IMDB scores you just can't comprehend!

Pigman II

D'ya ever visit the IMDB and see a movies vote rating and wonder "How the hell did it get that score"?

Now by this I'm not talking about for example Sound of Music (rubbish) having a 7.8 or Ace Ventura (classic) only having a 6.3. Whilst I personally cannot agree with this scores I do at least comprehend that there are people out there who will vote that way.

No, I'm talking about movies where it literally makes no sense to you who is voting for these movies (either positively or negatively) at the rates and scores that they do.

Classic example for me is Steven Spielbergs "The Terminal" which is currently at 7.1 after 27,000 votes.

To me it was like Capra after a labotomy. It's ponderous, preachy, pointless, preposterous and many other things begining with 'p'. Now that'd be fair enough if I believed that there is a large section of the viewing public who enjoy that sort of stuff, but I honestly wonder why ANYONE (male / female / black / white / young / old) would like this film enough to leave the theatre and go on the internet rate it a 7 (and in many cases 8 or 9 or 10 presumably?).

Further puzzling, I even went on the message board to understand what people saw in "The Terminal" that I didn't see, but even there there seemed to be fair amount of negative threads/posts (and that is unusual for any film with a positive rating on IMDB) so how is this film (as an example) doing so well?.

Anyway what I'm looking for here is examples movies you've noticed where you honestly cannot comprehend who is contributing to the score (either too high or or low) to leave it where it currently stands and then perhaps we can arrive on some sort of consensus here.

RuggieBear

different strokes for different folks

mike65

Sometimes you wonder. I mean is the Shawshank Redemption that good?

Mike.

Crucifix

What I love about IMDB is that no matter how bad a film is, if you search about the reviews and the forums you'll find someone who says it's their favourite movie.

abetarrush

Yeah, i Highly doubt that The Godfather is the best movie ever

[check their top 250]

but I agree with their worst movie ever. Some film about Justin and Kelly Clarkson

BopNiblets

They let anyone on this internet these days.

I remember back in the day when only people who had IQs could use it.
I blame Gates and Jobs.

MisterAnarchy

mike65 wrote:

Sometimes you wonder. I mean is the Shawshank Redemption that good?

Mike.

Yes it is.
Its a masterpiece.
I've given up on IMDB in the last 6 months ,its ratings are very misleading.
For example
8.0:Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl
8.3: Donnie Darko
8.6:Memento
8.5:Fight Club
8.4:Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
8.4:The Pianist
I dont think any of these films deserves anywhere near such a high rating but they are all decent films.
Then again I've watched some stuff thats been rated 7 and they have been utter rubbish,not even worth 3.

Necronomicon

Whatever about the ratings, those message boards have to be the worst things known to the internet.

mike65

They are as bad as 606 boards on a bad European night.

Mike.

Kingp35

MisterAnarchy wrote:

8.0:Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl
8.3: Donnie Darko
8.6:Memento
8.5:Fight Club
8.4:Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
8.4:The Pianist

Maybe Memento is just slightly overrated there but I think the rest are spot on.

BlitzKrieg

its less of a problem with imdb and more with people's views on how one grades a film.

personnally when i go to rate a film, i automatically give it 10/10 and i deduct points for what i didnt like. Meaning a film which i watched, enjoyed but isnt a masterpiece, will for me in most cases hit around 6-7, because i can name out 3-4 things wrong with it at most, and some of those points could only be half points (its very heavy film for some viewers etc.

While a film i hated i could probably spew closer to 7-8 things wrong with it. and the film holds on to its last 1-2 points simply if they actually knew how to hold a camera.

i've known people who will automatically give a game or a movie 5/10 if it works. i.e no bugs in a game, or a film which technically works (editing, script, lighting etc.) the next 5 goes to what the film does better.


But its a common sight i thought, that a film or game that scored around 70% is average but well made. hence why its usually only something that scores in excess of 85% would convince me that the reviewer actually liked it.

reviews have been bloated for long time. anything on imdb thats below a 6 i assume will have problems.

Limerick Dude

MisterAnarchy wrote:

Yes it is.
Its a masterpiece.
I've given up on IMDB in the last 6 months ,its ratings are very misleading.
For example
8.0:Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl
8.3: Donnie Darko
8.6:Memento
8.5:Fight Club
8.4:Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
8.4:The Pianist
I dont think any of these films deserves anywhere near such a high rating but they are all decent films.
Then again I've watched some stuff thats been rated 7 and they have been utter rubbish,not even worth 3.

Donnie Darko and Fight Club well deserve those ratings.

Diogenes

Look at a certain Hill 16 mentioned on this board previously, an absurd 9.7. Its a bloke of a certain age kind a quantifiable rating something on a scale. Theses are stories, they are subjective things. What makes them better or worse is entirely based on our personal opinion and believes. Me? I have a list of my favourite films, and my best films. Some of the films that I've enjoyed will never make it into my top ten list, but they have an emotional resonance with me, because films strike a cord at a ver base level. The goonies, ghostbusters or ghosbusters two are never going to score well if you asked me vote on scale where 1 was Batman and Robin and 10 Was citizen Kane, but am I going to be happy as a pig in sh*te to hear "I collect spores fungi and moulds" yes!

