(4 minute read)
TV show reviewers are predominantly male according to IMDb data visualized by FiveThirtyEight:
You're a busy person. You don't have time for bad movies, so you go to the only source that can pull up movie scores in seconds – Google. You Google your movie while sitting on your couch in your overworn sweatpants for the 9th week in a row in quarantine as you prepare for tonight's entertainment. Maybe you're a numbers girl/guy or maybe you think you're just practical. "If it's below a failing letter grade (<60%) on Rotten Tomatoes, then it's not worth my time."
And trailers?! Forget about it. That's 3 minutes of your life you won't get back. And YouTube trailer likes-to-dislikes won't predict Rotten Tomatoes scores accurately...
Before (97% approval on YouTube):
After (5% critics' approval):
Below is a list of 5 methods you can use to measure how good a movie really is before pressing play.
5. Check Two Sets of Ratings 🎞
I've been saying this for years: Check IMDb alongside Rotten Tomatoes. IMDb, The Internet Movie Database, was founded in 1990, five years before the dot-com bubble. It has been storing data for 30 years, 22 of those years have been under one of the largest companies in America that also happens to be the leader in all cloud computing services through its subsidiary, Amazon Web Services. In fact, founder Jeff Bezos bought IMDb the year Rotten Tomatoes was founded in 1998. In other words, IMDb has been storing data longer and is being powered by the best cloud computing software in AWS.
Now no one really knows what a good IMDb score is because no one probably told you. It's a 7/10 or more based on the average, using data from 949K titles.
I usually like to cross reference Rotten Tomatoes Scores with IMDb ratings just as a check. Mentally I put more weight towards IMDb because of the larger sample size of reviewers, but if the two scores are very different then that raises some concerns. Usually both sources will agree if a movie is really good or really bad, but when they disagree, that is when you need to withhold judgment for now and move on to the next 4 steps.
4. Control Ratings for Gender Bias 🧠
This Wired article makes #5 look bad because it takes away some of the credibility of ratings. To sum up, every movie review aggregator and ratings system is inherently biased.
One of the main conclusions of that article can be understood in this much more data-driven FiveThirtyEight article titled,
"Men Are Sabotaging The Online Reviews Of TV Shows Aimed At Women"
As you can see the distribution skew that only a small minority of TV show IMDb ratings have a gender makeup of at least 50% women.
And the male-skewing distribution is the same for movie reviewers according to a 2017 USC Study:
Thus ratings of tv shows and movies are being skewed towards the opinions of men, which is useful to know when evaluating reviews across different genres because women generally have different preferences than men.
Sample of Survey Results:
-> 77% of women favored Romance compared to 55% of men. (most significant differential)
-> 64% of women favored Musicals compared to 48% of men.
-> 89% of women favored Dramas compared to 80% of men.
-> 84% of women favored Romantic Comedies compared to 67% of men.
-> 75% of women favored Animated Films compared to 65% of men.
-> 62% of women favored Sci-fi compared to 76% of men.
What you need to think about when you pick a movie is the genre and its target audience. In general if the interest gap between genders is wide like in Romance or Musicals, then take Rotten Tomatoes and IMDb scores with a big grain of salt because men are more likely to give those genres lower scores than women, which will manifest itself on IMDb and RT's pages. If the interest gap is small like in Comedies (90 M /91 F favorability split), then you can feel a bit more confident in trusting Rotten Tomatoes and IMDb scores.
Even with that information, you should continue on to the next 3 steps.
3. Number of Oscars 🎥
Another good indicator albeit difficult to obtain for most films is the Oscar Count. For one, most films are not nominated for Oscars and two, newer films will not receive recognition until the Oscar ceremonies.
Assuming you did have access to that information, know that an Academy Award is the most prestigious and respected award in the film industry, decided by professionals in the film industry. More often than not, movies that win Oscars are usually very high quality and corroborated by multiple news outlets, critics, and audience sentiment.
Britannica does a great job answering the question "Who Votes for the Academy Awards?" which adds context into how the voting process works. Any Academy member can vote for Best Picture.
2. Letterboxd, the Yelp for Cinephiles 🍿
One website you should check out is Letterboxd, a reference to the video format containing two black bars that sandwich a movie screen like this. Take a look at Parasite's Letterboxd profile to get a sense of the website.
Marketed as the social network for film enthusiasts, Letterboxd also acts as a movie log or diary. Use the mobile app or their website to add movies to your watchlist, track films that you have already seen, and review them like you would on Yelp or Amazon. The best reviews are upvoted and brought to the top, and each reviewer has the option to hide their review if it contains spoilers.
There's a wealth of qualitative data on this website to analyze, and it's probably one of the easiest tools to use outside of Rotten Tomatoes.
1. Social Media Posts and Expert Word of Mouth
Another cool, quick way of identifying trending films is to check Twitter trends and Instagram Hashtagas.
These are two data-driven ways of seeing how popular a film is judging by the number of tweets or hashtags associated with the movie.
Here's an example when searching for Parasite's hashtag.
Compare that to another Best Picture like The Shape of Water, which has been out longer and you can immediately see the number of posts with that hashtag. The challenge with doing this method is that not all hashtags are created equal. Parasite is also a generic word but people still might be using in their posts to describe the film and there will always be noise, or posts completely unrelated to the film but still use the hashtag. Something like #mycousinvinny would be a much more accurate hashtag as that phrase will most likely be used to talk about the film and not about someone's cousin who's also named Vinny.
Then there's Twitter. All you have to do is login and look at the Trending sidebar on the right for desktop or it will be on the bottom for mobile. Like on Instagram, this will also show you the number of tweets or people talking about a certain topic. Give this a look when a new title comes out.
Last but not least, it's always important to listen to other people, but not just anyone, the "experts" or even the amateur experts. People who spend more time watching a particular film genre have trained themselves to identify what makes a good film for that specific genre. These are the diehard comic book nerds, the chick-flick fangirls, the fantasy geeks, the historical documentary buffs, and more. This could be you and anyone you know.
The reasoning here is that fervent fans of genre X are more likely to have seen more of genre X movies. As a result, those people are more likely to acquire a finer taste. They will be able to discern a good horror movie from a bad one, and they can better explain why that is to someone who has never seen a horror flick. In short, Genre-Seasoned Reviewers, if you will, can better articulate how a film is entertaining and what makes it different from the rest.
So the next time you're preparing to watch a new genre, try asking any available experts:
-- For fantasy films, ask fiction readers
-- For war movies, why not ask your grandparents or relatives and friends in the force
-- For historical dramas, ask history buffs
It very well may be difficult to find someone who is both a seasoned watcher AND someone who watched the movie you are considering to see, but this could be the best available opinion out there for you
An added bonus is that talking to a friend who is Genre-Seasoned will know your tastes, so they can more accurately predict whether a movie is worth your time.
All of this is data: how much the person knows about a particular genre, how the person remembered the film, and his or her knowledge of your interests. Use this to evaluate the next upcoming film and don't waste your time with ones that you may not enjoy. There are so many options now and if you're me, you want to spend your precious time on the ones that have a higher probability of making you satisfied.