Why I’ve Personally Ranked 2,300 Movies
My Tater Tastes are fresher than the Tomatometer
How many movies — feature films — do you think there are in existence?
Oddly enough there isn’t an “official” source on this — but it does appear to be somewhere around 500k (since movies started popping up at the beginning of the last century).
If you’re into film, what do you watch and why? How many movies have you seen or will you see? Could you hit all 500k? Likely not. You learn what you like over time and you choose what to experience through a variety of means — there are plenty of writers and sellers and tools out there to help you decide what to queue up next.
If you’re like me, you value your time very highly. And if you love film, it’s probably safe to assume that you care about prioritizing your film-watching time effectively… you want to focus on the good stuff.
What is the measure of good — box office success, artistic merit, entertainment factor, or some all-of-the-above combo? Does it even matter, and how is it relevant to you and your tastes?
For all of the many film critics, aggregation sites, and apps that are out there trying to help us understand and navigate all of these productions (see graphic below comparing ratings from the three most popular: Rotten Tomatoes, Metacritic, IMDb), frustratingly, there’s not one singular, all-encompassing, quantitatively perfect-and-objective rating system or database. Nothing to tell you, “this is certifiably the best, and the best for you.”
There are just thousands of movies, loads of opinions. A lot of muck. A lot of mucky perspectives. And nor could there be one such film bible — Film is Art! There will always be that tricksy risk in picking a new flick. That’s part of what makes it fun.
With the insane amount of content being churned out in 2022 (check out that chart above), picking what to watch next is a slog.
Thanks to Netflix throwing their weight all over the globe, we’re now blessed with movies that may not have seen the life of day in a big-screen-world — like the surprisingly touching porcine fable, Okja (2017). On the flip-side, we’re also inundated with drivel that we may end up watching just because it’s-a-Sunday-night-and-I’m-bored-and-this-is-trending-in-America—case in point, The Princess Switch: Switched Again (2020).
Please Note: I feel remiss to call movies, “content” — which Scoresese savagely reviles as the “the business term for all moving images”—but I’m going to do it anyways.
There is too much content out there to reasonably sift through and there are far too many untrustworthy players — Netflix’s algorithm, trying to tell you what’s what; Disney+, Hulu, Amazon Prime, and Apple forcing you to prioritize their “originals” — all leaving you with an insurmountable mountain of codswallop to sift through.
Online review aggregators Metacritic and Rotten Tomatoes feel like a necessary evil.
Sometimes our best buddies, like the Certified Fresh tomato, can lead us astray. These sites that are supposed to help us make sense of things can actually make the process of finding something we may be interested in even harder than it was before. Medium writer Alex Olteanu, posted a fun, data-driven take on these sites. I love this analysis and I’d agree with him that Metacritic is the best of the available rating aggregation options… but is that the only option?
These sites also force me to do odd things like use my handy-dandy internal critic-vs-user internal calibration to consider the ∆ between some NYTimes critics and my online brethren. Oftentimes a romcom or action blockbuster will get an unjust critic pan since they happen to be shackled in the bonds of a genre that just isn’t refined enough for highfalutin tastes.
Internal Voice: “Hmm… critics gave Aladdin a 57%, but audiences think it’s awesome, soooooo it’s probably dope.”
Unfortunately, audience reviews can’t always be trusted either, especially on films that have been interpreted as politically charged. “Review bombs” are becoming more and more frequent, wherein people who may not have even seen a movie, take time out of their day to pan it online, just to tank the ratings score — the trolls (on all sides) are out in droves!
“But, Potato Paisan, if you eschew these sites like Rotten Tomatoes, how else would you have known that Dune (2021) was actually maybe going to be good and that access would also be included in your monthly subscription on HBO Max™!?” Yes, I agree, in spite of the above challenges, these systems we have do have their utility, and there’s no harm in perusin’ and usin’ em. My argument is just that on their own, they are not enough.
It’s helpful to know what’s hitting theaters and it’s interesting to understand consensus — across critics or the public — but the resulting auto-filtration of movies is a double-edged sword. If you rely too heavily on the gospel of others, these sites can rob you of some potentially epic film experiences.
Outside of just serving as a database with some fun marketing dollars on top — how do any of them help you remember or better understand what you have liked and discover what you may like next? None of em, nada.
The cure to the problem requires a bit of elbow grease: rating and ranking movies on your own and then coupling that with a recommendation engine for future use. I realized this over 10 years ago and I went in search of available options. I started off by ranking movies on Netflix. Their binary Thumbs Up / Thumbs Down proved pretty useless and they don’t have a holistic database.
I then moved onto Letterboxd which has 1–5 stars. After a period of time and a few hundred ratings, I quickly realized I had a jungle films in the 4 star category and sorting it was useless.
From there, I moved onto IMDb’s site and their 1–10 star system. This was a decent start but the 1–10 issue wasn’t all that different from the 1–5 one, and the search/filtering features left much to be desired.
Ultimately they all failed me. BUT… they did help me find Criticker!
Criticker still seems to be the only online film database, ranking service, and recommendation service of its kind.
While the UX looks like something crafted by MySpace Tom in the dawn of the age of the internet as we know it, everything else is pure gold.
You can search one of the most holistic-ever databases of film (they also have TV and Short Film in there!) and then give each a score of 1 through 100. All scored are saved and then indexed into your own personal profile which is later searchable and filterable.
Have you ever wondered what your top 15 favorite science fiction movies that came out before the year 2000 are? Now you can know, in just the click of a button!
Once you’ve rated enough films, Criticker will actually recommend movies and predict which ones you’re likely to enjoy (it ain’t perfect, but show me something better and I’ll change my mind). As an added bonus, they’ll also recommend rating systems of “like users” who have similar tastes so you can dig into their ratings and find movies they’ve loved, that you’ve yet to watch.
As someone who has seen thousands of movies, plans to watch thousands more, and has a pretty mediocre memory… adopting a personal scoring practice and documenting my own perspectives and opinions has been a game-changer. (I’ll get to sharing the specifics on the personal scoring rubric I use in my Potato Paisan ratings, in my next post)
My Potato Percentages / Tater Tastes Help Me:
- pinpoint movies I loved and watched years ago that I may want to rewatch
- get served personalized & taste-based recommendations (because I found a system that learns my tastes)
- discover films (old and new) that Disney+ or Amazon Prime don’t want to help me find
- provide recommendations to family and friends who are looking for something specific like … “something happy and romantic that came out somewhat recently like in the last 10 years”
- refresh my memory of what I’ve seen and help me hold conversations on specific topics or areas with friends or randoms
Bonus: This practice also just makes me happy! It enhances my overall experience with my [very extra] film-watching hobby. In some ways, my personal database is a filmic scrapbook.
Taking a stroll down memory lane in my own index of 2,300 movies is supremely enjoyable for me. It jogs my memory about that Tarantino movie I watched in my friends dorm room in college (which is also when I first learned he has a foot fetish)… or the first romcom I watched 3 years ago, on my couch in Brooklyn, while I was falling in love with the guy I now live with.
You can have your own scrapbook, too… all it takes is the upfront time investment needed to retroactively rate all the movies you’ve ever seen. Get at it and let me know how it goes. :)
P.S. Follow along to check out my next post — a deep dive on my personal scoring rubric. See what makes Long Shot (2019) an 86/100 for me… and Amour (2012) an 84/100…
P.P.S. I’ve included my Potato ratings, for all of the movies mentioned above, at the bottom of this post.
