Over at the Česko-Slovenská filmová databáze (ČSFD), the Czech & Slovak version of the hugely-popular IMDb, hundreds of thousands of users have rated hundreds of thousands (millions?) of movies from the past 100+ years.

And like the IMDb, the site provides a neat little compilation of the highest & lowest-rated films. While the rating system, a percentage out of 100 rather than IMDb’s familiar 10 stars, is a little different, the gist is the same.

And there are a lot of similarities in taste: like IMDb's top 250, The Shawshank Redemption comes in at #1 among local voters, with familiar titles like The Godfather, Forrest Gump, 12 Angry Men, and One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (from Czech director Miloš Forman) all in the top 10.

Throughout the list of the ČSFD’s top 300 films, roughly 20% are Czech titles. And they give an interesting cross-section of what the general public considers the country’s top movies to be, which may not always meet expectations.

For instance, František Vláčil’s Marketa Lazarová was chosen by Czech film critics as the best Czech movie ever made in a mid-2000s poll, and it was given the Criterion treatment in the US last year. It would also be my choice as the best Czech film ever made - and one of the all-time great films in all of cinema.

But rated at 82% among Czech viewers, it misses the cut for this list. (Also not in the ČSFD’s top 300: Welles’ Citizen Kane and Hitchcock’s Vertigo, two US titles that are routinely named as the top films in many critic polls - and rated highly over at IMDb).

Closely Observed Trains, one of only three Czech movies to win the Best Foreign-Language Film Oscar, is also absent from the top 50.

Here’s the top 50, with ratings valid as of June 2017. English titles where applicable: