Always Low Ratings on New Movies?

Whenever I browse through the new releases (last 7 days specifically) all the movies have very low ratings. How do new movies/just added movies get rated?

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Permalink Reply by beeswax on May 10, 2009 at 6:14am: I guess that shows how seldom I see an unmolested entry. As in, this may be the only thing I've ever seen before anybody rated it.; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by MCWHAMMER on May 10, 2009 at 6:25am: That's true, I haven't seen it often... :) You've gotta get in there before the morons do at this point. Usually, even when something new is rated 3 Stars, it's still been rated that by someone, if you go look. So, you've presented a rare commodity to the community!

It's a real shame though... I was rating Dollhouse last night, and I didn't even bother to look at how many people had reviewed it, even though the season just finished. I'm guessing over 100 people probably did (Based on how many usually do). These 100's of people had likely reviewed it the day after the first episode, meaning their season review was based on that 1 episode, and nothing else. So, because they had to be FIRST, they've gotten helpful ratings, when their review is a lie, and the only people voting them helpful are liars themselves, and fellow idiots.

Yeah, so obviously it bothers me too. I'm almost to the point where I don't want to review anything anymore (I've reviewed 301 movies or TV shows so far. All are legitimate, none say, I LURVZ ELIZABETH HURLEY, SO I R@TED THIS 5 STARS, EVEN THOUGH IT DOESN'T BE COMING OUT TILL 2013!!!), because what's the point? All the work I put into it is negated by someone else who watched 30 minutes of a movie and cut it off, then rated it 1 Star.; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by eviltimes on May 10, 2009 at 6:36am: With all the ridiculous voting anomalies out here, I often wonder why I continue to write reviews. I think it is a psychological infirmity. May be I can get some free drugs for it! Or some free government cheese!; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by MCWHAMMER on May 10, 2009 at 7:00am: At this point, I do it to bring lesser known movies to people's attention. In my mind, by writing them, I'm giving them reasons why they should give the movie a chance, or avoid it completely.

But at some point, it spilled over into me having an opinion on everything I watched, not just the lower-budget, hidden gems. And the easiest way for me to express my opinion on what I just watched is to write about it.

I also used to write reviews just with myself in mind. Say I wanted to know why I rated "Blackout" 4 Stars. I can now easily go to Feedflix.com, open up the "All Reviews" page, and scroll down to Blackout. Read my own review, and decide whether it's worth watching again, or if there's even a need to.

So, I bounce between writing reviews for my own benefit (ie., to look back on them someday), or for others (ie., so they can get someone else's opinion, rather than just Netflix's synopsis).; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by eviltimes on May 10, 2009 at 7:19am: I end up writing 2 reviews, a serious one for IMDb, and then a shitty little splash one for NF. With the passage of time, I find the NF ones to be much more informative and a better arbiter of "should I waste my time with this film" than any serious analysis I ever did at IMDb.; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by RJP on May 10, 2009 at 1:02pm: Eviltimes

I agree wholeheartedly !

I wrote reviews over on IMDB for years (under another name ), and was really quite well received over there. However, those reviews took a tremendous amount of time to compose to what I thought were acceptable standards, and I was spending way too much time - so I ended up bailing and writing 300 word reviews over here on Netflix. I like the limited review much better.; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by e manderthal on July 5, 2009 at 11:10am: Take a look at this one.
Can anyone explain how the average of one rating can equal 2.9 stars?

Also, here I see:
Average of raters like you: 2.8 stars
Average of 2 ratings: 2.9 stars

Hmmmm...?; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by beeswax on July 6, 2009 at 2:13am: Average of raters like you: 2.8 stars

I cannot. But nobody ever comes to me for math explanations.; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by alpha309 on July 7, 2009 at 10:56am: Back on the original question. some of us live in Los Angeles. Many of us that do either know people that work in Film, or do so ourselves. When this is the case screeners for films that are not yet in theaters are easy to come by and are often obtained before the movie actually hits theaters, especially common with small Independent films that are trying to be bought up by some company trying to get it released and they saturate the town with these screeners.

The best example I can give from my personal experience is Mysteries of Pittsburgh. I viewed this movie over a year before it received it's limited theatrical release. I have a whole stack of screeners sitting on my TV stand. The reason most of them are still there is because 7/10 are not worth watching and the other 3 are usually average at best.; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Johnny on July 25, 2009 at 5:11pm: Predicting Movie Ratings: The Math that Won the Netflix Prize has a graph that shows average movie rating vs. movie age that directly addresses this topic.

Here's an interesting quote from the article:
"One of the most important insights is that ratings change over time, as the graphs above suggest. For each movie, ratings increase over time—on average nearly 10% over 5 years. The best explanation for this phenomenon is that people are less discriminating when they rent new releases. To rent an older movie, they need more encouragement—some indication that they will like it—so these end up better matched to their tastes."; ▶ Reply to This