What was the best year for movies?
Some years produce a fine wine of great movies, others… Sour grapes. Let’s take a look at the IMDb.com top 250 movies and see which years had the most movies make the cut.
The first thing that sticks out to me is the recency bias. Every year since 2009 has at least 6 movies in the top 250, with the exception of 2011 with only 5. But it may not be solely due to recency bias. Another factor is that there are simply more movies released today than in the past, especially when you factor in all of the streaming services.
Plus, there’s an argument to be made that creatives (writers/directors/actors) are simply getting better at making movies. If instead we were talking about life-saving drug therapies no one would be shocked that there are more discoveries today than 20+ years ago simply because of advancements in technology, funding, etc. The same could be said for cinema.
Standouts
There are a few years that stand out in the chart above. For instance, 1957 was the first year to have more than 3 top 250 movies. Listed in order of ranking those would be:
