Frequently Asked Questions

What is Flickchart?

Flickchart is a website that lets you:

  • rank movies to create your own personal chart of favorites by using the Flickchart matchup system
  • become part of the Flickchart community and help decide what the "Best Films Of All Time" really are
  • take part in discussions about particular pairs of movies
    (who doesn't like to debate whether Star Wars is better than Star Trek?)
  • view movie information, and its ranking statistics on Flickchart
  • invite friends and make new ones that you can compare your taste in movies with
    (Someone out there must share your love for Gigli?)
  • view the definitive best-of charts that break down the top movies by popular choice, years, decades, genres, actors, directors, studios, & franchises

How does Flickchart work?

Our pairing system shows you two movies, and you decide which of the two you prefer - whether it be the story, the cinematography, the director, a favorite line by your favorite actor, or any other traits you may find that qualify it as the better film. If you haven't seen one, or both, of the films, you use the designated buttons to let us know you haven't seen them.

You can't decide which movie you like better if you haven't seen one of them, right?

What happens if I mark a movie as unseen, but I want to rank it in the future?

On your profile you'll see a chart of your Top 10 "Haven't Seen" movies (ranked by order of preference as ranked by all of Flickchart's users) where you can click any of the titles to go to that particular movie's information page and add it to your Flickchart via the "Add To My Flickchart" button. You can also search for any movie at the top right of any page, or by clicking a movie's name on your Top 20 in the left-hand column while ranking, or on a movie's title on any of the charts.

How does the movie ranking work?

When you first create your account, Flickchart shows you the most popular movies. As you continue to rank more films, Flickchart will gradually add in more obscure movies to show you. We also give your rankings a point value that increases the more you rank - so someone with only 75 movies ranked will have significantly less influence on the global charts than someone with 1000 movies ranked.

Why is there no "skip" button?

Skipping goes against our core belief that you must choose, no matter what. Part of the fun of Flickchart is that we want you to search within yourself to find the answer - every time. Try asking yourself, "Which movie would I rather watch again right now?", or "If I could only watch one of these for the rest of my life, which movie would I choose?"

How do I remove movies from my Top 20 that don't belong?

While you're ranking, you can click a movie's title from your Top 20 in the left-hand column, and it will take you to that movie's information page. From there, simply click "Remove From My Flickchart" to completely eliminate the film's place on your chart, and all of the rankings you've made for it. Then you have the option of clicking "Add To My Flickchart" to rank it again immediately, or you can choose to wait until the movie comes up again later while you're ranking.

You're missing a movie I want to rank. What do I do?

Just do a search for the movie you're looking for on Flickchart, and if we don't have it on our search results (and it DOES NOT have a "[pending]" at the end of the title when searching for the movie), just click the "Submit a title to Flickchart" link to open the movie submission form. From there, you can enter the information for the film, and we'll review the submissions and get them added to the site as soon as we can. This is the fastest way to let us know which of your favorite movies we're missing. Also see our screencast video for a short how-to on how the submission works: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KpiNcboEvf4

Can I use keyboard shortcuts to rank movies?

When you're ranking and you hit a keyboard shortcut key for the first time, you'll automatically pop up our guide which explains the control scheme.

Our standard controls are:

Left arrow key: Choose the movie on the left
Right arrow key: Choose the movie on the right
<Shift> + left arrow key: Mark you haven't seen the movie on the left
<Shift> + down arrow key: Mark you haven't seen either movie
<Shift> + right arrow key: Mark you haven't seen the movie on the right

and for the gamers out there who are used to the WASD control scheme from years of playing first person shooters, our alternate controls are:

a: Choose the movie on the left
d: Choose the movie on the right
z: Mark you haven't seen the movie on the left
x: Mark you haven't seen either movie
c: Mark you haven't seen the movie on the right

You can also hit "u" to undo the last matchup, if you made a rash decision that you desperately want to reconsider.

At any time, you can hit "?" (the question mark key: <Shift> + /) to bring up the guide for review, and close it up when you're ready to rank with the elite.

Of course, if you don't want to use the shortcuts, you can choose to disable them entirely and go back to your mouseketeering.

Do you have an app for iPhone, Android, or Blackberry?

We do have a simplified web app, which can be found via your mobile device's browser at http://mobile.flickchart.com, or you can simply go to http://www.flickchart.com and it will automatically redirect you. You won't find it in the App Store, or the Android Marketplace, as it's just a specially formatted version of the website made to fit well on your mobile device's screen. We'll be working on this more in the future to flesh out its features, and perhaps even migrate it to a full native application for iPhone/iPod Touch/iPad and Android phones. If there's enough demand in the future, we'll look into supporting even more devices as well.

Why did you decide to create Flickchart?

We're big movie fans, and we know what movies we like. Great sites such as IMDB, Rotten Tomatoes, and Metacritic offer excellent ways to learn more about movies, and to see what the critics, and their users, think about movies. The problem arose that everyone is rating movies individually with some sort of point value - using stars, a 1 to 10 scale, or percentages - that when lumped together to create an all-encompassing "Best Movies Of All Time" list, always seemed to come short of what we thought they could be.

Flickchart is our solution to the dilemma.

Flickchart takes any two movies and presents them to you with the choice of which is better. When you make that choice enough times, you can start to see what movies are really the best - for you. A simple idea with a strikingly accurate result. Take a look at our charts and see for yourself.

Who are you guys?

Check out the About Us page for more info on the founders of Flickchart.