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A better way to rate films

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Re: A better way to rate films

#21

Post by glen_goodfilms »

wvl wrote: post #19
glen_goodfilms wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a really important point, and it'll probably justify its own blog post soon, but a quick response would be this: I'd class United 93 and Black Swan as being, sort of, emotionally exhausting. And yes, I'm not going to rush out see them again. But that's very different to saying they're a bad film. I would suggest that, at high levels of quality, low levels of rewatchability makes it actually a better film, in…

I guess then, it depends on execution. If you're combining both of these numbers into one single metric of "goodness", then you'll just be accomplishing Pahalial's point of "legitimizing 'poor taste'". If, however, you can expose this information separately and well, then perhaps it will add value. Personally, I'd like to break down the "rewatchability" metric into more components, to really get at the heart of the m…

Yeah there's no sense in combining them. Or even averaging scores, really. Using a scatter plot you can get quite a good insight into the film at a glance.

As for which movies are the outliers, that you'll find out when you're a member :)

Re: A better way to rate films

#22

Post by covercash »

socratic wrote: post #9

I really want a good movie recommender system. (Which I suppose makes this a good idea to work on.) However, focusing on these sorts of issues seems like exactly the wrong way to go about it. I understand that people overwhelmingly tend towards the extremes of rating scales. But who cares? There's so much noise anyway. Here's what I want: (1) include (all) films and television series and (2) include top 1000 lists fo…

While not exactly what you're looking for, I find myself going back to http://nanocrowd.com quite often for movie recommendations.

They don't do TV shows, but their niche categories are usually pretty solid.

It works well if you can give them an example of the type of movie you feel like watching. For instance, I wanted to watch a cheesy, nerdy, thriller earlier tonight, something along the lines of Hackers and it suggested The Net, Antitrust, TRON, Live Free or Die Hard, The Matrix, Swordfish, etc. Exactly what I was in the mood for.

Re: A better way to rate films

#23

Post by nostromo »

Another issue with five star ratings is that visually you would suspect that a 50% rating is 2.5 out of 5 stars.

However, the 50% rating is actually 3 stars. This is obvious when you list out your star options: 1,2,3,4,5. 3/5 stars visually appears to be better than 50%, but is actually exactly 50% due to the inability to choose 0 stars.

(This seems unresolvable as most people now recognize the image of 5 unfilled stars as null rather than 0%.)

Re: A better way to rate films

#25

Post by tryitnow »

wvl wrote: post #12

I really disagree with the premise of this post. Emotional impact (United 93), psychological impact (Black Swan), intellectual demands (Primer) all equate to a lower rewatchability score, since watching the movie takes a lot out of me. However, the more of an impact a movie makes, the higher my opinion of a movie. Because something is light and fluffy doesn't make that movie "better", it just means it's easier to wat…

I think that's certainly true for some people (e.g. you), but just the opposite is true for me.

I would like a meta-rating system where I could select the rating algorithm that would work for me. That would be nice.

Re: A better way to rate films

#26

Post by wanorris »

Pahalial wrote: post #11

This seems useful, yet awfully much like another step on the slow path to legitimizing 'poor taste'. That's a bit harsh, so let me qualify it. I actually rather agree with the division inherent in this and think it will resound with people, but I honestly believe that this is yet another step towards turning our society into idiocracy. It's the slow legitimization of appreciation for content that we acknowledge as ga…

I have a job that I put extra time into, a longish commute, and two enthusiastic boys. When my wife and I get time to watch a movie at all, we want to watch an entertainment, not high culture. I'm pretty sure that historically, the primary consumers of high culture have been the independently wealthy and people who don't have young children that they raise themselves.

I have an Ivy League liberal arts degree, I know what high culture is, and I'm actually quite fond of it, on the whole. But I won't apologize for what I feel like watching these days, and if you try to stigmatize it, I'll laugh in your face and carry on doing what I feel like.

Re: A better way to rate films

#27

Post by ComputerGuru »

I posted this on the site, posting it here too:

I would say a better metric would be "How much did you enjoy this film?" vs "How good is this movie?"

I've been grappling with this problem since subscribing to Netflix, wondering how I should rate a movie I personally did not enjoy that I also felt was incredibly well made. For example, "A Clockwork Orange" is an incredible movie by all means and I would give it 97 stars out of a hundred.... but I hated every single second of it. It's gruesome, sadistic, dark, miserable, and disgusting. But it was undeniably well made.

Rewatchability sucks in the aspect because many movies can't be rewatched, while still being both splendidly produced and enjoyable. Let me make this clearer with examples: "The Sixth Sense," "Rear Window," "The Accused," "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly," "12 Angry Men," "Apollo 13..." The list goes on and on. There are great movies that just don't rank so highly because they're SUSPENSEFUL and that suspense doesn't translate will into rewatches. Rewatching suspenseful movies will make them seem boring and long-drawn.

Rewatching feel-good movies ("Seven Pounds," "How To Train Your Dragon," "Blind Side," etc.) however, is just as good the second time if not better.

tl;dr the rewatchability index will be heavily skewed towards feel-good favorites and epics, and away from dark, gritty, mysterious, and suspenseful. Not a good index.

Re: A better way to rate films

#28

Post by thirdsun »

socratic wrote: post #9

I really want a good movie recommender system. (Which I suppose makes this a good idea to work on.) However, focusing on these sorts of issues seems like exactly the wrong way to go about it. I understand that people overwhelmingly tend towards the extremes of rating scales. But who cares? There's so much noise anyway. Here's what I want: (1) include (all) films and television series and (2) include top 1000 lists fo…

edit: I just noticed that you already know jinni. sorry.

I use jinni.com - it is basically last.fm for movies and tv shows. The site could need a better user interface, but the movies are very well tagged, which enables you to dig deep into niche categories. For example you are not only able to filter by genre (drama, comedy, etc.) which is very general, but instead there are filter options for the plot too (corruption, love, drugs, mind-bending,...).

Also their recommendation engine works quite well and gives you accurate suggestion which are not that obvious or popular.

So, while not cutting-edge, jinni.com is probably the closest to the movie discovery service i wish to exist.

Re: A better way to rate films

#29

Post by carbocation »

glen_goodfilms wrote: post #21
wvl wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess then, it depends on execution. If you're combining both of these numbers into one single metric of "goodness", then you'll just be accomplishing Pahalial's point of "legitimizing 'poor taste'". If, however, you can expose this information separately and well, then perhaps it will add value. Personally, I'd like to break down the "rewatchability" metric into more components, to really get at the heart of the m…

Yeah there's no sense in combining them. Or even averaging scores, really. Using a scatter plot you can get quite a good insight into the film at a glance. As for which movies are the outliers, that you'll find out when you're a member :)

On your scatterplot, the correlation between the two scores looks incredibly high. By eyeballing it, I'd say > 0.8. Will you give the actual score in your upcoming post?

Ideally, it would be nice to find two axes that are orthogonal and let people rate on those. Clearly these two axes are highly correlated.

Re: A better way to rate films

#30

Post by mkolodny »

I think that "rewatchablility" is an important metric, but it's just one of so many different metrics that people use to judge what a great movie is.

As you said, there are plenty of terrific movies for which I wouldn't be upset if I never saw them again. Yet, would I recommend them? Yes.

Movies are so wonderfully complex that there is no single metric by which we can judge their credibility. We can only state our opinion of them, and leave the judgement to the next viewer.

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