What is the deal with IMDB's ratings? It feels like over time all movies end up rated around a 7.
This is explained partially by the Four Point Scale. [TVTropes warning]
Be Suspicious of Online Movie Ratings
31–40 of 214 posts
Re: Be Suspicious of Online Movie Ratings
#32I never trust any online reviews, especially aggregate reviews, because I have never found any to hew remotely closely to my taste (the best example is on RT, the worst movie I've seen in the last two decades is rated 95% fresh).
The only approach I've found that works is to pick a professional reviewer that is marginally close to my taste, read a lot of their reviews, so I know where I tend to agree and where I disagree with the reviewer, then build a mental translation, so when I would see Roger Ebert trash a David Lynch movie, I could discount it because I know Ebert's antipathy to Lynch in not something I share.
Re: Be Suspicious of Online Movie Ratings
#33Rotten 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."
The only way Rotten Tomatoes is useful is if you look only at the negative ratings. All kinds of horrible schlock that has mass appeal gets "certified fresh." But isolating negative reviews: If idiots dislike it then it's probably good; If the negative reviews sound cogent then it's probably bad.
The problem with Rotten Tomatoes scores is that people want to treat them as a measure of how good a film is...it's a natural tendency considering it's a score on a continuum. But what Rotten Tomatoes scores actually represent are a measure of what percentage of people a film will please enough to give a positive review. Just like the The World's Funniest Joke [1] (which most people find "meh, kinda funny"), a movie can rate very highly on Rotten Tomatoes without rating very highly on anyone's list of movies.
But most of the films we'll enjoy are more polarizing. A smaller group of people will really like the film and a sizable group will dislike it. As such, Rotten Tomatoes is a really terrible way to choose a good movie and a really great way to avoid bad ones.
Re: Be Suspicious of Online Movie Ratings
#34Earlier quoted context omitted.
Really? He's well-known for picking contrarian views just to get hits, causes problems at events, and is pretty much shunned by the film community. Even Ebert called him a "troll". http://www.ew.com/article/2014/01/13/armond-white-kicked-out... http://www.avclub.com/article/armond-white-claims-he-was-kic... http://www.slashfilm.com/armond-white-prevents-toy-story-3-f...
Ebert was an idiot and an idiot's reviewer.
It's interesting that you bring up Ebert because I would apply your original comment to him. Ebert is spot on about the redeeming qualities of many films, but in retrospect he focuses a lot on the positives. I don't think this is due to him appealing to the "idiot masses", but rather it's a product of how he views film. No matter which review I've read, the only impression of Ebert I've had is of someone who loves film and its ability to convey the human spirit.
As for calling Ebert himself an idiot the man had seen pretty much every movie that deserves acclaim so it's silly to think he doesn't have a huge library to compare to or isn't qualified to talk about film. He even kept reviewing after having his lower jaw removed because of cancer. The only reason I'd call him an "idiot's reviewer" is because he never bothered with pretentiousness or overanalysis in his reviews.
Re: Be Suspicious of Online Movie Ratings
#35Metacritic
or look at the average rating in RT
Re: Be Suspicious of Online Movie Ratings
#36I never trust any online reviews, especially aggregate reviews, because I have never found any to hew remotely closely to my taste (the best example is on RT, the worst movie I've seen in the last two decades is rated 95% fresh). The only approach I've found that works is to pick a professional reviewer that is marginally close to my taste, read a lot of their reviews, so I know where I tend to agree and where I disa…
[deleted]
Re: Be Suspicious of Online Movie Ratings
#37I'm wary of any website that offers reviews for things they are also trying to sell, like those online systems for buying games (Playstation Network comes to mind). Why would a profit-driven enterprise allow anything to create a negative impression for the user? Amazon seems okay because they have such a wide variety of items: They're getting paid either way.
The problem with most online reviews is that they usually only collect reviews from those who are motivated to submit a review. This usually skews reviews towards the 1 or 5 star ends of the spectrum because 3-star reviewers aren't really motivated to go through the hassle of submitting a review, unless they're the type of person who obsessively reviews everything (think Yelp! Elite).
The only real way to get past this is to know when someone is a candidate to review something and solicit reviews from them. Amazon reviews fall into this category and it's the reason why they're pretty reliable. I'd bet they're getting 5-10% conversion (I've worked on systems that got over 30%, but different types of reviewable products have different conversion rates) on every "Did product X meet your expectations?" email they send. They've got their die hards that review everything and who's reviews everyone finds helpful, but the star rating will be largely determined by the larger group of people that write 1-2 sentences and submit.
But without closing the loop and attempting to get reviews from every possible reviewer, ratings are far less useful.
Re: Be Suspicious of Online Movie Ratings
#38I've never seen much point in caring about movie ratings. I find very little correlation between my own perception of a movie and the ratings; whether from "professional" critics, or the generic crowd-sourced ones. I just watch stuff that sounds interesting to me. Sure, you hit some stinkers here and there, but I find that acceptable.
That's interesting - I'm the exact opposite. I figure there's such an enormous amount of content out there and I don't know where to start. So I'll see what's out there and cross their RT & IMDB ratings. If they're both high, I'll check them out.
yes. I do the same thing. I look at rotten. Then compare with IMDB. Decision made! :)
Re: Be Suspicious of Online Movie Ratings
#39I've never seen much point in caring about movie ratings. I find very little correlation between my own perception of a movie and the ratings; whether from "professional" critics, or the generic crowd-sourced ones. I just watch stuff that sounds interesting to me. Sure, you hit some stinkers here and there, but I find that acceptable.
I do the same. I check the synopsis and if interesting i watch it. But i do sometimes watch based on reddit recommendations/upvotes.
Re: Be Suspicious of Online Movie Ratings
#40I never trust any online reviews, especially aggregate reviews, because I have never found any to hew remotely closely to my taste (the best example is on RT, the worst movie I've seen in the last two decades is rated 95% fresh). The only approach I've found that works is to pick a professional reviewer that is marginally close to my taste, read a lot of their reviews, so I know where I tend to agree and where I disa…
I'm curious, what was the 95% fresh movie that you thought was the worst movie in 2 decades?