find each other and possibly breed.

There's someone out there for you, Accordion27.

If you haven't already, check it out. There's no charge to sign up but keep two things in mind: Flickchart is incredibly addictive, and to best appreciate it, you should probably have seen a lot of movies. As an added bonus, the site features a lot of obscure and foreign movie posters, some of which are incredibly weird. If nothing else, it can be a great little time-wasting activity while you are on the go. You don't actually have to spend hours ranking movies. But you probably will.