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A data science investigation of IMDB, Rotten Tomatoes, Metacritic and Fandango

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Re: A data science investigation of IMDB, Rotten Tomatoes, Metacritic and Fandango

#11

Post by ghaff »

minimaxir wrote: post #9

I did a similar analysis a year and a half ago in which I found that yes, IMDb movie ratings are not uniform while RT/MetaCritic are, but that's only part of the story. All forms of movie ratings are actually poor predictors of box office success (especially with Indies/Documentaties; I'd love to look at rating/BO data again while faceting by genre of movie) (full blog post: http://minimaxir.com/2016/01/movie-revenue…

I guess it doesn't surprise me that a fan rating site like IMDb skews high. While there are films that elicit strong negative reactions, on average I would think that people see and rate films that they expect to like. I know that there are a vast number of movies out there I would never expect to enjoy; mostly, I just ignore them. If I'm going to spend a couple hours watching something I almost certainly have at least neutral to mildly positive expectations going in.

Re: A data science investigation of IMDB, Rotten Tomatoes, Metacritic and Fandango

#12

Post by wslh »

ghaff wrote: post #10
wslh wrote: post #4

Cinephile here and I cannot follow any ranking for a non popular movie and for blockbusters I can't either. I don't buy that you can have a good ranking for everyone. You should separate in different clusters. For example, Wonder woman score at Metacritic? 76. Are you kidding me? BTW this is my shared ranking: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1ojCTmnu8-uIXxnas142M... EDIT: changed 7.6 to 76 based on the comment…

Clearly the less mainstream your tastes are, the less useful a mainstream rating is going to be. A site can, as Netflix tries to do, adjust ratings based on expressed individual preferences but it's marginally effective in my experience. For myself, it's fairly rare that I find myself way off from the critical consensus. I'm more likely to not care for big box office action films but, then, these aren't usually at th…

The problem I see is that mainstream films scores are trivial to calculate and are pretty unusable because you just need to the see the list of the few successful films worldwide. Then you have a lengthy list of films that should be weighted in a different way.

Re: A data science investigation of IMDB, Rotten Tomatoes, Metacritic and Fandango

#13

Post by alex_g »

beloch wrote: post #8

Another pitfall to be wary of in analyses like these is that imdb's ratings change over time. New releases typically have inflated scores that regress over time. Ideally, this sort of analysis shouldn't use anything under a year or two old, so using only movies from 2016 and 2017 puts this particular study off to a really bad start.

But isn't that the case for all of these websites, not just IMDB?

Re: A data science investigation of IMDB, Rotten Tomatoes, Metacritic and Fandango

#14

Post by ghaff »

wslh wrote: post #12
ghaff wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Clearly the less mainstream your tastes are, the less useful a mainstream rating is going to be. A site can, as Netflix tries to do, adjust ratings based on expressed individual preferences but it's marginally effective in my experience. For myself, it's fairly rare that I find myself way off from the critical consensus. I'm more likely to not care for big box office action films but, then, these aren't usually at th…

The problem I see is that mainstream films scores are trivial to calculate and are pretty unusable because you just need to the see the list of the few successful films worldwide. Then you have a lengthy list of films that should be weighted in a different way.

Worldwide box office definitely skews to big budget action film though. Unless that's your thing, critic ratings are probably better.

Recommendations is a really tough problem even within a fairly narrow problem domain like film or music. I find Amazon and Netflix to mostly be pretty bad and you can be sure they've invested heavily.

Re: A data science investigation of IMDB, Rotten Tomatoes, Metacritic and Fandango

#15

Post by posterboy »

ghaff wrote: post #10
wslh wrote: post #4

Cinephile here and I cannot follow any ranking for a non popular movie and for blockbusters I can't either. I don't buy that you can have a good ranking for everyone. You should separate in different clusters. For example, Wonder woman score at Metacritic? 76. Are you kidding me? BTW this is my shared ranking: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1ojCTmnu8-uIXxnas142M... EDIT: changed 7.6 to 76 based on the comment…

Clearly the less mainstream your tastes are, the less useful a mainstream rating is going to be. A site can, as Netflix tries to do, adjust ratings based on expressed individual preferences but it's marginally effective in my experience. For myself, it's fairly rare that I find myself way off from the critical consensus. I'm more likely to not care for big box office action films but, then, these aren't usually at th…

The parent claimed there was no such thing as mainstream taste, basically.

