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Comment by leejoramo | Hacker News Reader

At first I thought this was an awful list, but then I filtered it by date up to 1995 and I felt that the list made a lot more sense. Is this an issue that it takes 15 to 20 years to get settle on what is truly worthy? Or is it an issue with the dawning of the Internet Age?

There are plenty of films made after 1995 that I think are highly deserving. But in 20 years from now, will we look and say Return of the King out ranks Star Wars? Or The Avengers is better than 12 Angry Men? (The Avengers was decent popcorn fun, but what was the plot?)

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"At first I thought this was an awful list, but then I filtered it by date up to 1995 and I felt that the list made a lot more sense. Is this an issue that it takes 15 to 20 years to get settle on what is truly worthy? Or is it an issue with the dawning of the Internet Age?"

I remember seeing the same thing on IMDB years back, where contemporary movies will appear very high on the list and disappear.

If you read the reviews (and I think IMDB lets you filter by demographics, or used to) you'll see that it's mostly young kids and idiots voting summer blockbusters as "10/10 OMG best movie evar!".

Not sure if there is a solution as it's always been the same way, there's always some hot new art, book, technology, etc. that's "GROUNDBREAKING" "CLASSIC" "AMAZING" that fades away quickly and the items that stick around for posterity aren't necessarily the ones that you'd predict (eg. Moby Dick and The Great Gatsby were initially flops on publication).

Good point, a 10+ year cooling off period would definitely help.

Which is how the National Film Registry here in the States operates https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Film_Registry

"The National Film Registry is the United States National Film Preservation Board's selection of films for preservation in the Library of Congress."

"The National Film Registry names to its list up to 25 'culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant films' each year, showcasing the range and diversity of American film heritage to increase awareness for its preservation.... To be eligible for inclusion, a film must be at least ten years old."

The scoring system needs to be bell-curve weighted by the release date of the movie.

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