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Be Suspicious of Online Movie Ratings

fivethirtyeight.com

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Re: Be Suspicious of Online Movie Ratings

#21

Post by dublinben »

graeme wrote: post #17

I've noticed a trend with IMDB reviews: * The rating will be very high around release time, then drop a point or two after a few weeks * The top 1-2 reviews will be 9-10 star. After that will follow a large number of reviews saying the movie was terrible. I first noticed this with movies that I disliked, and couldn't believe their high imdb rating. For example, I loathed American Hustle, and it had that same pattern.…

It's likely that you just have specific tastes, and you were not the target audience for that movie. It is almost universally liked by critics, earning a 93% on RT and 90% on MC. The high rating on IMDB wasn't misleading in any way.

Re: Be Suspicious of Online Movie Ratings

#22

Post by goodness »

ripberge wrote: post #20

Having done a little bit of work on stuff like this for Fandango a long time ago I learned a little bit about their view of customers from their marketing folks. Their average customer is a person that sees all the big blockbuster movies. They are not discerning about what they see and they are not critical viewers. Comparing these people's reviews to the professionals on Rotten Tomatoes is a little silly. As mention…

The Fandango scores were also higher than the Rotten Tomatoes user ratings 74% of the time. But yeah, Fandango is obviously incentivized to be biased.

Re: Be Suspicious of Online Movie Ratings

#23

Post by firebones »

mindcrime wrote: post #13
firebones wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Similarity of reviewers to you, ratings by those people similar. Who cares what the masses think...you care about the people you trust and who have tastes most similar to yours.

Yeah, I'm just too lazy to put a lot of work into that. The best way I get personalized recommendations (for books, movies, music, whatever) is actually from Amazon.com. They recommend stuff to me based on my purchases, and stuff other people purchased who also purchased what I did. I find that their recommendations (especially for books and music) are usually pretty darn good. The only kink I find, is that the overw…

Naw, I'm saying...services should do this for you. Twitter should be working on this instead of Moments. TwitterRecs.

Re: Be Suspicious of Online Movie Ratings

#26

Post by a_bonobo »

guelo wrote: post #24

What is the deal with IMDB's ratings? It feels like over time all movies end up rated around a 7.

I feel that's something like survivor bias - you may watch and rate only the movies you're interested in. My Goodreads ratings are at an average of 3.8/5 because I usually stay away from books I know I wouldn't enjoy.

Re: Be Suspicious of Online Movie Ratings

#28

Post by Pxtl »

guelo wrote: post #24

What is the deal with IMDB's ratings? It feels like over time all movies end up rated around a 7.

People want to rave about movies they like. People want to watch movies that appeal to them. It's not exactly a double-blinded controlled random trial.

Re: Be Suspicious of Online Movie Ratings

#29

Post by qrendel »

raspasov wrote: post #2

Rotten tomatoes usually matches my personal tastes pretty well. Their Critics Consensus summaries are pretty blunt and entertaining sometimes. Here's the one for Fantastic Four (2015). "Dull" is my favorite part. "Dull and downbeat, this Fantastic Four proves a woefully misguided attempt to translate a classic comic series without the humor, joy, or colorful thrills that made it great."

Most of the critic (and user) reviews are what I think of as "easy mode" ones. They don't really teach you anything about the film, just say whether they liked it or not, using the most colorful language they can possibly muster. The FF quote seems like a typical example.

Alternatively there are some that really dig deep into the meaning and execution of the film and analyze it in ways I would never think of, not having a PhD in literature or having been to film school or anything. An example I like a bit is Film Crit Hulk[1], which range from simply explaining why the film's execution didn't match its themes (Jurassic World) to borderline philosophical treatises on the meaning of film (Birdman). (Imo, obviously.)

For getting a quick rating to see what soared/bombed, stuff like RT and IMDB serves its purpose, but I wish published reviews would do more of the deep dives into film analysis, rather than just letting some random journalist vent their opinion for pageviews.

[1] http://birthmoviesdeath.com/author/film.crit.hulk

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