Watch Better Movies: A project to improve the use of my free time
Over the past 3 years, I have watched 637 movies. At approximately 2 hours per movie, this means an average of 1 hour and 19 minute per day towards my hobby of watching films.
Reaction A: Holy shit that’s depressing
Reaction B: Meh, that’s probably still less than what some people spend in transit each day.
Ultimately, I don’t have a big problem with this stat because it’s a passion. If I won the lottery tomorrow that stat would probably increase. Exactly why it is a passion to the degree that it is is a topic for another day. I’m bringing it up today because I’d like to pose the question to myself: Am I spending that time wisely or am I just watching a lot of trash?
And from here, a project was born: the Watch Better Movies Project. Using my powers of data entry and statistical analysis I will attempt to track the quality of my film-watching and make consistent and gradual improvements over time. Excitement!
Historical Data
At the moment of writing this article I have watched 2,669 movies and rated each of them out of 100. This scores are then divided into tiers, which evenly distributes the scores. Assuming that I already tend to watch that I enjoy more than ones I know I won’t like, it makes sense that my median score would not be 50/100. It’s actually 67, which is the barrier between Tiers 5 and 6. Anything below Tier 6 would mean that I’m watching less than average movies, which anything Tier 6 and above would mean a better than average year.
As you can see, I’m not doing too great. The early 2000s dipped into a Tier 4 average (sidenote: everything I’ve rated was rated 2010 or later). 2016 is the best year I’ve had this century, but at an average score of 6.01 it’s barely over the threshold of being defined as a good year.
Note that I have also included the number of films seen in each year. There are a few different ways to interpret these results and I want to be upfront about that. One potential way to watch better movies might be to watch less and only see the ones I know will be good, but over the past 16 years it looks like my quality has gone up while watching more films. There are a lot of films out there, and while I want the result of this project to be me watching better films, I don’t want it to be at the expense of not watching films. There are a lot of hidden gems out there and a lot of disappointments.
Hypothesis Testing
Now that I know I need to do something about this, I’m going to ask a series of questions and use the data available to me to answer them as best I can.
Note: I’m about to talk about PSI (Predicted Score indicator) for a bunch of these questions. This is a score that is given to me based on all 2,669 movies that I’ve ranked and how people who have similar tastes to me have ranked movies I haven’t seen. In 2016, 55% of movies I ranked +/- 5 of the PSI that I was given (out of 100), so I consider a good stat to compare against.
Hypothesis 1: I should watch movies alone
Conclusion: Not proven. Attending a movie alone or with a guest had little to no impact on the quality of movie chosen or how much I enjoyed it compared to what was expected.
Hypothesis 2: I should avoid premium formats
Conclusion: Proven. Every premium format led me to enjoy the film less than what was expected. It appears that I may have picked better movies to watch in IMAX, but that AVX had the least negative impact of the 3 premium format.
Hypothesis 3: I should go to particular theatres
Conclusion: Mostly proven. Scotiabank Theatre has bad movies that I enjoy even less than I already should. Varsity VIP seems to most enhance my experience, while TIFF has a neutral impact but seems to play the best movies. Therefore, more TIFF and Varsity, less Scotiabank. It’s also worth noting that not pictured here are a lot of theatres where I only saw 1–2 movies, and it’s pretty consistent that they are all in the negatives for PSI Difference, so needing to go out of my way to travel to another theatre seems to make my experience less enjoyable.
Hypothesis 4: I should watch movies in the morning
Conclusion: Not proven. If anything, I should watch movies in the afternoon. It does appear that I should avoid late-night movies though.
Hypothesis 5: I should watch movies at film festivals
Conclusion: Proven. For all the complaining I did about standing in lines too much, it seems like I did enjoy myself at TIFF. It’s also worth noting that I went into most of these films with no trailer, no review, no PSI, and no expectations…which is something worth exploring on their own but for which I have no data.
