The Internet Movie Database ranking of the 250 films its users deem the greatest of all-time has always fascinated me, partly because I’ve spent a disturbing amount of my life creating lists for various publications and also because it reveals America’s self-proclaimed movie snobs to be deeply perceptive and total cretins all at once. The rankings inevitably feature a few artificially high recent releases (you may not have been aware of it, but Inception and Toy Story 3 are both among the ten finest films ever). Then in a few weeks things stabilize, resulting in relatively constant master list. Here’s what I love and loathe about the rankings:

1. Citizen Kane isn’t number one. It is on every other list. Personally, I’ve always felt it’s by far the most influential movie ever made and a timeless technical achievement. On the other hand, it’s filled with scenes of people in mediocre old age makeup hamming it up while reminiscing about Charles Foster Kane, little suspecting that he really missed…his sled. Yeah. It’s #36 on imdb, and that strikes me as fair.

2. Shawshank Redemption is number one. I like Shawshank. It’s Tim Robbins’ best performance and solid all-around. But I don’t know how anyone could go, “Godfather good…Shawshank gooder.” Also, I refuse to believe the greatest film ever contains the phrase “pinch a loaf.”

3. A surprising number of foreign flicks made the cut. While only Sergio Leone cracked the top 10, it’s riddled with recent keepers like City of God, Spirited Away, and Oldboy, plus Akira Kurosawa’s all over the place (though inevitably lower than he deserves, as you could make a list of the five greatest films ever using only his work that would hold up pretty well). In an era when it’s harder and harder for non-American films to get decent distribution — I think John Woo’s Red Cliff is, in its complete five-hour form, the greatest cinematic achievement of the last decade, yet while it made hundreds of millions of dollars overseas it barely reached the art circuit here — it’s nice to think there will be consumers who will rise up in three years when Transformers 5: Robots Fighty-Fighty manages to open on every single screen in the U.S.

4. Moron white college boys wield way too much clout. I use the term with affection, as I’m one in recovery. Nevertheless, this is the only way to explain how Fight Club, American History X, and Se7en all cracked the top 40. Inexplicably, the top 40 does not include any of the three moron white college boy movies of choice of my youth, omitting A Clockwork Orange (50), Reservoir Dogs (64), and The Blues Brothers (unranked), suggesting America’s young people really are getting dumber (which is something, because I felt like we set the bar pretty low).

5. The Professional is the 35th best movie of all-time. Yes, this is one ahead of Citizen Kane. Yes, this news would kill Roger Ebert. And yes, this still somehow strikes me as appropriate.

6. The Room is not included. Anything lacking Tommy “You’re tearing me apart, Lisa!” Wiseau takes itself far too seriously to be taken all that seriously.

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