IMD ratings are stupid. I almost never see a rating even as high as 9 for anything no matter how much people love a movie or consider it one of the greatest ever made:
Citizen Kane: 8.3
The Maltese Falcon: 7.9
Star Wars: 8.6
No Country for Old Men: 8.2
The Shining: 8.4
Lawrence of Arabia: 8.3
Psycho: 8.5
Here’s a few 9s.
Schindler’s List: 9.0
The Godfather: 9.2
The Shawshank Redemption: 9.3
That’s how rare it is. Even The Shawshank Redemption couldn’t get a 10.
Edit: Whooosh for me on the joke. And I love This is Spinal Tap too. I love it so much I sat through the terrible 4-hour rough cut on the Internet Archive.
Rotten Tomato ratings are stupid.
With every review being either a 👍 or 👎, the most simple meh movie that nobody hates (or loves), gets a 100% fresh.
IMDb and Metacritic are much better.
I find Rotten Tomatoes much more useful. Knowing that 90% of critics gave a favorable review is infinitely more helpful for my decision to watch a movie than its IMDB score.
As long as you know what it is, consensus as to okay-ness or better, then it’s still a decent metric. Still, “universally okay” is not always what I’m after, nor is it quite the achievement the studios will proclaim.
If you’re inclined to take reviews seriously (and it’s a whole other discussion, but I very much believe criticism and analysis are worthwhile when done well in their own right) , still better to find a few sources whose takes tend to line up with your own.
I honestly don’t find any number rating especially useful.
What I have found useful is to follow 3 or 4 specific movie critics, get to know their opinions and contrast them with my own. We’re never going to agree on every movie, but at least I’ll know why they liked or didn’t like it as a way to figure out if it’s worth my time.
They’re about general critic and public sentiment.
And for that, no movie should ever get a perfect 10. No movie could ever get a perfect 10.
They are useful for evaluating a movie’s actual quality. But quality has nothing to do with any individuals enjoyment of a movie.
Maybe instead of 1-dimensional number scales, we should move to something like 4 quadrants, where different movie qualities are represented?
Because rating a movie isn’t just like shit - meh - ok - great, but should be much more detailed.
This could represent something like how well it was done in different scales in one view, and I can choose what matches my mood.
Really good rated movies are sometimes also hard to follow/process, and a movie with a light mood won’t get those good ratings, but would still be exactly the thing I’m currently looking for.
So, I haven’t really thought this through, but if we create a more dimensional rating system, it would be maybe easier to find, what I’m really looking for.
This is more or less a shower thought, but I really think, that the problem lies in the one dimensional rating system, which cannot represent the multitude of experiences I want from a movie
ThanksKilling was peak cinema. Gobble gobble, motherfucker!
I don’t want ratings from imdb. I want facts about the film from imdb.
I really like movies that were critically panned. I hate movies that are very popular. I’ll watch terrible movies for the MST3K of it all. Ratings are worthless.
I want to know who played Guy With Grocery Bag in the scene in The Clampertons when Glenn Clamperton was running down the street chasing the demon giraffe that stole his pocket watch, you know the guy who says “What in the neck is going on?” Because is he the same guy as the pilot in Club Paradise?
That’s what I want imdb for.
I really like movies that were critically panned.
Agreed. Critics hate Zardoz. They are incorrect. In fact, all Zardoz-haters are incorrect.
I hate movies that are very popular.
I really do not like Rogue One. I know everyone else thinks it’s the best Star Wars movie. I didn’t like it in the theater and then I watched it again to see what I must have missed and I still didn’t like it. (I did like Andor.)
I’ll watch terrible movies for the MST3K of it all.
