How do you rate movies seen long ago ?

[livelove]

I often struggle with how to accurately score movies. This topic is part of a series dealing with voting-related problems, challenges, phenomenons and paradoxes — all as part of a quest whose end-goal is to correctly reflect my appreciation of movies when rating them:

• • On what basis do you rate films ?
• • The rock/paper/scissors paradox: ranking A>B and B>C but C>A ?
• • Do you change your ratings ?
• • How to deal with our changing taste over time ?
• • How do you rate movies seen long ago ?
• • How do you rate movies you have abandoned halfway through ?
• • How granular are your ratings?
• • Do you rate ridiculously bad movies 0 or >0 ?
• • RULES that help you decide how to vote
• • How do you account for the novelty factor and the chronological order in which you watched your movies ?
• • How do you handle the observer effect ?

How do you rate a film you have last seen 10-20 years ago ?
I find it all the more difficult, if it's a film I saw back in my childhood.

This I find more interesting. Do I rate films I saw from my childhood by the standards I had at the time? Or do I rate them from the perspective of my current standards and taste, having matured, experienced more and know much more about films, filmmaking and the world in general? If I rated say Police Academy back when I saw it originally (when I was 13) it would be a tier 10 film for sure. I feel confident however that if I re-watched Police Academy today I'd hate it. Yet I have seen it, and I did enjoy it at the time. An interesting quandary, especially when you consider that something like The Blues Brothers - which I saw at around the same time as Police Academy is still a tier 10 film for me.

The conclusion I came to (as much as it matters, which again - it totally doesn't) is that I'll rate it through todays eyes after the fact. If one assumes that the purpose of rating films is to let others know what you're opinion of the film is rather than used to be then this seems like the most reliable way, given the less than ideal circumstances. I'm not going to re-watch Police Academy in order to more accurately rate the film today. Instead I'll rate it according to what I remember about it (I usually remember films very well, even many years after having seen them), coupled with how it lines up with my current tastes. Maybe not perfect, but it does the job imo.

However, this also brings up another interesting aspect of film watching; expanding your cinematic horizons. Some films require more of the viewer than just the time it takes to watch it, and may reward more than one viewing to appreciate all it has to offer. If you had asked me to rate Andrei Tarkovsky's Stalker immediately after I'd first watched it it would have received a pretty poor rating from me. It's now in my top 10 films of all time.

Which is a roundabout way of saying; things change - and your rating's should change accordingly. They're not set in stone.

Good luck in your cinematic journey.

[livelove]

• If it's a film, which I would give somewhere between 0-60 points based on what I remember, I don't want to waste my time re-watching the film, thus possibly giving it a completely wrong rating because
a) memory gets distorted over time and
b) tastes may change considerably, which is my case

• and if my memories point to somewhere between 60-100 points, I might want to rewatch it, but watching a film a second time may give considerably different results
a) not only because your tastes may have changed but also
b) because you already know some spoilers, so for the category of movies that rely heavily on suspense, you won't be that excited any more the second time you watch it, since you already know what happens (even if only for the movie's major twists and turns).
Either way, the excitement of seeing something completely new, fresh and never-seen-before is gone (almost by definition) the 2nd time you see it. So IMO rating a movie on second sight is bound to yield a distorted rating.


This is why I get the sense I would give the movie a wrong rating by both rewatching and not rewatching it. It's a paradox. And a mess.

[BillyShears]

Very carefully.

[ribcage]

Used to rate them, but as i re watched some and realized all i remembered was the feel of the films and not anything else and that rewatching might as well be a first watch, i stopped rating ones like this i come across. I do have a fairly bad memory, and my main reason for mini reviews is simply to put to writing enough words to hold a movie in my memory. So if i know for a fact that I've seen it...but can't remember enough to mini review it...i won't rate it.

[ShogunRua]

I have an excellent memory, so if I think back on the film and my impressions, I can generally recall them well. However, I have a simple rule; if I don't remember enough of the movie in order to write a mini-review, then I don't rate it. Or, alternately, delete my score if I already had.

[mucow]

I generally don't as my taste in movies has changed over the years. Ranking a movie based on how I remembered it as a kid would really mess with my PSIs and TCIs.

[philamental]

There are generally three types of 'distant memory' films I come across.

1. Ones that I can't recall with any level of significance and I don't expect to watch them again: I don't rate these films simply because I can't do so with any level of accuracy. I may 'forget' these films on criticker if they are ones that crop up in recommendations.

