For whatever reason, The Hollywood Reporter decided to make a slideshow gallery out of Netflix’s current top 10 most rented movies and for whatever reason I decided to click through the list instead of just viewing the Netflix page with the complete list. The list, as it turns out is quite fascinating with Crash still ranked near the top, which it has been ever since winning the Best Picture Oscar back in 2006. The question… Why?
Sure, The Bucket List is also confusing, but that one doesn’t baffle me quite as much since my father (who never, ever, ever, ever watches movies) asked me about that one about 10 times when it came out back in 2007. But Crash? Sure, it won a Best Picture Oscar as did The Hurt Locker, The Departed and No Country for Old Men, but once you’ve seen Crash is there a reason you’d want to see it again and is there a reason you’d recommend it to someone?
Maybe it’s just because I never really took to the Best Picture winner, but the only movie with the word “crash” in it that I truly enjoyed from 2005 was Wedding Crashers.
Then again, looking over the complete top ten films is a bit of a crazy potpourri. I can understand Sherlock Holmes, Inception and Iron Man, but it shocks me to see The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and The Hurt Locker still ranked so high. I’m happy to see the top ten isn’t filled with movies like Norbit, Paul Blart and Grown-Ups, but it’s still initially surprising to look at the wide range of titles.
I’ve included the top twenty below and you can check out the full list here. Surprised or does this seem about right to you?
- The Blind Side
- Crash
- The Bucket List
- The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
- The Hurt Locker
- The Departed
- Sherlock Holmes
- Inception
- Iron Man
- No Country for Old Men
- Date Night
- Up in the Air
- Gran Torino
- The Proposal
- Slumdog Millionaire
- The Pursuit of Happyness
- Avatar
- Inglourious Basterds
- Blood Diamond
- The Social Network
After Slumdog Millionaire at #15, the only Best Picture winners in the top 100 are The King’s Speech (#41) and Million Dollar Baby (#90) and every online fanboy’s favorite, The Dark Knight, doesn’t come in until #30, right behind Twilight.
I have to assume the films omitted also suggest how many people bought certain movies as opposed to rent them. For example, Up is the only Pixar film in the top 100. None of the Lord of the Rings films are on there or any of the Star Wars or Godfather films. I haven’t looked close enough, but I wonder if there’s also a correlation with the DVD boom and the films not on the list.
Thinking about it more clearly, Crash may be on there because the audience for that film is less likely to buy the DVD and other recent titles such as Inception, Iron Man, Avatar, Inglourious Basterds and The Social Network may suggest people are finally deciding it’s easy enough to rent a DVD or Blu-ray rather than spending upwards of $35 to buy one. Now that I think about it, the list begins to make a lot of sense…
