Are rating systems worth having?

Tbf, I'm also going off topic...and I'm the host of the thread lol.

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Well yeah. The discussion was engaging even though it was diverting from original focus.

Citizen mentioned a 5/5 needing to be perfect, which I don't think it does because then no film can get full marks because no film is perfect, although I suppose a reviewer can hold to that. From my experience full marks is for when the film really hits its marks incredibly well and is just so well-made and/or entertaining the viewer can't help but love it unendingly. After giving the film the full marks, the individual can then explain his reasons behind the full marks, and we can have the snippet of a simple number, and the elaboration of an intricate review.

My reviews are usually a bit "stream of consciousness" where I kind of ramble and type up thoughts about a film and don't amount to much more than two paragraphs of disjointed sentences so I don't typically write them. I am typically unfocused so reviews are hard. It's the same with posts online; I kind of type random thoughts and hope the messages make sense. Sometimes I actually succeed.

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To the Red River conversation - She flinches, a bit - and she's smiling because she was in the middle of flirting with Montgomery Clift, how rude of an arrow to interrupt that. And she maintains her cool and continues to banter with Clift because she a tough frontier woman, and just like there's no crying in baseball, there's no crying in an Indian fight (also, never let your potential boyfriend see you sweat).

I do have an issue with ending, but disagree that softening Wayne's behavior before that would have helped, that might possibly fix the finish, but doing so screws up the body of the picture. Him being an A-hole, and people putting up with it because they need an A-hole in that situation, is the thrust of the whole thing - along with creating an increasingly difficult, but compelling, relationship dynamic with Clift. But yeah, it's a flaw, but not enough of one to drop my grade more than a half a box.



Anyhoo - ratings alone can be enough for me as far as getting me to notice a movie. One of my rituals is to visit a site that lists forthcoming DVDs, then going to my local library's website and putting everything that had an, oh, 6.7, 6.8 and higher grades, into the holds.

Every weekend I'd pick up a stack - some of them I had no clue what they were about, I read no reviews or synopsis, just went in cold. Some of them didn't live up to the grade, but some wound up happy surprises.

I remember a movie titled Teddy Bear from 2012 - never heard of it or the director, I had no idea what I was about to watch when I popped the disc into the player - but I loved it, it was this slow moving, indie, non-traditional romance, that hit all the right notes. Things like that were the best.

Now, I do watch things with lower grades, for genres I like (such as westerns) or going by recommendations, or because of just plain stubbornness (to heck with it, I'll give it a go). The library thing is only a part of the discovery process, but it's been a great part.

So, with that, I'd say grades, just for the grades, are worth having.

I know it's a TV show, but I remember finding Pretty Little Liars after stumbling upon Ashley Benson through pure happenstance, and even though its IMDb score is like 6.7, the show sounded interesting, and now I'm almost through the whole show and have enjoyed it. It's an atypical show for me to watch, the whole teeny-bopper thing, except the mystery behind everything and the intrigue have kept me interested. I did take a breather to watch seasons two and three of Turn, and now I have season six of Pretty Little Liars back, and am near the end of the whole show. It's been pretty captivating.

Anyway the point is, the score didn't scare me away because the premise was enough to catch my attention. If it was 3.7 instead, I probably wouldn't have been as interested.

Your review/thoughts would be just as helpful as anyone else's.

I just want to reiterate that a movie needs to be perfect to be a 5/5, is only for myself. I know other people have different metrics, I can dig that.

Sounds like me

That all sounds great. We can go with all of that.

I don't really know what goes into a full fledged film review. When I start writing a review, it usually has random opinions that come to mind as they do, and then I reorder things to kind of make sense, and hope for the best. I don't like long reviews, especially writing them. If I write one or two paragraphs of thoughts, that should be plenty. If that's all one needs, then I'm fine with that.

I rate rating systems 2.5 out of 5, with 0 being the worst and 5 being the best.

I'll rate this post a . Interpret that as you will.

I honestly don't know whether they are "worth" having, but they overall seem to be there so that people who weren't involved in the creation of a movie can have a way to participate in the consumption/use of the movie after it has been released, which of course is good for the movie industry in general.

I've learned to take reviews seriously just because when people warn something is bad and not worth your time/money, then they're often right. However, what I usually look for in reading reviews before I decide to watch something is an actual description that demonstrates the person really did think about their experience. If it's appealing enough to me, sometimes I will not look at reviews at all, because you can't know what kind of an experience you will get until you watch.

I think ratings themselves would be more useful for consumers if they were broken down into mutli-dimensional rating systems like GamePro used to have. For movies, it could be something like this:

Visuals: (1 through 5)

(rate the special effects, and the overall artistic elements)

Plot and Dialogue:

(how good of a job did the writers do?)

Acting:

(was the acting convincing, we're the actors really having a good time with this?)

Overall, I feel the burden of the quality of a movie generally rests on the script writers and production team, whereas the actors are basically like the hitmen (they are just payed to do their thing). It's a creative work for everyone involved, but generally when I see bad acting, it must have to do with how inspiring the whole project was and the culture of the set.

Indeed I do and it's a matter of Friday night. We want to go out, get some dinner, take in a movie and between 3 locally owned theaters that show non-mainstream movies with artistic pretentions, I want to make a good guess on what to see. I seek expert advice, not the wisdom of the masses. I don't exactly dislike mainstream movies, but I like to find some of the ones that are outside popularity, perhaps something like the unappreciated sequel, "My Dinner With Andre, The Next Day". "Experts" have someone else paying for their tickets. I have to pay for mine, so I'd rather check some advice first. I can ignore the advice, but, I'd rather have it.