2. Ones I recall fairly well, but I don't expect to watch them again: I'll give them a rounded (multiple of 5) estimate rating which is in my own mind fairly close to where I'd expect to rate it if I rewatched it.

3. Ones I feel compelled to watch again after being reminded of them: I don't rate these. Instead I add them to my 'remembered' list and wait until I re-watch them before rating them.

[QuinlanLJ]

It totally depends on wether I still remember seeing them or not.
If I don't remember them, I watch them again and rate them normally as I rate any new film I watch.

But if I do remember seeing them and I've watched them recently, then I rate them with my rating system (that is admittingly still not perfect), but at the part where I score how much fun I had with with a film, I score how much it stuck with me. And not all films stuck with me, that's why certain really good films have a bit lower ratings than they probably could have had.

[chmul_cr0n]

I usually base it on how vivid my memories of it are. With some movies, you remember what they meant to you as a kid, or how often you saw them. Those things usually increase my confidence when giving high ratings.
But of course you're not gonna be accurate. I think I had The Lion King at 80 and dropped it to 75 after I rewatched it after 20 years of not seeing it. Mainly because there were some things I didn't like about the structure. Which is a thing I didn't give a shit about at the age of 7.
E.T. on the other hand, which was my favorite movie as a kid, really impressed me, when I rewatched after 20 years. Even compared to the high opinion I stall had of it. I probably had it at 75 or so and upgraded it to a 86. Which is due to a couple of things I love about the movie (and Spielberg) that I didn't notice to that extent, when I was five years old. It was also the first time I watched in its original language (I'm German and everything's dubbed there) and was really impressed with the performances, which are just on a different level. Not because Germans are bad at dubbing, but because those are very hard performances to do justice to. Not impossible, but almost. :>
And I noticed this with some other kids' movies I hadn't seen in a while. A movie's value does not necessarily decrease over time, just because your taste is changing or becoming more sophisticated. 'cause some movies actually turn out to be more sophisticated than you were able to realize back then. With others it's the opposite. So I don't think it's unimportant to let your new opinion have a say in the matter.

Of course you always have to take into acount that you're much more knowledgeable now than you were at that time. Maybe your current favorite movie is one you saw when you were 16, and it blew your mind and completely redefined what a movie was or could be to you. So now you have new context. So of course The Lion King isn't so close to the top anymore now.
So, there's this thing Tarantino does...when he goes to a new movie for the first time he always goes alone. And then the next day with a friend or whatever. He does this to, as he calls it, "get the plot out of the way". Which is a really interesting perspective, I think. And one I can identify with. Because some movies you can appreciate much more the second or third time you see them. You're much more free to discover things, because you already know the framework. You're much more relaxed, because you can't actually miss anything (unless of course you feel you did the first time...), you can only discover. Those are usually the movies that mean anything to me and therefore deserve to be in higher tiers.
If the plot or a twist was indeed very memorable, you can always adjust for it. Kind of compare your memory of the first time with the experience of the recent rewatch. Movies with more than just a good plot should work more than once. I can watch Mission: Impossible over and over again and still be as excited as any other time I saw it, because I like de Palma's style so much, and how he creates suspense. He makes the suspense work for me, even though I already know what's going to happen, down to every detail. Which makes me appreciate the movie in a different way compared to the first time I saw it. Or even the fifth or tenth time. And I couldn't have known these things as a teenager. So the fact that the movie holds up after so many times of watching it, and even grew after so many years, and so much familiarity, should definitely have a say in the rating. As it should, if the movie started to suck through the ages.

So I definitely try to incorporate new opinions. But only if they're based on discovering new things in those movies. Not because they became stale, because they weren't meant to be watched 30 million times...

[livelove]

2. Ones I recall fairly well, but I don't expect to watch them again: I'll give them a rounded (multiple of 5) estimate rating which is in my own mind fairly close to where I'd expect to rate it if I rewatched it.

Thanks for sharing your approach. Ok, so if I understand you right in item 2, your taste changed over time, but you think that you are able to take your memories from the film and then factor in your changing taste and combine these two to get, as an end result, your expected/estimated rating. Right?

And this turns out fairly well (in those cases, where you actually DO rewatch those movies) ?

If I don't remember them, […]
But if I do remember seeing them and I've watched them recently […]

As the thread title says, this topic is about "movies seen long ago" (rather than recently). Your posting is still interesting though, thank you.