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Be Suspicious of Online Movie Ratings

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Re: Be Suspicious of Online Movie Ratings

#101

Post by rconti »

saiya-jin wrote: post #97
makeitsuckless wrote: post #75

Of all the ratings, IMDB are the most useless of all. Especially for quality movies that have gathered enough of a reputation to be watched by the masses of tv or netflex, who then proceed to rate them low for being "boring". Pretty much all of those converge on a rating of around 6.2, including some great classics, whilst lots of Hollywood lightweight entertainment has 7+ ratings. The only good cinema to escape this…

for me personally, IMDB works damn well for almost all movies (except family/sport stuff which ain't my cup of tea). probably the attitude "I am above all the stupid masses" tells a bit about you... hollywood "classics" that have rating around 6.2 are mostly piece of cr*p IMHO, unwatchable/boring these days except if you have some strong bias towards it due to special childhood memories or something. the true classic…

You might think the parent is condescending, but I've noticed the same thing. VERY few movies are anywhere lower than 6 stars or higher than 7 stars on IMDB. It's almost worthless. Not because my taste is so superior to the reviewers, but because the scale is so coarse.

Re: Be Suspicious of Online Movie Ratings

#102

Post by dspillett »

bostik wrote: post #63

Oh wow, that's rich. Quoting from the article: Sites like Rotten Tomatoes that aggregate movie reviews into one overall rating are being blamed for poor opening weekends. The best part is that the quote above even provides a link to the reference they are using for the made statement.[0] In effect, the studios are complaining that news of the films' crappiness are spreading too fast . Let that sink in. The studios co…

This isn't the first time: Gigalo's poor performance at the box office was blamed on people texting their contacts as they left the theatre to say "go see something else instead". I can't remember if that was any form of public statement or an internal memo that leaked out, but either way it is funny.

Re: Be Suspicious of Online Movie Ratings

#103

Post by OSButler »

jmckib wrote: post #68
OSButler wrote: post #66

I usually only check ratings & reviews after watching a movie, just to see what other people think about it. Seeing how easy it is to game such online ranking systems and how tastes can differ, not only on a personal level but also on the current mood, I simply don't trust the scores without having been able to make up my own opinion. The same goes for any other aggregate "review" site, e.g. restaurant reviews. Those…

As someone who relies on online movie ratings (not Fandango), how do you choose movies then?

I usually base it on the movie's stars, theme or genre, then read up its synopsis (short movie description on imdb or theater's website), and if it's less likely to have some kind of twist or I don't mind spoilers at the time, then I'll watch the trailer.

I'm also not really picky, so don't mind giving a movie a try without knowing anything about it in advance (Dancer In The Dark, Oldboy, and Snowpiercer come to mind as wonderful surprises, for example).

Re: Be Suspicious of Online Movie Ratings

#105

Post by johnchristopher »

rconti wrote: post #100
johnchristopher wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If the rank is lower on Fandango and higher on Rotten Tomatoes, it's usually a bit too artsy and pretentious for me (I go watch a movie to be entertained, not to stoke my ego). Crass anti-intellectualism. I like the Sundance Festival, Movies from all over the world and wouldn't got see 2012 on screen but I don't go pissing online on fans of Transformers. Your definition of `artsy and pretentious' is just `things I…

Your usage of the phrase "crass anti-intellectualism" is far more absolute, dismissive, and disparaging than anything the parent said.

I don't think so. Moreover dismissing an entire group of people (hipsterism ? really ?) by stating that watching and enjoying movies one doesn't like is akin to stoking one's ego and that such movies are pretentious seems way more... well... dismissive and absolute to me. Because, believe it or not, some people truly enjoy the movies he doesn't enjoy and it has nothing to do with ego. This is objectively anti-intellectualism.

Re: Be Suspicious of Online Movie Ratings

#106

Post by aleem »

> if you ask people about a movie after they’ve paid $15 for it and devoted a couple of hours of their life to it, maybe they’ll have a more favorable opinion of the work. Maybe the profoundly rightward shift in Fandango’s bell curve is just a moviegoer’s version of Stockholm syndrome.

This is called the Endowment Effect[1]. I suspect it happens when you spend a considerable amount of time picking the "right" movie.

Admitting to yourself that you made the wrong pick is harder than consoling yourself that it wasn't so bad after all.

Often times the bias will manifest itself in the subtlest of ways--for example a survey of "How would you rate the movie you picked?" versus "How would you rate the movie?" can skew ratings positively in the case of the former.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endowment_effect

Re: Be Suspicious of Online Movie Ratings

#107

Post by andreasley »

aceofpack wrote: post #96
abruzzi wrote: post #32

I 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…

Finding people that rate in the same way as you is an interesting concept at https://www.mov3y.com

If only it worked. After rating 50 movies, the "recommended" section still is empty. Also, lots of GUI issues, dead links etc.

Re: Be Suspicious of Online Movie Ratings

#108

Post by SyneRyder »

Maybe of interest to some here is MovieLens[1], a research project from University of Minnesota that makes personalised movie recommendations based on your own ratings. You can dive behind the scenes and switch between different algorithms, compare its predicted score against the average review score, and there's a page with statistics on your own ratings. (Preferred genres, ratings curve, ratio of mainstream to obscure movies, etc.)

After rating 250+ movies on there myself, my own ratings demonstrate the same right-skew graph curve that IMDB and Fandango has in the article.

[1] https://movielens.org

Re: Be Suspicious of Online Movie Ratings

#109

Post by aembleton »

aceofpack wrote: post #96
abruzzi wrote: post #32

I 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…

Finding people that rate in the same way as you is an interesting concept at https://www.mov3y.com

Brilliant, thanks for that. Seems great, shame that the recommended tab is empty.

Re: Be Suspicious of Online Movie Ratings

#110

Post by icc97 »

qrendel wrote: post #58
cooper12 wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The site you linked is unreadable because they write everything in all-caps. Unfortunate considering that the titles sound interesting and that there's lively discussion in the comments.

I forgot to mention the part where all Film Crit Hulk reviews are written in the first person as the Incredible Hulk - hence the all-caps. Certainly a valid criticism. Other authors on the site use proper capitalization. I never found it that big a deal, mildly distracting at best, but I can understand where it turns off others. Seems the design decision for gains in immersion(?) caused a larger tradeoff in readabili…

Ah what we need is film reviews from Terry Pratchett's death.
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