What is Flickchart ?

Flickchart is a website that lets you rank movies to create your own personal list of favorites by using the Flickchart matchup system : their pairing system shows you two movies, and you decide which of the two you prefer (for any particular reason). If you haven’t seen one of them, just skip it and the system will choose a new one.

Everything starts with the most popular movies, then the more you’re ranking, the more obscure movies the system will show you. Their rating system is pretty simple compared to others which use some sort of point value – stars, a 1 to 10 scale, percentages, or even tomatoes. The goal ? Find out what really are the “Best Movies Of All Time”.

My review

You know (or maybe not) that I’m a huge movie (and TV show) lover. So I couldn’t resist Flickchart’s calling. First, the interface : it’s quite pleasant. A central panel is showing you the posters of the 2 movies which are in competition. Just choose your favorite by clicking on it or, if you haven’t seen it, discard it using the button below and a new one will be chosen. I had no particular problem at that point except sometimes  slow response time – I had to wait around 10s – especially when I discard a movie. A trailer can be seen (in a nice pop-up window ) by clicking the proper icon. You can also send a comment on the current matchup or start a discussion with other users. You have the option to rate amongst all movies, the ones in theaters, by year or by decade. I should not forget to mention that on the left is Your Top 20 Of All Time !

If you’re searching for a specific movie, you will get some information (not as detailed as IMDB), some statistics, his global ranking, the trailer (if available) and cool stuff from this movie available on eBay. The most interesting thing here is the ranking history but I think that if a user could add some comments on the movie itself and not only on a matchup could give a plus to this section. And maybe a “best quotes in this movie” ?

The discussion panel is showing the top ten ones with the last comment. You have to click on the number comments to read them and agree or disagree. Nothing special here – I haven’t use it yet – but where this fan number comes from ?

The charts let you have a look at “The Best Movies Of All-Time”, “The Worst Movies Of All-Time”  and  “Movies Currently In Theaters”. It could be nice to be able to generate some other statistics, like a ranking/chart by director, actor, genre (sci-fi, drama…) … to see if there’s any trend.

Finally your profile is showing your favorite movies, the one you haven’t seen and your last posts in the discussions.

My feelings on Flickchart : after the first few votes, you will see that your Top 20 doesn’t really match your opinions. Give it some time, the more you’re rating, the more accurate it will be : I think that more than  one hundred ratings are necessary. It’s quite fun to see those matchup generated (sometimes it’s quite hard to decide), but it became also a bit monotonous after a while. So don’t stay on it for too long, instead go back to it regulary. I think the social part could be greatly enhanced : you should be able to compare your taste with your friends, send direct message (is it possible ?) or even suggest your own matchups. What about some gadgets to display on our websites too ? An API maybe (it’s my coder side which is talking now…) ? And I think that some performance tuning could help before opening it to the public.

Conclusion : I would recommand to any movie lover to give a try to Flickchart : nice interface, lots of fun with their matchup system, very promising !

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