Be Suspicious of Online Movie Ratings • Hacker News Board

Re: Be Suspicious of Online Movie Ratings

#191

Post by cdelsolar » Fri, Oct 16, 2015, 3:59 PM UTC

lmm wrote: post #153

Udik wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

De gustibus non est disputandum . At least, not on HN. However, would you put The Martian almost on par with 2001? Would you rate it more than Blade Runner? I wouldn't do either, no way. As for the video games space, well, I don't know it enough. But I suppose you could argue that video games are different from movies in that they require a much higher level of engagement, both in terms of time and concentration - no…

I haven't seen The Martian yet but I'd put Gravity well above Blade Runner. I found Blade Runner really dragged, and I found the characters impossible to relate to or care about. I was actually quite surprised as I'd expected to enjoy it (e.g. I loved Ex Machina). I think it's easy to miss how much general improvement there's been in moviemaking. I accompanied my mother to see The Transporter Refuelled a few weeks ag…

Gravity is one of the most amazing movies I've ever seen. So yes, agreed.

Re: Be Suspicious of Online Movie Ratings

#192

Post by MrZongle2 » Fri, Oct 16, 2015, 4:02 PM UTC

abruzzi wrote: post #44

eridius wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious, what was the 95% fresh movie that you thought was the worst movie in 2 decades?

Snowpiercer. I'm sure some people love it, but I could not think of a single redeeming thing after I got done. I honestly preferred "The Room", (though that ones 'quality' was unintentional.)

Yes! I sat through the whole thing, waiting for it to get better. Then the credits rolled, and I was baffled by the people who raved about the film.

Re: Be Suspicious of Online Movie Ratings

#193

Post by JoeAltmaier » Fri, Oct 16, 2015, 4:06 PM UTC

MrZongle2 wrote: post #192

abruzzi wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Snowpiercer. I'm sure some people love it, but I could not think of a single redeeming thing after I got done. I honestly preferred "The Room", (though that ones 'quality' was unintentional.)

Yes! I sat through the whole thing, waiting for it to get better. Then the credits rolled, and I was baffled by the people who raved about the film.

I agree; a zero of a film. Those that like it, were impressed by some actor/actress' performance (or they had the hots for them anyway). Not by the actual movie, which was a heavy-handed fable that thudded across the screen.

Though maybe I was blinded by the nonsense, to a wonderland of interesting screencraft. But I don't think so.

Re: Be Suspicious of Online Movie Ratings

#194

Post by dec0dedab0de » Fri, Oct 16, 2015, 4:12 PM UTC

eevilspock wrote: post #187

dec0dedab0de wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm hoping for a future where recommendation systems and collaborative filtering get so good that they render marketing and advertising useless. How can you recommend something you've never heard of?

A grapevine starts with one. Recommendation systems, as well as the plain old web, are just scalable grapevines. If a new product is good, people will quickly hear about how good it is from actual users. As opposed to from you the biased (and often motivated to mislead) seller. So how do you bootstrap your good product into the grapevine? A variety of ways, depending on what it is. Sending samples to reviewers. Annou…

Sending samples to reviewers. Announcements on relevant websites (such as HN). Making it available in catalogs and product search engines (Amazon, an app store, Etsy, Orbitz, etc) where people will encounter it in search results.

Aren't those all forms of advertising?

Re: Be Suspicious of Online Movie Ratings

#195

Post by graeme » Fri, Oct 16, 2015, 4:17 PM UTC

dublinben wrote: post #21

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.

It's possible, but then what's going on with the imdb reviews? The users hate it: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1800241/reviews?ref_=tt_ov_rt

When I look at older movies (pre 2010 or so) there is no such divergence in rotten tomatoes and imdb user reviews. Recent movies have a massive divergence. I'm not sure what's going on.

Re: Be Suspicious of Online Movie Ratings

#196

Post by graeme » Fri, Oct 16, 2015, 4:17 PM UTC

dublinben wrote: post #21

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.

It's possible, but then what's going on with the imdb reviews? The users hate it: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1800241/reviews?ref_=tt_ov_rt

When I look at older movies (pre 2010 or so) there is no such divergence in rotten tomatoes and imdb user reviews. Recent movies have a massive divergence. I'm not sure what's going on.

Re: Be Suspicious of Online Movie Ratings

#197

Post by hagbardgroup » Fri, Oct 16, 2015, 4:23 PM UTC

eevilspock wrote: post #190

fluidcruft wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Did you actually have a need for those products before hearing about them? Yes. As a mater of fact, a prime example from earlier this week--I live in an area with very active clays and we've had a serious drought this year which has shifted foundations around like crazy--whatever, that's what active clays do and you learn to live with it. But the annoying part is doors that stick or won't close or closets that won'…

Ran into? That's not an argument for ads. That's an argument for serendipity. We don't need ads for chance encounters of things that might be useful. You run across them when you visit someone's house, or a friend tells you about something great, or someone here on HN mentions it. Or maybe you do a web search and it comes up as a recommended alternative to planing doors. All of these are better than ads because the s…

Yes, we can.