Hypothesis 6: I should watch more suspense and less action movies
Okay, this one is going to take some explaining. I determined the breakdown of movies seen in different genres both for myself and for the average person. This gave me a baseline of whether I watching movies in a particular genre more than usual, and then also compared the average scores I was giving movies in each genre. I was then able to plot these on the above graph which gave me 4 quadrants: Watch Often with High Scores, Watch Often with Low Scores, Watch Less with High Scores, and Watch Less with Low Scores. Knowing this, I should be avoiding genres in the 2nd quadrant, and focusing more on genres in the 3rd quadrant. These were the results:
Watch Often with High Scores (keep watching)
Documentary, Crime, History, Suspence, Drama, Sci-fi, Mystery, Biography
Watch Less with High Scores (start watching more)
Music, Western, Romance, War
Watch Often with Low Scores (start avoiding)
Sport, Action
Watch Less with Low Scores (keep avoiding)
Horror, Fantasy, Adventure, Musical, Comedy, Family/Kids, Animation
Conclusion: Sort of proven. I knew that I should be avoiding Action and that was correct. Sport was a surprising genre to see on there and it’s good to know. I did not expect Romance and War to be on the list of genres to watch more, but know I can focus on them. I expected Westerns to be something I should be watching more of.
Strategy
My goal is to watch the same amount of movies that I usually do, but make decisions about which movies I see. Therefore, I need two different types of strategies: ones that will get me to say no to bad movies I’m planning on seeing, and ones that will get me to take a chance on a potentially good movie that I’m not planning on seeing.
Watch Less Bad Movies
I want to make it slightly difficult to say no to potentially bad movies, lest I end up filtering something out that ends up being good. There is precedent for movies that I expected to be bad that ended up being okay. Last year’s list would include Warcraft, Bleed for This, and The Accountant. Therefore, I’m putting forth three criteria, and if a movie fails all 3 then it gets cut:
Criteria 1 — PSI lower than 60
To increase my overall movie scores, I need movies that get at least a 70. 55% of my movies do not escape +/- 5 of their PSI, and even the three mentioned above only went +10. Filtering out movies that have a PSI lower than 60 is a safe bet. This cannot be the only criteria because this would have also filtered out the following movies that achieved the attached score: Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk (78), Triple 9 (73), Voyage of Time (79), and The Birth of a Nation (77).
Criteria 2 — Sports and Action Genres
I’m a sucker for Action genres. I remind you that in this section I need to filter out movies that I’m already leaning towards seeing (by my poor judgement). I don’t need to create a criteria for filtering out Musicals and Horror movies, I’m already doing that. What I do need to focus on is not seeing these bad action movies that are passing through my gates due to my bias.
Criteria 3 — Available in 3D or IMAX
I do not think that watching a movie in IMAX necessarily makes me experience worse (although the opposite could be said for 3D), but the fact that it is available in IMAX should tell me a bit about what kind of creative freedom that movie has. This criteria doesn’t mean that I should just avoid the format, but instead avoid the movie if it is even available somewhere else in that format.
By these 3 criteria, the following list of movies would not have been seen: Independence Day Resurgence (6), Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2 (6), Batman v Superman (56), Suicide Squad (62), and Alice in Wonderland 2 (38).
Watch More Good Movies
Constastingly, finding ways to watch better movies is not about satisfying multiple criteria, but instead finding one criteria under which I can take a ‘leap of faith’ in a safe environment for a movie I would not otherwise want to see.
Safe Environment #1 — TIFF Bell Lightbox theatre
After seeing 11 movies at TIFF Theatre last year, the worst movie I saw was rated a 68, which would still put it in Tier 6 and therefore the better half of movies I’ve ever seen.
Safe Environment #2 — Film Festival
When looking at the differences between my PSI and the actual score I gave a movie, the biggest determining factor was whether or not it was a movie I saw at TIFF. It’s a small sample size but if there’s one place to take a risk on a movie it would be at a film festival.
Safe Environment #3 — Western, War, and Romance Movies
I feel as though Westerns and War movies are already something I know I want to see more of. Romance’s are more out of my comfort zone. I should note that Comedy is among my negative genre, so Rom-Coms cancel eachother out and I won’t be seeking them out, but general Romance movies I can take more of a chance on.
Goal Setting
Over the past decade, an average score of 67 or 68 would be fairly normal. In 2016 I increased that to 69 without actually trying. Now that I’m actually putting effort into this, my goal for 2017 is to have an average score of 71 across the 120+ movies that I’m sure to watch (I’m already at 31 through the first 2 months).
I’ll be sure to follow up on this in January 2018.
(I won’t)
