Flickchart or the cinematic equivalent of smokeable crack

Some people who must be geniuses (or just smart enough to realize the obvious) launched a Web site called Flickchart.

This is a problem.

I have been clicking on Flickchart, mindlessly, for the last six and a half hours. I’m not even lying. This thing is worse than hard drugs.

You log onto Flickchart, and the site presents you with two movies. You have to choose which is better. Then it gives you two more. Then two more. And so on, and so on and so on. Then you realize you’ve been doing it for six hours, your dogs are dead, your wife left you days ago and you’ve been fired from you job.

Flickchart advises you to choose the movie you like most, not the movie with the best reputation or accolades. You do it about 1,000 times and you’ll start to surprise yourself. Most of the time, when people ask me what my top five or top 10 movies are, I try and create a very deliberate list. I want a few prestige movies, a few foreign films, a comedy or two and then some unpretentious crowd-pleasers just to make sure they can’t pin me down.

And even if I’m right, this is still a little insufferable.

Flickchart will have none of it. If you tried really hard, you could probably fool it into thinking you were some sort of high-minded cinephile. But if you stick with it for a few hours, it breaks you down and honestly shows you what you like a fricking ton, what you don’t like and, inadvertently, what you tell yourself you like even though you don’t.

I meet or listen to several people each week who could use this sort of digital bitch slap. Case in point. After several hours, my Top 20 is as follows:

1. “Pulp Fiction” (What am I? A college sophomore?)
2. “That Thing You Do!” (I do not regret this.)
3. “Back to the Future Part II”
4. “Magnolia”
5. “There Will Be Blood”
6. “Annie Hall”
7. “Network”
8. “National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation” (This is the truth.)
9. “Eyes Wide Shut”
10. “Punch-Drunk Love”
11. “The Sandlot”
12. “The Fountain” (I don’t know how this happened.)
13. “Grindhouse”
14. “Atonement”
15. “The Professional”
16. “Finding Nemo”
17. “The Dark Knight” (I’ll go with this.)
18. “The Bourne Ultimatum” (Ugh…)
19. “Boogie Nights”
20. “Notting Hill” (… I have no problem with this either.)

Pretty fricking lame. It kind of proves no matter how much shit you’ve seen, everyone basically like the same crap.

Flickchart hasn’t offered me up a bunch of foreign movies, so those really aren’t factored into my rankings. But, according to the site’s runner, they’ll be linked up with Netflix soon, so all the movies you’ve seen and registered on Netflix with be instantly wired into the system.

The site’s in beta mode right now, so you have to sign up to be invited. It took me about two days to get an invite. So I’m a member now… or as long as I have a job and don’t have to pawn my computer to pay for cans of tomato paste or something because I’m addicted to this shit.