You’ve still got a little while to go until I unveil my top ten movies of the year, but here’s something to hold you over: IMBd’s Top 10 Films and Stars. The results aren’t generated by critical reception or box office numbers, rather by searches for the stars and user ratings for the films. So, now for the winners.
It should come as no surprise that top star of 2010 is Johnny Depp. Not only did he star in one of the year’s highest earners, Alice in Wonderland, but he’s just one of the most famous guys out there regardless. Twilight fans managed to snag the second and third spots for Bella Swan and Edward Cullen, Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson, but couldn’t secure a spot in the top ten for Taylor Lautner.
The next three positions all went to gentlemen who would likely make the cut regardless of their body of work for the year, however, Inception and Shutter Island likely had something to do with Leonardo DiCaprio’s fourth place finish, leaving Brad Pitt and Robert Downey Jr. in the fifth and sixth positions respectively. The seventh spot goes to a man who’s likely gearing up for a busy awards season, The Fighter’s Christian Bale, while the eighth belongs to an actor that has a 0% chance of ever nabbing a statue if he keeps delivering films like The Bounty Hunter, Gerard Butler.
The list wraps up with two ladies who’ve certainly attracted a lot of attention the past two years, Megan Fox, well, for being Megan Fox and Zoe Saldana for her roles in a handful of 2010 films – Death at a Funeral, The Losers and Takers.
Now, the top ten movie list is a different story because it isn’t generated by just popping the film’s name into the search box, but by how much the users actually liked the film. Despite being endlessly confusing and leaving viewers with an ambiguous ending, Inception earned the title of IMDb’s top user-rated film of the year. Following right behind is the much-beloved Toy Story 3 and the Oscar-bound The Social Network.
Animated films have quite a presence on the list this year because How to Train Your Dragon and Tangled took the fourth and fifth spots. Kick-Ass finally gets the love it deserves here, coming in at #6 followed by Shutter Island at #7. Likely thanks to adoring fans and the fact that the film was pretty damn good, the eighth position went to Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part I. Another underappreciated movie finds itself in the ninth spot, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, while Ben Affleck’s The Town rounds out the list.
While box office numbers may not always correlate with a film’s critical reception, this IMDb list actually does. The lowest rated film on this list, Shutter Island, comes in at a 68% on the Tomatometer. Other than that, every single production on this list came in with a 76% or higher. It’s quite nice to see this list correlate so closely with the best of the Tomatometer because if it matched the list of the highest earners of the year, it’d be Alice in Wonderland, Shrek Forever After and The Twilight Saga: Eclipse stealing the notoriety from far superior films. Even better? The admirable selections don’t end there. IMDb has a list 25 films long on their site and just about every single one is worthy of the honor.
By Perri Nemiroff