Ratings only work if there is more information than just a number. Without knowing why something was given a specific rating, there's no way to know how much weight to give to that specific rating.

For example, when I use the self-checkout at Walmart, there's always an option to give a rating (1 - 5 stars) after I pay. Because we have so many problems at Walmart, Hubby always gives a 1-star rating, (even if we didn't have any problems that day). But without knowing why they were given a 1-star rating, there's no way to fix the problems, so the rating is basically useless.

Also, I know from selling online that there are some people who never give a 5-star rating, even if everything was perfect, because they feel that a 5-star rating leaves no room for improvement. (I've actually had buyers on eBay who have left a 4-star rating and also messaged me to let me know that I deserved 5 stars, but they never give the highest rating.)

These issues can be applied to movies as well because some people will take off point(s) when rating a movie because of something minor in the movie, or they just don't like to leave a 5-star rating because they don't believe that a "perfect" movie exists, but without a written review, (even if it's only a few sentences), there's no way to know what they didn't like about the movie.

Also, some people, (like me), don't have a valid explanation for why they give specific ratings. The ratings are not based on any kind of analysis of the movie, but just a feeling of how much they liked or disliked the movie in a more general sense.

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I'm just now coming back to this thread and catching up on it a bit, but I find it amusing (in a good way) how the whole thing got side-tracked into a Red River discussion. I was just using that film, my favorite of all time btw, as an example to test the popcorn rating tag because I suck with computers and technology.

As far as Joanne Dru and her performance in Red River goes, she fits the mold of the Howard Hawksian woman archetype. They go from being headstrong, loud, confident then to hysterical, then to being tough, and then to being one of the guys, and then to having a breakdown or something where they are "finally tamed" in true Shakespearian Taming of the Shrew fashion. Obviously that's an oversimplification and that template might not fit every single Hawks female character in all his films, but still. The way Dru reacted or her non-reaction fits the bill and works perfectly in the film and in the context of it being a Howard Hawks' picture.

She probably had her breakdown before Cherry, Matt, or any of the other cowboys even got there and when the arrow hit her she was one her "comedown" and then passes out after it hits. When the arrow struck her, she was tired, annoyed, had likely already had her hysterical breakdown and was just emotionally drained and ready to just go with whatever. Also, from my own personal experience, there's some truth to this... I was attacked and bit on the throat (drawing blood and leaving a mark) and nearly killed by a bull mastiff one time. I was angry on the inside, yet calm externally in the moment, but 15 minutes after it happened I had a complete nervous breakdown - was shaking and crying and couldn't get it together because it finally dawned on me that I was centimeters away from dying. Then after that while in the ER, I did almost fall asleep just from being amped up in the moment and the energy dump.

So in my experience, it's perfectly plausible and passable that Dru has a non-reaction to a traumatic physical injury.

Oh and I do love the "no crying in baseball" A League of Their Own connection. Also the ending I originally had issues with in Red River, but the more I think about it and the older I get and understand how pride and ego are, the more it actually does make sense. Think of two men who've said and promised they are "going to kick each other's ass!" - maybe neither one of them truly wants to fight, maybe they even secretly admire or like each other, but because pride and ego is on the table AND because they've both said they are going to fight the other person and are men of their words, they'll continue to go at each other until something, someone, anything comes in between them so they have an "out" to "save face." That's what Joanne Dru's character does in the end when she has a hysterical fit and stops the fight and if anyone knew "man psychologically" it was Howard Hawks. Sure, it might be something of a stretch, but it's by no means implausible and out of nowhere. Also, and again Red River is my favorite film of all time and I've likely have seen it dern near 20 times... when Wayne stops at the camp while chasing Clift down and has a discussion about babies and legacy, she cuts him off and already you can see both these characters letting their guards down, whereas before that wouldn't have happened. It's the scene where Dru keeps the little revolver in her sling and Duke has one under the table.

"It wouldn't've done you any good."





Red River (1948, Howard Hawks)

Yep still works.

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Go to the doctor... for a three or four on the pain scale?

C'mon now! Do you think a real man, like The Marlboro Man would get off his horse and go crying to the doctor for a three or a four? Not. At. All! And us men, we gotta have standards and not lose our man card to no three or four on a scale of ten pain. What kind of pansy do you think I am?

This here's Marlboro country!

Ha!

That's the problem with ratings in a nutshell. Having done rating scales for a living in one of my past lives, I know how weak they can be as well as the limitations of what you get from them.

The problem is the same, whether it's movies, food, service at Walmart or whatever. A simple numerical scale needs benchmarks, constructed by people who know about what purpose the rating is to serve, who will be the raters, etc. None of that happens when you can click on popcorn bags on a web site where all you need is a pseudonym, an attitude and a password.

The other half, however, is what purpose the people who collect ratings expect it to be and who are the responders. In the case of the popcorn rating on the movie site, there's an assumption that people on that web site are more interested in movies that someone who is NOT looking at the web site. That selects a more cinema-literate group. Once you have a more literate group of responders, the value of their clicks goes up. It's not the same as polling 17 year olds in the Mall Cineplex on Date Night. It's about people like me that actually like movies, have seen lots of them, and pay for tickets.

It won't tell you everything you need to know, but it's OK. Often, subjective ratings are a good thing, especially in anything about the art world.....a simple "Did you like it?".

My rating system is very simple: if it's on my shelf then it's a winner. I only collect the crème de la crème and I don't care about sixes and sevens.

Yeah, but, my shelf space is full enough that some favorite movies, or, movies that I'd rate high but don't expect to rewatch are not there. Some movies that are ON my shelf are not movies I'd rate all that high but they work like late night drugs to put me to sleep, so, my shelf is a dubious indicator of quality.