40 Years of Movies Bracket!

 

Forty years ago NASA launched the first space shuttle, Sandra Day O’Connor was confirmed as the first female Supreme Court Justice, Prince Charles married Lady Diana.  And in October of 1981, yours truly was born.  That’s right, I turn 40 this year.  And what better way to celebrate this momentous event in our history than with a special bracket for March Madness!  So without further ado, allow me to introduce the 40 Years, 40ish Movies Bracket, a celebration of my favorite movies from the past 40 years.  This is your chance to take a trip down memory lane, perhaps revisit some classics, and vote on which of my favorite movies from the past 40 years you think is the best. 

Before we reveal the actual bracket and get to the voting itself, let me explain a little how I put this together.  (Warning: Nerdy science info to follow to make me seem smart.)  I started the process by selecting a favorite movie from every year since 1981.  I wanted to make sure every year was represented.  This proved a little difficult for some years (see: 2007).  After that, I filled out the rest of the bracket with wild cards spread throughout the forty years.  So, in basketball terms, there are 40 automatic qualifiers and 24 at-large movies.  Once I had the 64 movies locked down, I ranked them based on my preference.  Now at this point I could have just placed them in the bracket based on my ranking alone, but I wanted to remove some of the bias.  So I added critic and audience scores from Rotten Tomatoes, IMDB ratings, and a Metacritic score to form a composite ranking.  I then used that composite ranking to create the seedings for the bracket.  After I created the initial seeding, I made some adjustments to the bracket in the name of competitive balance, mostly to separate movies from the same franchise, same year, or starring the same actor/actress.  What I was left with is a bracket full of my favorites in which I think every matchup is a tough decision.

But now it is your turn to help decide which of my favorite movies of the past 40 years is the best.  You can vote below and check out the full bracket at the bottom of the page.  And please feel free to share with your friends, and comment on which movies you are surprised made the list or which ones you think I overlooked.  Enjoy!