Criticker ratings and difficult watches

[oplars]

AFlickering, I think you misread my post when you say that I "project dishonest posturing onto people". And when you make a quote as if I have said the following

"the algorithm recommending me stalker is proof that Criticker users are pretentious and rate films highly solely because they're considered artistic--"

you are making a strawman.
I do not say people at Criticker are dishonest, but there is a difference between rating due to the degree of one's subjective enjoyment and rating due to the objective quality - both ways of rating are equally valid - depending on what is the goal. At Metacritic (which would have been a much better example for me to use than Rotten Tomatoes) objective quality of a movie would be more relevant compared to the subjective enjoyment of the critic. The objective quality would also be the most relevant to rank by at Criticker if one is supposed to use it to search for movies with objective high quality (and as I said, the name Criticker can in some way suggest this). And as I pointed out, some comments in this thread (and other threads) show that there are users who do make their ratings based on this!
And if some people (like me) follow a rule when ranking movies that says "I can see that Godfather is a marvelous piece of art (and here I intentionally have picked a popular movie!) but it bores me to death to watch gangster movies so I give it a low rating" and if there are other users that are also bored but give it a super high rating since it is very well made, then probable scores will suffer from these different rating strategies.

[AFlickering]

i'm sorry if that was a grumpy reply or i mischaracterised your post (i was admittedly being snarky with that paraphrasing). i'm absolutely with you that people should rate honestly based on their reaction to the film and not based on some notions they have about "objective quality", but what bothers me is how often people resort to citing the latter as an explanation for why other people rated a film high when they personally found it boring/pretentious. i think part of why it bugs me is it betrays a dismissive cynicism+lack of curiosity about other people's perspectives, and that's anathema to someone like myself who's always done my best to dive into other people's writing and give everything a fair shake even if i hate it at first, having numerous revelatory experiences with film, music, literature etc as a result. i think that pretty much without exception, canonised films (from mainstream to 'difficult') have their share of people who genuinely love and enjoy them, and while that doesn't mean you have to enjoy them as well, i do think it's better to make a genuine effort to understand those viewers than ascribe some kind of dubious rating strategy to them and move on, that's a surefire way of closing yourself off from some stuff you probably have the potential to fall in love with.

that said, i do accept that many such people exist (and i did used to do this as a teenager i think). the collective inability to treat comedies with the respect they often deserve is a prime example. but in defence of criticker, i actually think it's less populated by such users than a lot of other rating sites precisely because it revolves so completely around the accuracy of its algorithm and is therefore designed for being as honest as possible. certainly, i have a couple of hundred kumpels whose tastes are so weird and removed from any established groupthink canon that i would surely assume complete honesty of them. and aside from maybe martryn depending on how you interpret that post, i think the only person in this thread to admit doing this is ironically the original poster?

this is more of an aside, but i also think that rating based on your subjective experience is a little more complicated than it sounds. for example, sometimes i won't particularly enjoy a movie, but once i've experienced the ending and have a full picture in my head it'll suddenly become much more appealing and i'll expect to like it much more on rewatch--personally i would factor in my projected rewatch score into my rating because i prefer to be forward-looking, but maybe that's dishonest? conversely, i can enjoy a film that keeps its cards close to its chest for an hour plus only to be extremely disappointed when it whiffs on the conclusion and betrays or devalues what came before--would it then be dishonest to give it a low rating even though i was having a blast for three quarters? what about if i love a film solely because i once watched it with an ex-girlfriend and whenever i watch it i can smell the strawberry tones of her perfume? nothing to do with the film which was trash, it just happened to be on that time she gave me the world's greatest footjob. obviously, despite the honesty, rating this one highly is only going to have a negative impact on my PSI accuracy.

obviously it's not an exact science, but i can say that with over 2500 trying-to-be-honest ratings under my belt the algorithm is accurate to the point where it can be kind of eerie--it's amazing how many times i'll watch something that's canonical among a lot of people i like and respect, be disappointed, then come to criticker and it somehow anticipated my disappointment, or vice-versa. even if it is more likely to underrate a certain kind of movie (like, say, a comedy or a 'family film' or w/e), it still tends to predict which films in those groups i'm most likely to enjoy. i'm sure this wouldn't be the same for every single user, and i'd definitely agree it isn't useful to people who haven't seen that many films, but like i said before i do think it's selling the site short to dismiss the PSIs as inaccurate or the userbase as rating based on 'objective standards' before you've rated at least 1000 films, maybe a little more than that (ultimately the more it knows, the more it 'understands'). i know plenty of people who feel the same way, and if it works for us, i don't see why it wouldn't work for most. and of course i also think it's selling the site short to criticise it for overrating a certain type of film if you yourself have rated lots of those types of films highly, which i do think the OP was guilty of to an extent. garbage in garbage out, as they say.

[oplars]

I read your comment and I just want to say thanks, as I do not have time to write much right now. And to my great surprise Criticker was more right than Movielens yesterday about me liking The Lobster. I look forward to get more of the "eerie" you talk about when it guess me right.

[oplars]

Hi AFlicering,

It's a rainy Sunday and I have time to respond to your last post.
First I must say that after I did what you and others have suggested, rating more movies ( I went from around 6-700 to 926) I have begun to get beautiful recommendations!
But I am sure some other changes also play a role:
-Raising the percentage of shared movies to 20%.
-Rate (random) Japanese animated movies, which Criticker had the idea that I really must like, very low (now they are gone).
-Horror movies also used to be among what Criticker suggested, so I gave very low ratings to 15-20 movies that seemed horr(or)-ible.
So although my best TCIs are still above 24.000, it seems to work now.

I agree that it is sometimes difficult to rate a movie. The movie "There will be blood" is so uncomfortable to watch, it makes it so clear how the world we are living in is created by greedy monsters. Part of me really likes the film, but I dont want to see it again or any similar film. I wondered if I should skip to rate it, but then decided to give it 70, which would correspond to the attitude in my reaction if a friend asked me to come over and see There Will Be Blood, II.
But let's say that I really enjoyed a movie because it took place in a city where I spend a holiday. I would skip rating it. OR imagine what I would think about the movie if I haven't been there.

So Criticker doesn't seem "biased" in it's suggestions no more.
You are right that I myself might have many "artistic"/"difficult" movies at my rating list. When I suspected that Criticker tended to lean towards these kinds of movies it is not because I dislike such movies, it was just because the particular ones that were recommended to me I did not find interesting.
And BTW, when I said that Criticker is a bit like a "club" (which might give a bias towards liking "the right kinds" of movies), I had in mind that users' ratings are discussed here at the forum and that one could be afraid of being ridiculed for a bad taste.
So these were ideas I had that I thought could give the answer to why the probable scores did not match my taste.
Now I have decided to become a subscriber and looking at the prediction accuracy I am amazed at how close it comes, so I am already feeling some of the "eerie" you mentioned.