Favorite Movies

Group work by Case Cain, Parker Dickson, Madison Fuerst)

Among the picks from our classmates, we started by observing concentrations in genre. We found that most of the movies fell into two genres: action movies and character-driven dramas. For example, Inception and Rushmore for character-driven dramas (Estrada) (Cain), and Deadpool and Zombieland for action films (Fuerst) (Gore).

We then moved on to when the films were created. Aside from a few older, classic films, most of the films were made in the range of 5-10 years ago, such as The Shawshank Redemption and Ferris Bueller's Day Off.

We did notice the repetition of films by one director, Christopher Nolan.

The majority of the films picked by our peers, we noticed, all had some sort of romance aspect as part of the story. Certain words, such as "story" and "funny" also appeared in tweets multiple times, notably by Caroline Cavitt: “My favorite movie is 13 Going on 30 because it's hilarious, has great music, and is such a cuuuuute romance story!! #thirtyflirtyandthriving”.

What can we deduce from this data? In summary, our class consists of fans of films with good stories with action and romance, with a preference towards films made within the last 10 years. There’s at least two people who enjoy films directed by Christopher Nolan, and a sizeable majority of those who enjoy movies that give them a laugh or two.

Parker's additional thoughts:

It appeared to me that our classmates enjoy movies with varying levels of conflict. It ranged from a very straight good vs evil scenario like The Dark Knight or Inglorious Bastards to multiple smaller yet more complex conflicts such as in Ferris Bueller's Day Off. The contrasting interest of Ferris and his school principal is the main conflict with sub conflict involving Ferris' sister, Cameron's relationship with his parents, and what to do with the high schoolers futures. This might not be as in your face as a killer clown firing RPGs at the batmobile it is conflict all the same. These different conflicts exist in every film, sometimes they are in the forefront of everything drawing in your attention to an all out brawl or they may reside in the mind of the protagonist as they slowly try to cope through the course of the film. All the same, conflict gives each of these movies a purpose and usually a conclusion.