Ratings: Search for movies based upon the histogram of ratings.

Yeah it does seem a little specialised and perhaps not something IMDB would do itself, but it is another example of the interesting things that could be done with an API.

I assume this isn't included in the plain text downloads?

a movie may have a "U" shaped distribution which indicates a polarized audiences

Whenever I've seen it, this is a sign of vote stuffing and/or trolls throwing on 1 star votes.

Hi Dave Black,

Although it would be interesting to search the titles by the shape of the distribution of their ratings, this is probably too complicated to be meaningfully implemented. The standard deviation of the distribution of the ratings will provide much of what you suggest and would be much easier to implement. A large standard deviation would indicate a "U" shaped distribution. A relatively small standard deviation would indicate a "V" shaped distribution. A standard deviation of zero would indicate complete agreement.

Until / unless IMDb includes the standard deviation of the ratings, you may find this list I created over a year ago of interest.
Polarizing Films
http://www.imdb.com/list/p5BdMpNPyxA/
The users of IMDb strongly disagree on the ratings for these films. The
standard deviation of the votes is an indication of the strength of this
disagreement, the larger the standard deviation, the stronger the
disagreement. This list ranks these films in decreasing order of the
standard deviation of the votes.

You will notice that the films on this list all have the "U" shape you describe.
For instance: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0845424/ratings