If you haven’t seen this film yet, it’s about time you did – after all, it’s the best film of all time according to audiences! So why not consider it for your streaming selection tonight?
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The Internet Movie Database (IMDb) is still the largest film database in the world – including most of the film ratings from viewers. And because the ratings are quite representative, at least for classics and mainstream films, due to the sheer number of participants, the same puzzle has been posed again and again for many years now – why the hell is the prison drama “The Convicts“ with Tim Robbins and Morgan Freeman is number 1 in the list of the best films of all time?
Sure, the Stephen King adaptation by Frank Darabont (“The Mist”) is damn good and very touching. But the best film of all time? I have never seen a critic’s top list that lists “The Shawshank Redemption” as the best film of all time! But be that as it may: If you are one of the few who don’t know the film despite its reputation fueled by IMDb – you can now stream it directly on Amazon Video:
“The Shawshank Redemption” on Amazon*
A theory on IMDb position
The average rating on the IMDb (“The Shawshank Redemption” is one of only two films in the top 100 with a 9.2 out of 10) is not a simple average, but is the result of a more complicated algorithm in which the number of ratings plays a major role. The IMDb grew in the 90s – at the time when “The Shawshank Redemption” came to cinemas and was even more widely available on video and TV premieres shortly afterwards. This is how “The Shawshank Redemption” came to the top of the list.
But The fact that the film has stayed there all these years is also due to the fact that it is not so easy to lose that position once you have it. After all, being the “best film of all time” is a pretty prominent position – that means that pretty much everyone who logs onto IMDb will come across “The Shawshank Redemption” and give it a rating, whereas otherwise you might not necessarily give every film you’ve ever seen a star rating. So there is a constant influx of further ratings – and because the sheer number of ratings is also included in the algorithm, it is now very difficult, even statistically speaking, to push it off the top spot.
But whether it’s the “best film” or not, we can still recommend “The Shawshank Redemption” because we also gave it a very good rating of 4.5 out of 5 stars.
The rest of the top 10
For those of you who are interested, here is the rest of the top 10 (as of December 2023) – and there are some overlaps with the typical all-time top ten lists of film critics:
So “The Return of the King” is better than “The Fellowship of the Ring”? Well, there’s no accounting for taste…
The 100 best films of all time: The ultimate FILMSTARTS list
This is a re-publication of an article already published on FILMSTARTS in view of the imminent disappearance of Netflix.
*The link to the Amazon offer is a so-called affiliate link. If you make a purchase via this link, we receive a commission.
