sjlu / popular-movies

Tries to create a list of popular movies based on a series of heuristics

popular-movies

This tool makes a best guess at what popular movies are based on a series of heuristics from multiple websites. This then returns a list of movies with their posters and IMDB ID.

Popular movies are based on some general rules:

• Rating greater than the general sentiment of movies currently out
• Released less than a year ago
• At least 3 weeks old to generate a "stable" rating
• Does not consider tastes, categories or genres of movies

Usage

⚠️ The URL has changed from https://s3.amazonaws.com/popular-movies/ to https://popular-movies-data.stevenlu.com/ as of September 11, 2023. Access via S3 using TLS 1.0 or 1.1 will be deprecated by AWS on December 31, 2023. Access via S3 will be completely deprecated January 1, 2025.

You can poll the following JSON file for a list of movies.

https://popular-movies-data.stevenlu.com/movies.json

• This file is regenerated nightly so it is recommended that you only poll this file once per day
• It is recommended that you take a snapshot of this list and not remove based on the list no longer displaying a particular movie
• Subject to fair use; excessive usage will be rate limited

There are also several other variations of the main file:

File	Description
movies-metacritic-min50.json	Movies with a minimum score of 50 on Metacritic
movies-metacritic-min60.json	Movies with a minimum score of 60 on Metacritic
movies-metacritic-min70.json	Movies with a minimum score of 70 on Metacritic
movies-metacritic-min80.json	Movies with a minimum score of 80 on Metacritic
movies-imdb-min5.json	Movies with a minimum score of 5 on IMDB
movies-imdb-min6.json	Movies with a minimum score of 6 on IMDB
movies-imdb-min7.json	Movies with a minimum score of 7 on IMDB
movies-imdb-min8.json	Movies with a minimum score of 8 on IMDB
movies-rottentomatoes-min50.json	Movies with a minimum score of 50 on Rotten Tomatoes
movies-rottentomatoes-min60.json	Movies with a minimum score of 60 on Rotten Tomatoes
movies-rottentomatoes-min70.json	Movies with a minimum score of 70 on Rotten Tomatoes
movies-rottentomatoes-min80.json	Movies with a minimum score of 80 on Rotten Tomatoes

If you're looking for historical files, you can amend a date to the main file like so:

https://popular-movies-data.stevenlu.com/movies-20191202.json

This file is only available from December 2, 2019 onwards.

Develop

• Make sure you are running Node.js and a local instance of Redis

• If you want to run it locally you can clone this repository and add a .env file which includes the following lines

  TMDB_KEY=
  

  • https://www.themoviedb.org/documentation/api

• Then run npm test and you should see an output of movies showing on your console and the grade it's gotten

License

MIT

popular-movies's Issues

Is there a popular-tvshows ?

No longer working?

Hi, it seems that the JSON is no longer being populated?

No results

https://s3.amazonaws.com/popular-movies/movies.json

returns an empty list

The King's daughter (current 5.1 on IMDB) showing on movies-imdb-min7.json

Why is that?

Currently no movies in list

As of 11/24/2021 the list is completely blank

website doesn't show covers

http://movies.stevenlu.com/ doesn't show movie covers :(

Feature Request: streaming providers

This list seems to miss the big movies from the streaming providers like Disney +, Hulu, Netflix, Apple+, and Prime, would love to get these added so they could auto-download when they come out

Curious about the "better than most" criteria

Hi, I'm curious about the criteria "Rating greater than the general sentiment of movies currently out". What sites do you pull the rating from, and what rating number is the minimum?

I ask because I find that metacritic often gives a subpar rating to my beloved action movies (like many Marvel films) and frequently ranks movies high that were praised by critics but panned by audience. So your metacritic ratings lists (60,70,80,90) are likely to be a poor match for me. Conversely, I tend to take note of IMDB movies that score higher than 8, and I suspect a similar score on TMDB would be more aligned with movies I would like to catch.

Expand selection

Hi,

Would it be possible to expand the movie list with even more popular movies? I'd love to be able to see top 20 most popular movies e.g. :)

Thank you for the great service!

popular-series for TV shows?

I know Sonarr doesn’t currently support lists like Radarr does, but it still would be useful to see which shows are the most popular using your algorithm instead of browsing IMDb or Trakt.

Could something like this be implemented?

A Database Error Occurred

The website: http://movies.stevenlu.com/index.php/api gives an error:
Error Number: 1064

You have an error in your SQL syntax; check the manual that corresponds to your MySQL server version for the right syntax to use near ')' at line 3

SELECT * FROM (movies) WHERE tmdb_id IN ()

Filename: /home/sjlu/public_html/movies.stevenlu.com/models/movies_model.php

Line Number: 44

List unchanged for weeks

The list has not changed for the past few weeks.
I am wondering if this is expected or not?

Request for formula proposals

The repo currently works by pulling in popular rating sites such as IMDB, Metacritic and Rotten Tomatoes for scores and ranking. The current algorithm currently only takes those rank orders and mixes them for a minimum score and position on those lists. There's currently zero math involved.

From a mathematical standpoint, it has proven difficult to filter outliers. A good example of this is Rambo: Last Blood has 23,428 votes on IMDB (higher than Hustlers), yet it has a rating of 26 on Metacritic. A point score system was considered but never proved fruitful.

For whoever has time, I'm open to suggestions on improving the formula. Please use this file
dump.csv.zip for experimentation.

Filter by metacritic or rotten tomatoes

Any way to request a json for movies that meet a certain minimum RT, IMDB, or metacritic score?

Questionable recommendation

As of now, your algorithm is suggesting "Just Getting Started" which is currently scoring 3.8/10 on IMDb, 5% on Rotten Tomatoes and 21/100 on Metacritic.

It's a great idea but I was wondering if such a stinker should be making that list?

suggest: Excluding genre and/or excluding some network like (prime/disney/netflix)

Hi,

I would like to suggest exclusion feature.

• Exclude genre ex.: anime or horror or thriller)
• list based on network excluding. EX.: if you have access to prime, I would like to exclude these movies.

thanks.

Radarr Error when using list

Getting an error today in radarr when I enable this list … when I disable the list, error goes away. It looks like the json format is valid.

https://s3.amazonawst.com/popular-movies/movies.json

Error:

Couldn't map movie to a movie on The Movie DB. It will not be added :(: Search for '' failed. Invalid response received from TMDb.
	2:19pm

The list is empty

I have tried to check your list and it is completely empty. Is there some error?

No new movies listed because theaters are closed (COVID-19)

The last movie in the list is from 2 months ago, is there something broken with the script?

List of movies with metacritic score higher than 70

Hi,

Could it be possible to add a json file that filters the movies that have a metacritic score higher than 70?

Thanks

JSON request is returning empty..