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Movies and TV Ratings

Aug 2, 2008
Why do we use ratings and reviews?
The answer is very simple – we want to make the right purchase, in this case the right movie, and to avoid time wasted and bad choices. But what exactly is a rating? Isn’t it just another person’s opinion? Should we really consider someone else’s opinion before we make our own? Then again, how can we have an opinion without watching the movie first? The only reason we took the time to view the ratings and maybe read the reviews is to save the effort and time of going to see a movie we know we won’t like.There are two basic systems that give you information about the quality of a film – review and ratings. Each will give you either one person’s opinion or an aggregation of reviews and audience ratings. Newspapers, TV shows, magazines, commercials, radio, and of course the ultimate source of knowledge – the internet – all offer reviews and rating systems, all have their own reviewers, media/cinema specialists who “know” the business, who saw all the movies, who understand our interests, our likes and dislikes. But do they? Can we really depend on these reviews to tell us which movie is worth seeing and which is not? On the other hand, can we really depend on the knowledge of the masses, when all of them, just like you, earned their knowledge by listening or reading other people’s opinions? The review system in newspapers and magazines that uses cinema experts to rate and write their knowledgeable opinions has its own inherent flaws – after all these are only opinions. How many times did you end up disappointed after watching a movie that got great reviews? How many times has movie ‘killed’ by the critics’ become a cult-movie or at least a fairly decent DVD movie – “blade runner” being the perfect example of that? As I said, this method has its own inherent flaw, a review, such that it is, is only an opinion, and opinions, to stay true to the words of Larry Flint (“The people vs. Larry Flint, Columbia Pictures Corp., 1996), are like assholes, everybody’s got one…The other system – the aggregate method – is a summary or better said, an average of some sort and is created out of a total; gathered according to some type of rating system. For example – imdb.com; The Internet Movies Data Base web-site, gives every user the opportunity to rate any movie on the scale of 1-10. Each rating adds up to the general rating of the movie and an average of the ratings is shown on the web-site. This is one of the more popular systems, and frankly one of the better ones, but it is not free of flaws. The main flaw with this system is also one of its strengths – everyone can change the average. While the review system relies too much on the expert opinion, the aggregate, or better said – the popular system relies only on the opinions of the masse, which by all means is not really professional. The second problem with this system is mathematical – assume that a movie was released and only one person saw it, or to be realistic, only one person rated it. In the average system, this rating will show as the movie’s rate, but in what way is this different from the review method. My point is that the aggregate system works just like its name – it getting better only when a large number of rating are available. When the numbers are low this system is no different from the review method, and even worse – while in the review method you can at least account for the “expert’s opinion”, in the popular system which opinion/review/rating can you really count on?So should we really read these reviews and take the time to check the ratings for the sake of deciding which movie we should see or not? Or should it be just another way for us to enjoy the experience of the movie. Very often I find myself reading the reviews before watching a movie. My watching experience, and for that my opinion as well, are influenced by it. But on the other hand there were those rare occasions when a review I read actually enhanced my experience of the film and enriched my knowledge of it. Those rare reviews helped me see aspects of the movie I could have not seen without it, and simply enjoy the movie more for the same price. And after all isn’t that all we rally want?I like to read reviews, I feel as if I am involved in a conversation about the movie, I like to read the “people’s” reviews as well and not just the experts, but I try not to decide which movie to go to based only on reviews. So when a new movie comes out and I need to make up my mind about whether to go see it, I usually use my two private methods. First, I go to imdb.com (or rottentomatoes.com or any other web site that shows the popular ratings) and then I look into the plot, the director, and the actors in the movie. I then read a couple of reviews on the internet and if there is a newspaper near by I read the reviews there too. I logically weigh all the pros and cons from the data I gathered and then I usually use my second method to make the final decision – my wife.So enjoy the movie and everything around it, including the reviews… Read my personal ratings and reviews analysis next time.
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About "Uri" (The online video guide expert who writes this blog)
If it went through the silver screen or any screen for that matter Uri knows about it, specific movies and general movie rankings are his sweet spot. Uri is the movie expert of the online video guide.
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