This comment will sound really elitist I don't give a fuck
Just like /u/SomeCalcium said, films from the recent year (2014) and maybe even a year before that should be invalidated. There's a huge recency bias.
I said in MCJ that another film ranker, AFI or Sight and Sound, not sure who, automatically prioritise newer films below other ones. And of any post-2000s films, only Mulholland Drive is in or close to the top 10.
Personally I think a 1 year invalidation period would be great considering the short attention span of /r/movies.
Also a big problem with the results of the list - which is why people end up hating it - is because of how 'popular' the list gets. A result of stickying it for a long time.
You might get 100 upvotes where you have the users of r/movies/new and regular users, focused on looking for discussion (rather than having discussion find them via front page) voting. I remember the list was extremely different for the first 100 votes, IIRC Whiplash was #1 and TDK was #50+
Maybe in /r/movies not stickying it but putting it in the header? It's less obvious that way but still advertised for people who bother to look at the sub's updatesand new featured discussions.
An obvious thing with the voting thread is people browsed the top 20 and then they fucking left. People entered solely to vote for, like, TDK, Fight Club, Pulp, Departed, Inglorious, etc, then left.
I can't think of any good way to make people vote for more films (other than contest mode) but I think the best way to form a list less manipulated by popularity is:
Create the thread, get answers and votes, etc, don't sticky it - that way you don't get a thread dominated by popularity from people visiting from the front page ("Oh a post about Avengers trailer? I'll check /r/movies to see what other Avengers content is there - what, a top 250 list!? Better make sure MOON is there!"
Cross post it to /r/flicks and /r/truefilm and get users of those subs to vote, so the list starts off being voted on by more passionate film hobbyists
Don't sticky, put it in the header. But if you feel it does need a sticky, then do it for a couple hours at a time. Maybe twice or thrice a day for 2 hours, I dunno.