Private roads have no ads. Expensive neighborhoods have no ads. You won't see many ads on Park Avenue in Manhattan.

Expensive HOAs ban lawn signs. You can pay extra for the ad-free Kindle from Amazon. If you buy books, the books are ad-free. Expensive newsletters are ad-free. Pay per view movies are ad-free (except when they have products inserted surreptitiously into the content on behalf of advertisers).

Are you seeing the pattern, here? You get to pick two from this set: cheap, good, fast. If it's cheap and fast, it'll be bad. If it's good and cheap, it'll take a long time. If it's fast and good, it won't be cheap.

Plenty of people -- the majority, really -- want lower prices in return for submitting to brain-scrambling.

Re: Be Suspicious of Online Movie Ratings

#198

Post by Kequc » Fri, Oct 16, 2015, 4:38 PM UTC

4ad wrote: post #129

eridius wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious, what was the 95% fresh movie that you thought was the worst movie in 2 decades?

"Gravity" wasn't the worst in two decades, but it is a pile of crap, and it does have 97% on RT and 7.9 on IMDB.

Everyone has different opinions but what was crap about it. Directed by the visionary behind Children of Men, which won best picture and rather than just making a bunch of easy films he spent 4 years making this one.

The cinematography required new innovations in ways to film space scenes. New rigs and such they invented that stuff on the production budget. The acting was top notch. It was stunning.

The cheesy stuff? The unrealistic parts of it? Maybe you could criticise those aspects of it, but they were intentional sacrifices made so the rest of the film could be fresh, new, attainable. The story arc was like a mini rollercoaster, never slowed down. I cheered for our protagonist.

Movies like that don't come out very often.

It's a borderline masterpiece my dear friend. A masterpiece I tell you. One of the prettiest looking things I've ever seen in Imax. It made me have feelings inside. I rated it as one of the best movies to come out in decades.

I think part of a film like that is the spectacle of it. It's probably harder to enjoy on a cellphone, is that what happened?

Re: Be Suspicious of Online Movie Ratings

#199

Post by eevilspock » Fri, Oct 16, 2015, 4:43 PM UTC

hagbardgroup wrote: post #197

eevilspock wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ran into? That's not an argument for ads. That's an argument for serendipity. We don't need ads for chance encounters of things that might be useful. You run across them when you visit someone's house, or a friend tells you about something great, or someone here on HN mentions it. Or maybe you do a web search and it comes up as a recommended alternative to planing doors. All of these are better than ads because the s…

Yes, we can. Private roads have no ads. Expensive neighborhoods have no ads. You won't see many ads on Park Avenue in Manhattan. Expensive HOAs ban lawn signs. You can pay extra for the ad-free Kindle from Amazon. If you buy books, the books are ad-free. Expensive newsletters are ad-free. Pay per view movies are ad-free (except when they have products inserted surreptitiously into the content on behalf of advertisers…

So, a two class system. The poor get by (taken advantage of is more like it) by submitting to "brain-scrambling". The rich get rich thorough said brain-scrambling. Excellent!

Not to mention it is utter bullshit that ads make things cheaper or free: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7485773. So much for your "pattern".

EDIT (since I can't reply to hagbardgroup at this thread depth): You didn't really read the link and the argument why it doesn't make anything free or cheaper (think about where the advertisers get their money that they pay Facebook), in fact the opposite. Ok, here is the same argument in different words: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8585237

Re: Be Suspicious of Online Movie Ratings

#200

Post by philh » Fri, Oct 16, 2015, 4:44 PM UTC

rm_-rf_slash wrote: post #144

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…

Hollywood has known what to do when they're selling shit for years: crank up the marketing to get as many people buying tickets as possible before word gets out that the film sucks. As a result the costs of films go way up to the degree that we're pretty much stuck with Oscar bait tragic dramas or the same lukewarm franchises we've had shoved down our throats before we were old enough to chew.

Hollywood wants to make films that people want to watch. They might be able to trick people into going to the cinema before the reviews come out, if necessary. But that won't save it in home entertainment, which is where most of the money is.

They're pretty good at it, too. This year, Furious 7 and Jurassic World have been two of the top-grossing films ever. That's not because people were tricked into seeing them, and didn't know what they were in for. It's because people enjoyed watching those films.