Re: A data science investigation of IMDB, Rotten Tomatoes, Metacritic and Fandango

#16

Post by ko27 »

alex_g wrote: post #13
beloch wrote: post #8

Another pitfall to be wary of in analyses like these is that imdb's ratings change over time. New releases typically have inflated scores that regress over time. Ideally, this sort of analysis shouldn't use anything under a year or two old, so using only movies from 2016 and 2017 puts this particular study off to a really bad start.

But isn't that the case for all of these websites, not just IMDB?

Rotten tomatoes/meta-critic ratings don't change anymore after a month or so, unlike IMDB where newer movies are trending downward for at-least a year or two.

Re: A data science investigation of IMDB, Rotten Tomatoes, Metacritic and Fandango

#17

Post by ghaff »

posterboy wrote: post #15
ghaff wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Clearly the less mainstream your tastes are, the less useful a mainstream rating is going to be. A site can, as Netflix tries to do, adjust ratings based on expressed individual preferences but it's marginally effective in my experience. For myself, it's fairly rare that I find myself way off from the critical consensus. I'm more likely to not care for big box office action films but, then, these aren't usually at th…

The parent claimed there was no such thing as mainstream taste, basically.

And I'm not sure I agree.

Tastes do vary; I think it's fair to say that the average theatergoer has somewhat different tastes than I do.

But. If I read reviews of the critics at the major pubs and go to the movies they recommend, I may see some films that aren't to my tastes--just the sort of thing I KNOW isn't going to be my bag going in--and I may miss a few I'd really enjoy. But it's not a bad filter. And many of the people I know have relatively similar tastes.

Maybe that just means I'm of a similar demographic and have similar tastes to many critics. There does seem to be some consensus though.

Re: A data science investigation of IMDB, Rotten Tomatoes, Metacritic and Fandango

#18

Post by baddox »

ZoeZoeBee wrote: post #5

Fandango, Rotten Tomatoes, IMDB and Metacritic are owned by content distributors/creators, Fandango and Rotten Tomatoes are owned by Comcast/Time Warner, Amazon owns IMDB while CBS owns Meta-critic. It's no coincidence the accuracy of ratings sites have deteriorated over the past few years, one of the most glaring violations of trust has been Rotten Tomatoes pre-certifying movies as "Fresh" and keeping it so despite…

What do you mean by "pre-certifying movies as 'Fresh'"? They're pretty clear about the definition of "Certified Fresh":

> Movies and TV shows are Certified Fresh with a steady Tomatometer of 75% or higher after a set amount of reviews (80 for wide-release movies, 40 for limited-release movies, 20 for TV shows), including 5 reviews from Top Critics.

https://www.rottentomatoes.com/browse/cf-dvd-streaming-all/

Re: A data science investigation of IMDB, Rotten Tomatoes, Metacritic and Fandango

#19

Post by O1111OOO »

ZoeZoeBee wrote: post #5

Fandango, Rotten Tomatoes, IMDB and Metacritic are owned by content distributors/creators, Fandango and Rotten Tomatoes are owned by Comcast/Time Warner, Amazon owns IMDB while CBS owns Meta-critic. It's no coincidence the accuracy of ratings sites have deteriorated over the past few years, one of the most glaring violations of trust has been Rotten Tomatoes pre-certifying movies as "Fresh" and keeping it so despite…

Sadly... so much of what we get these days is manipulated. Can hardly wait for how big business plans to tweak "AI" to further muddy the info we receive./s

I usually first go to Wikipedia and get a summary of the critical reviews, length of film, some other stats. Head over to IMDB for a synopsis of the film (wikipedia doesn't do summary very well, focusing instead on entire plot). Maybe skim over a couple of user reviews (both positive and negative).

If it looks interesting, I'll head over to Youtube and watch the trailer. It's always the trailer that decides for me. Having watched plenty of films over the years, I pick up a tremendous amount of info from a 2-3 minute trailer.

Re: A data science investigation of IMDB, Rotten Tomatoes, Metacritic and Fandango

#20

Post by mulvya »

There must be platforms that try to do 'graph-matching' i.e. ask a new user to rate 25-30 popular movies. Compare against scores of other users who have rated the same movies. Identify a cluster of users who rate similarly; our new user is matched with this group. So, for other movies, the user can check the mean/modal score by members in this cluster. Sound familiar?
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