I"m sorry any public poll is just stupid. And to finally quote a dumb film I quite like "A Person, a person is smart, people are stupid" Never trust any pole made by groups by the general public.

abetarrush

Limerick Dude wrote:

Donnie Darko and Fight Club well deserve those ratings.

Fight Club yes, donny darko NOOOOOOOOOOOO

Giruilla

Return of the King 8.8??? First of all it was the worst of the three, secondly it was ****e

Giruilla

does anybody else find imdb really hard to navigate? Like if you enter one page its hard to get back to the previous page without clicking the back button?

Goodshape

mike65 wrote:

Sometimes you wonder. I mean is the Shawshank Redemption that good?

Mike.

No, it's not.

On the other hand, I enjoyed all the films MisterAnarchy pointed out, bar the two I haven't seen.

I prefer RottenTomatoes for film ratings anyway. More because it has a review attached to each ratting though, the actual percentage it gives can often be way off the mark (imo).

Giruilla wrote:

does anybody else find imdb really hard to navigate? Like if you enter one page its hard to get back to the previous page without clicking the back button?

They haven't changed their design much in the past ten years. Old skool, tbh.

monkeyfudge

Lots of shills on IMDb by the way.

I watched a film calle Alien Siege last week... well tried to watch it... it sounded pretty terrible, but it had Carl Weathers in it so I figured it must be good, but 40 minutes in and there was no sign of Carl and I was reaching for the remote as this was an unbelievably bad film.

But if you check the reviews there are one or two really well writen reviews absolutely praising it and then you have total nut balls giving it 10 out of 10 as well.

Wacker

On a mostly unrelated note, last Tuesday I spent 236 euro on the nineteen movies in IMDBs top fifty that I didn't have. Man, I should not have posted that. I'm about to get it bad, amn't I?

Ste.phen

Only when the mastercard bill arrives

Karl Hungus

People are an upredictable bunch really, and there is something like 6 billion of us, or so I'm told. There's no telling what films with strike a chord with what people, or how they'll respond to it. Maybe someone will vote a film highly because of that cute boy they like, or maybe because of the quality of gore, or god knows what else?

I've seen comments by users on imdb.com where they hated a film because the ending was sad, or because the ending didn't wrap up the plot in the way they might have liked.

Can I comprehend it? Easily. Related to it? No.

Wacker

Igy wrote:

Only when the mastercard bill arrives

hehehe. I'd really cut down my DVD purchasing to save for my holiday this year. Now I'm back and worse than ever.

With regards to the IMDB voting, I agree with what Blitzkrieg was saying. While I never saw the Terminal, it strikes me as being very much..... not too bad, I guess. Seven point one IS not too bad, I guess, by my standards. With IMDB, a film can only be seen to be really good if it is sitting pretty on eight or more. Average dramas or poor sci-fi films tend to score around 6 or 7. E.g. The Matrix Revolutions was on 6.3 when last I checked. While I thought Revolutions was terrible, one could easily see how a sci-fi movie could be a lot worse. Just look at anything by Uwe Boll.

People give crappy films ten to schew the poll back in favour of movies that they like somewhat, even if they never would really believe that such movies deserve a ten. Look at all the bottom ten movies; the nearly always have loads of votes of ten.
Similairly, look at the top ten. Loads of people voting one on the Godfather, Shawshank, Return of the King, etc. I doubt anyone could really believe that such movies deserve just 1. I mean, even people who don't like them would be content with giving them 2 or 3, right? Once again, it is people trying to manipulate the poll.
I think that the site employs a system of discounting a large percentage of the votes that vary wildly from the consensus to avoid this. And I know that they give extra weight to the votes of their staffers.
In conclusion, the IMDB polls are okay, if you know how to use them.

Running Bing

abetarrush wrote:

Yeah, i Highly doubt that The Godfather is the best movie ever

What do you think is the best movie ever then? Just out of curiousity

revolver, one of the worst films ever made is currently rated 6.1. The amount of people who gave that piece of crap a ten is unreal.

But then again, IMDB do have it spot on when it comes to terrible movies. House of the Dead is on 2.0/10, Gigli is on 2.3/10 (with the great user comment "I mean... why?") etc. etc.

I personally believe the Pianist well deserves its rating, but you're right, some movies get ratings they just dont deserve.

OSiriS

I think the problem is that many of you believe that your own taste is the definitive taste in movies upon which all films should be judged. The rating you see in imdb is a collection of what the average visitor to the site thinks of those films. It has little bearing on what you will think if your opinion is other than the norm with regards to the film in question. When it comes to matters of taste there is no such thing as a wrong opinion, which means those ratings are spot on.