Let’s say you want to take a decision – should I watch “X” movie or not? What should you do?
- “No!s”
- The very first thing I suggest is not to watch the movie trailer; modern trailers have a few good minutes in length and most of them even disclose sequences from the end of the movie;
- The second thing to avoid is reading too much about the scenario; even the small synopsis on an IMDb page, that small description at the top of the page, might be too much;
- “Yes!s”
- See the movie rating for English-speaking movies launched internationally; if it’s a local movie, either in a foreign language, or specifically aimed at a certain country, the votes might be biased in favor of the movie; a lot of Romanian movies have very high marks; so do French movies; so do Indian movies; so do movies in the Nordic countries; it’s much harder to get good marks on an international scale; I generally aim to watch movies above 7.0, even better above 7.5 and almost always about 8.5;
- Also, if a movie is a TV Series or a documentary, the grades will also be much higher than those of feature films; you should compare TV series with other TV series, not with feature films; also, documentaries with other documentaries;
- Another thing – some types of movies always get better marks than others; very few comedies have high marks; action movies, including those with superheroes are both very popular and get good grades, while some “boring” art movies might bring you more ideas, even if not more fun; drama beats comedies in grades;
- See the number of ratings; if a movie has less than 10,000 ratings, it might mean that the movie was not popular at the time of issuing; note that for movies older than the 90’s IMDb didn’t exist, so it’s normal for a 70’s movie to have fewer ratings;
- See the genre, one of the most important criteria; you will form your own biases with time; I like Animations, Comedies, Biographical movies, and to a lesser extent Dramas; on another hand, Action movies have good grades on IMDb, and I have watched plenty of those;
- The director(s) – In here, you will make your own judgment as time passes;
- Actors – same as above;
- Which company made the movie? I like Pixar’s animation movies better than Blue Sky’s, those better DreamWorks’, those better than Disney, those better than Sony. Some people prefer the DC Universe vs. Marvel Universe superhero movies.
- Who recommended it to you? Has it one some Oscars? Is the movie similar to other movies you have previously liked (you can see the list on IMDb pages – “People who liked this also liked…”).!