Do you rate ridiculously bad movies 0 or >0 ?

[mwgerb]

I actually retain a couple of numbers out of 100 for movies that are difficult to rate. Either they're so bad they're good, or I respect them for some reason or another but couldn't get into them, etc.

For instance,
35 (20th percentile): Crank, Batman (1966), Space Jam, and Thankskilling. Dumb as hell but you can really get into them.
16 (5th percentile): Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers, Plan 9, Reefer Madness, Troll 2. Absolute shit, but lovable.

I will point out that there are scores below this that are still ridiculously bad. At some point they get so awful that they're not even lovable anymore even if you laugh the entire time. I'll leave this XKCD strip as an example:


For the record,
11: Gigli
8: Batman and Robin
3: The Star Wars Holiday Special
2: The Room

[livelove]

It's "so bad it's entertaining" rather than "so bad it's good".

Your chart actually makes my point:

So-bad-it's-good-movies can be enjoyable (y axis) but they are still bad in terms of "movie quality" (x axis).
The purpose of Criticker is to vote on the latter.


It's like with bad sex:
It can be so bad that it's funny. But that's still pretty bad sex ...


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edit: Lacking a strike-through tool, I grayed out the sentence above because it's actually the opposite of what I think. Somehow I got confused

[iconogassed]

You are ruining the ratings and TCIs by voting >0.

So-bad-it's-good-movies can be enjoyable (y axis) but they are still bad in terms of "movie quality" (x axis).
The purpose of Criticker is to vote on the latter.

Says who?

This is such a bizarrely conservative line of thinking. And the scolding tone is a little ridiculous. Criticker's system is not tainted by the presence of different perspectives on how to quantity aesthetic appreciation, which again is inherently arbitrary and individualized and nonscientific. "Movie quality" is not an objective standard. Is there some magic amount of ironic entertainment value at which point a film MUST!!! be rated zero regardless of any other qualities it might possess? Are Plan 9 and Troll 2 and The Room all the exact same experience and thus must be rated identically?

I consider every rating on a case-by-case basis. Some movies whose "deficiencies" amuse me get a poor rating, some a good one, but in almost no case is the rating tethered to that. What I'm after is a unique vision interestingly and vividly realized. With exceptions when I feel like it, that is the ideal I grade to.

[livelove]

My point is that if half of Criticker users rate an unbelievably bad movie 0 and the other half rate it 70 because they laughed so much ("OMG this is bad") although everybody finds it equally bad, then this defeats the ranking system.

Or if user A likes film X and rates it 70 and user B finds film X so laughably bad that he also ranks it 70, then you have the same score for a diametrically opposed viewing experience. That can't be right.

[livelove]

The ranking system can only work if all users reply (by way of their ratings) to the same question.

To put it in the simplest possible terms, I'd say the question is
"How good/bad did you find the movie?"
EDIT: ... by which I mean "how much did you appreciate the movie" ?


Now if users use their vote to reply to completely different questions, e.g.
"How much did you laugh?"
"How much did your partner like the movie?"
"How much did it help you improve your foreign language skills?"
"How good was the popcorn in the cinema?"

... then the film's aggregate score doesn't reflect anything.

[paulofilmo]

To put it in the simplest possible terms, I'd say the question is
"How good/bad did you find the movie?"

nah, not for me. I usually go by -
how much did i appreciate having watched it? / to what extent would i recommend it to my former self?


last night i watched The Heiress. it was a 'good' movie - it was gripping and it impressed me in a bunch of ways.
but it stressed me out. if i could go back in time and unwatch it/not endure it, i would.

[iconogassed]

The ranking system can only work if all users reply (by way of their ratings) to the same question.

To put it in the simplest possible terms, I'd say the question is
"How good/bad did you find the movie?"


Now if users use their vote to reply to different questions, e.g.
"How much did you laugh?"
"How much did your partner like the movie?"
"How much did it help you improve your foreign language skills?"
... then the film's aggregate score doesn't reflect anything.

I've already explained why this is nuts so I'll just let you know that sometimes I even choose a number on the basis of a gag in my recent ratings muahahaha

[ribcage]

The ranking system can only work if all users reply (by way of their ratings) to the same question.

To put it in the simplest possible terms, I'd say the question is
"How good/bad did you find the movie?"


Now if users use their vote to reply to different questions, e.g.
"How much did you laugh?"
"How much did your partner like the movie?"
"How much did it help you improve your foreign language skills?"
... then the film's aggregate score doesn't reflect anything.

But if you're over there rating like some kind of textbook and I'm over here rating like a hooligan, my PSIs are gonna fall in line with the hooligans and yours the textbooks, we'll hardly need to cross paths. So we can both keep doing what we're doing and never know the difference.

[Bartbaard]

Exactly. That's what the TCI is for, ain't it?

[livelove]

To put it in the simplest possible terms, I'd say the question is
"How good/bad did you find the movie?"

nah, not for me. I usually go by -
how much did i appreciate having watched it? / to what extent would i recommend it to my former self?

thanks for your thoughts.
Yes, I can agree wholeheartedly with your description.

English is a foreign language to me, so sometimes I don't find the right words, unfortunately.

I don't think we disagree though, because if it's a movie you appreciate and that you would recommend to your former self, well than it's a good movie in your book, right?


I realize that I find this subject trickier than I thought, because above I wrote:

So-bad-it's-good-movies can be enjoyable (y axis) but they are still bad in terms of "movie quality" (x axis).
The purpose of Criticker is to vote on the latter.

... although I am actually of the opposite opinion, namely that we should not vote based on the film quality but enjoyability alone. This is the subject of another discussion:
On what basis do you rate films ?

Why don't you just rate how much you enjoyed the film rather than giving points for technical skill ?
The technically best films can be completely uninteresting if their are not your taste.

So I'm appearing to contradict myself at first glance and therefore the critique above has its merits (although the ad hominem attack was unnecessary!).


I'll try to explain what for me is the bottom line:
In my opinion, we should vote on how good we found a film, i.e. how much we enjoyed/appreciated it, and how much we would recommend it to ourselves (excellent definition by paulofilmo above).

But I feel there is a difference between enjoying a film, because it is good, or because it is sooooooo bad.
And that should be reflected in the numbers somewhat. Would you disagree ?

Because otherwise you can't distinguish a good film from a bad film, and that's certainly not the purpose of a voting system, right ?

I mean, what is a voting system good for, if a number like 65 can either mean
"pretty good film"
"extremely bad film"
?