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How to Find Any Movie / Film Title or Actors Name When You’ve Forgotten It

By Bryan Hadaway | Published April 22, 2011 | Need me to update this article?
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We all do it: “What’s the name of that movie?” | “What’s that actors name?”

Sometimes it’s nice to ease your mind because you just have to know. Or maybe it’s some old nostalgic film from your childhood that you just have to buy or put on Netflix.

These techniques also apply if you’re trying to find anyone else who works on films, music and video games (directors, writers, voice actors, you name it).

Difficulty: Moderately Easy

Step 1

Go to the IMDb (Internet Movie Database):

Step 2

Now, before you can begin your search you’ll need to at least have some piece of information that links to the film or whatever else you’re trying to find.

Here are some examples:

- Name of the Director
- Name of the Writer
- Name of the person who did the Score
- Name of any of the Actors or Actresses no matter how big or small their part was
- Name of the Company/Companies that released the film
- The Year (or Decade) the film was released
- Plot Info
- and so on…

Reverse Info

Now it may be possible to find what you’re looking for even if you don’t know any direct facts about the movie you’re trying to find.

Say that you at least recognize someone in the film and you’re aware of the title of another film they’re in you can start your search there.

When you search I recommend that you search “All” first, this is the search filter found at the top middle of the page with the search field.

Step 3

After you’ve searched, no matter how vague and you’re on a studio, film, actor etc page it’s all about narrowing it down.

If it’s an actors/actresses name that you have, you’ll want to look at their filmography. You can first narrow it down by looking at just the Actor section of their credits page.

Now, even if you don’t know the exact year it came out, you should at least know a range; for example between 1970 – 1980.

The films are in order from newest to oldest. I’d start on the oldest film in your range and work your way up.

Just seeing the title might not be enough to spark your memory. Think about what the movie is about and try and relate the titles to what it’s about. Most titles will make sense in relation to what the film is about.

When you click on a movie title to investigate further, look at the poster or movie cover image, look at the character and actor names, read the storyline/synopsis. If it’s the right movie it should eventually click: “Yeah! This is the movie“.

Reverse Method

If you know the title of a movie that has an actor in it that is also in the film you’re looking for find it on IMDb.

Then go through the cast of actors on that film and try and find that actor, most actor pages are supported with celebrity pictures so you can verify it’s who you think it is before you start searching their filmography for the movie.

Tips

- If you’re looking for something other than a film or actor, just try relating the techniques to your search

- Don’t give up; 9/10 times I find what I’m looking for if I keep at it, as a last resort you could always ask a film expert by describing whatever it is as best as you can at one of the following places:

IMDb Boards | Ask Me Help Desk | Yahoo! Answers

UPDATE: Utilize Google Search. If all you’re left with is the plot we can utilize Google to search the IMDb database in a much more powerful way than IMDb’s native search (this is true for most websites actually). Simply copy the following URL to your URL bar or follow it and add your own plot keywords:

http://www.google.com/search?q=site:imdb.com+plot+keywords+here

You can also search just the plot records of IMDb’s database:

http://www.imdb.com/search/text?realm=title&field=plot&q=keyword
(apparently only one keyword searches)

Try to be vague and yet specific at the same time so to get a somewhat substantial amount of results to browse, but so you also try and filter out the obvious conflicting results that might pop up.

Also a heads up. For some reason some people are getting the idea that my blog contains info on movies, which it does not. I keep seeing searches for plot keywords and actor’s names and whatnot done through my blog search. Outside of this article my blog does not contain info on anything movie related. It is not a media database. You want to head over to http://www.imdb.com/ – Thanks

And if you want to provide me as many details as you can about what you’re looking for I might give it a shot for you. – Update: I was happy to help out, but the majority of people that ask for help finding a movie bale after one comment or don’t even reply at all. So, I won’t be doing that anymore.

Thanks for reading, Bryan

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  • Jill

    So here is a movie I am trying to remember but I have no idea what the title is or any of the actors, also I just remember it from when i was little so it could be just a random tv movie too. Its been bugging me forever though so here it goes, I just remember some scenes.

    A white man has two kids a boy and a girl and he is an abusive father. There is also a black man who is nice to the kids and if I remember right he is bald and wears overalls.

    The scene, the dad is in jail and his cell is outside facing the street. The jail catches on fire and the dad is being burned to death in his cell. His son is watching him being burned while the dad his begging for his help and the son has a gun ready to shoot him but is hesitating. The black man shoots the dad instead and the son then asks him why he did that. Then a group of white men seeing the black guy shoot the dad, tie the guy up to a upright log and to burn the wood around his feet so he will burn to death.

  • Karenandrews67

    I’m looking for the name of a movie from late 80′s early 90′sish. plot is an assasin that bolts a 50 cal. to the top of building and shoots into an airport and takes out target as walks off a plain, end of movie the good guy bolts same gun to top of car and shoots bad guy as he drives away. no idea of actors but it was a great action movie. thanks jeff

  • Liz Lerner

    Foreign film: Moody, odd girl is police profiler, enlisted to solve kidnap & murder of girls, ends up reliving her own past abduction when she is handed a stuffed toy by a little while she is kept in a cell, as an adult she still has the blue elephant toy locked in her desk…..What is this film??????

  • KARENANDREWS67

    OWEN WILSON

  • moviebuffy

    Scene from a movie when there is a crabby old man that sits on a porch of a big white house and all the grownups have learned to avoid him. Then a little kid goes and sits on the porch with him and the kid seems to get along with the old man and the grownups can’t figure out why the old man likes the little kid when they have tried to be nice to the old man and he is mean back to them. The grownups ask the little kid what does the kid do or say that makes the old man like him and the little kid says back to them – “we don’t talk, we just sit”.
    The movie is probably from between 2000-2008. Can’t remember if the kid is a boy or girl. Can’t remember any characters. Could be a scene from “Little Miss Sunshine” or that kind of movie.

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