The collective ranking of 250 top films since 1902 http://ff.im/12Aw1d was smoothed using exponential moving averages, and then plotted (in blue) -- which allows us to eyeball the general trends (in red). Image enlarged: http://i.imgur.com/iwm0d... The data indicates that the quality of cinema appears to be getting worse since the 1950s :( - Adriano

I don't know how to interpret this :( - Amit Patel

Amit, the best film produced next year will roughly have a 1.2 rank lower than this year's best -- at the rate estimated by the post-1950 trend. - Adriano

Shouldn't that metric decline even if films are just as good? The overall number of films is increasing so the probability that the next film is better than previous ones should go down over time. Maybe I'm misunderstanding :) - Amit Patel