There are two lists here, and they work differently.

The Voter Board is yours. Anyone with a verified TOPICAL account can upvote a movie (once) or add one. The board is sorted by votes. When you add a movie, you search and pick the exact film from a real movie database, so typos and nicknames can't create a wrong or duplicate entry. If the film is already listed, your pick just counts as an upvote.

Top Movies and Top Actors are TOPICAL's own scores - every film we score and every actor we rank, each with its own page. The Voter Board starts with our top 100 at 0 votes each, so it begins in TOPICAL order until your votes take over. We score about 6,700 films - every film covered by Wikipedia in 30 or more languages, every film nominated for an Oscar, every film in the U.S. National Film Registry, and every film on the Voter Board.

How a movie is scored

Each film gets seven part-scores. For each part we measure how far the film is above or below the average film, then add the parts together using fixed weights:

Part	Weight	What it measures
Critics	20%	Rotten Tomatoes (the critics' average rating and the % of positive reviews) and Metacritic.
Audience	20%	How regular viewers rate it: TMDB members' average, plus IMDb and Letterboxd where available. A film rated by only a few hundred people is pulled toward average until more people rate it.
Awards	15%	Wins and nominations, weighted by how big the award is: Best Picture counts most, then Palme d'Or, the other top Oscars, Golden Lion and Golden Bear, then BAFTAs, Golden Globes and guild awards, then national academies and critics' groups. A nomination counts about a third of a win. Fan polls (MTV, Kids' Choice) count very little and "worst film" awards count for nothing.
Historical impact	15%	How many of the world's Wikipedias have an article on it (a film known in 100 languages has crossed the world), plus a boost for being chosen by the Library of Congress for the National Film Registry.
Lasting engagement	10%	Are people still looking it up and watching it? Wikipedia readers in the last 60 days and how many people have rated it on TMDB. Films less than 3 years old can't score above the middle here yet - they haven't had time to last.
Cast	10%	The actor scores (below) of the top four billed actors, added up.
Legacy & cult status	10%	An AI reading of the film's Wikipedia reception and legacy sections, scored 1-10 from "poorly received" to "routinely named one of the greatest films ever made". The AI must quote the sentence its score is based on, and the quote is checked word for word against the article - if it isn't there, the score is thrown out. Films whose article calls them a cult classic or says they have a cult following get a boost.

If a part is missing (for example, an old film with no Metacritic score), we assume it's halfway between average and what the film's other parts say. The final TOPICAL score (0-100) is based on the film's place among all scored films, so the best film scores about 99 and a typical film about 50.

How an actor is scored

Bigger roles count more. Each film counts toward an actor by where they're billed in the cast list: 1st billed 100%, 2nd 90%, 3rd 75%, 4th 60%, 5th 45%, 6th 35%, 7th 25%, 8th 15%, and below that not at all. Actors are ranked once their roles add up to at least three full leads (for example three starring roles, or five 4th-billed parts). Acting awards count in full whatever the billing - a supporting-actor Oscar is still an Oscar.

Part	Weight	What it measures
Acting honours	25%	Acting awards and nominations (Oscars, BAFTAs, Golden Globes, Cannes, Venice, Berlin, SAG and more, weighted like the film awards) plus career honours such as an honorary Oscar or the AFI Life Achievement Award.
Prime	25%	Their best ten-year run: how far above average their films in that stretch were, each counted by the size of their role, added up - this is how they compare with other actors at their peak.
Their movies	20%	How good their films are on average, each counted by the size of their role (a lead counts fully, an 8th-billed part 15%). It uses the film score without the cast part, so an actor doesn't boost their own score, and it's pulled toward average until they've had several big roles.
Credits	10%	How many films and shows they've appeared in.
Career standing	20%	An AI reading of their Wikipedia article (1-10, from "little acclaim" to "one of the greatest actors of all time", with the same word-for-word quote check) plus how many of the world's Wikipedias cover them.

Where the data comes from

Wikidata (awards, nominations, critic scores, cast, National Film Registry), Wikipedia (article text and reader numbers) and TMDB (posters, billed cast order, audience ratings). The weights are fixed and chosen by us, not fitted to any list - so this is TOPICAL's view, not a copy of anyone else's. The lists rebuild every week.

This product uses the TMDB API but is not endorsed or certified by TMDB.