*** OFFICIAL Movies & Movie Recommendations Thread ***

[CoccoBill]

IMDB rating system

For some reason people don't seem to wanna think that an external rating system is reliable, but it really is. Before I started using the system as a tool to pick movies, I watched a ton of garbage. But after using the system, the bad movies became few and far between. The system is, after all, pretty much a large sampling of peer-review from avid film fans

Seriously, there's a reason that some movies get high ratings like 8.0 and other movies get low ones like 6.5. I guarantee that if you did an experiment and watched fifty 8.0+ rated films then fifty 6.0-7.0 rated films you would be substantially more pleased with the former category, and it's really not even close.

There are nuances involved with how the system works, but generally, if you avoid watching all films rated below 7.5, you'll be watching so many good films that you'll begin to get sick of the quality and just wanna watch something stupid to keep from feeling like a snob or something

The problem with IMDB is that the ratings are not measuring the objective "goodness" of a film but rather their mainstream popularity. While you are probably getting more better than average films using it, you're also missing all the controversial/non-mainstream/low budget gems.

[wufwugy]

The problem with IMDB is that the ratings are not measuring the objective "goodness" of a film but rather their mainstream popularity. While you are probably getting more better than average films using it, you're also missing all the controversial/non-mainstream/low budget gems.

Actually, that's not true

Yes, there is an element of popularity involved (which is one of the things I was implicating when mentioning nuances with the system). An example is The Dark Knight. Good movie, but overrated on IMDB. The reason for this is because cult favorites, especially from the superhero/comic genre, are appreciated by a larger percentage of avid IMDB users, yet very underrepresented in film catalogue, and so when a good one comes around it's always overrated.

This is true for virtually all cult favorites. Like Good Bad and Ugly is NOT better than Schindler's List, but it gets a higher rating due to factors like few good westerns, it's historically iconic, etc



Anyways, back to my point that IMDB isn't biased for mainstream stuff. If you look over say the top 500 movies on IMDB, you will find a ton of obscure, low budget stuff, controversial, and non-mainstream stuff. In fact, most of the best films I've ever seen are due to using IMDB. Films like

The Celebration - Epitome of low budget/controversial/obscure, etc. Nobody's ever heard of it, but easily one of the best. Danish dogme film.

Seppuku - Old Japanese Samurai drama. Nobody's heard of it, but possibly in the top five dramas ever

Evil - Swedish film. Not necessarily among the best ever, but very tip top, and very enjoyable. Again, nobody's ever heard of it

Rope - Alfred Hitchcock's first and best film. Jimmy Stewart's best film. Talk about controversy, the subject matter of this film is about as controversial as it gets, yet nobody's ever even heard of it

Miyamoto Musashi Trilogy - Fucking Toshiro Mifune epic kills shit in more old Japanese Samurai that nobody's ever heard of. If you like Westerns you'd love Samurai since Westerns get everything they have from Samurai, and Clint Eastwood's iconic badass gun-slinging persona wouldn't even exist without Mifune and Kurosawa

The Straight Story - Possibly David Lynch's only 'non-weird' film. Extremely non-mainstream, and surprisingly awesome


All of those films are some of the best in existence, all very highly rated on IMDB, and all meet the obscure, low-budget, and often controversial criteria. In fact, there are very few mainstream and high budget films with high ratings, and when they are there, they deserve it (like Saving Private Ryan or Gladiator). If IMDB is a popularity contest, it's one among avid film enthusiasts with some semblance of taste, not weekend warriors

[CoccoBill]

If you look over say the top 500 movies on IMDB, you will find a ton of obscure, low budget stuff, controversial, and non-mainstream stuff. In fact, most of the best films I've ever seen are due to using IMDB.

My opinion was based on the top250, which includes pretty much all the box office hits and the most known classics and little else. How do you find out whats in the top500?

[wufwugy]

My opinion was based on the top250, which includes pretty much all the box office hits and the most known classics and little else. How do you find out whats in the top500?

There isn't a list for top 500. For some weird reason, the list for top 250 doesn't update correctly. Of the movies I mentioned, only Rope is in the list, but several others have high enough ratings to be there, yet aren't. That particular list doesn't represent actual IMDB ratings. The rating of each movie is within a few tenths of a point of accuracy at least, but a lot of them shouldn't even be on the list due to other films that are rated higher, yet for some reason aren't there.

Looking it over, there are a TON of excellent movies that meet your criteria that have the high rating, but aren't on that list. It actually looks like a majority of the movies in my top 50 or so aren't even on the list, even though the majority of them have high enough ratings to be there.

Werner Herzog's 'Aguirre, Wrath of God' is the epitome of low-budget, obscure, etc. Its rating puts it close to the top 100, but it's still not in the list. Personally, I hated that film, but it's about as good an example as it gets for the kind you're talking about

P.S. Apparently, the top 250 list only counts votes from regular visitors. So that would explain why its weighted towards more mainstream stuff, but that doesn't stop the great, obscure stuff from having high ratings.