http://www.criticker.com/
Never did. How is it?
What exactly is it? It doesn’t seem to load for me.
It is like the auteurs Films section where you can rate and review films, only it looks less appealing that the auteurs. I see they do have an extensive database of world cinema though.
Must be fun to play around when there is absolutely nothing interesting going on.
It looks like a cheap rip off of this site, except w/o good films on it.
Actually, it was around before The Auteurs existed. It’s a way to catalog the films you’ve seen, find others with similar tastes and get recommendations based on their films.
Users are allowed to add films into the database, so new films are always being added. I love the site and use it all the time.
Can you use the database to find other people with similar ratings? That would interest me. I wish there was some feature at Autheurs that could do that.
Yeah, I think it is pretty fantastic aside from the slow loading times at times.
The databse will even estimate how much you will rate a film but I don’t much for that feature, since I have my own ideas how much I like a film. Nevertheless, it does help you find users with similar tastes and perhaps you can compare your tastes with your friends (is GringoTex your friend? I think I saw him on the site). In any case, I do think it is a convenient resource for cataloging films seen.
Here’s my profile, as an example.
I’ve just rated a bunch of films. (It’s addicting!) But I’ve noticed some problems with the rating, and I’m wondering if anyone else faces the same challenges. For example, how do you rate films that you’ve seen when you were a lot younger? There are bunch of films that I liked when I was a child or teenager, but I’d guess I wouldn’t like as much now. Do you rate the film in the way you perceived it in the past or how you would perceive it now (which would be a guess)? The latter seems imprudent, but I think you have to consider the ratings will be used for recommendations. I might have liked The Great Pumpkin when I was seven, but if I rate it (and other films like it) as such, I’m going to get recommendations of the Care Bears’ Movie or something. See what I mean?
Or what about films you’ve seen, but you can barely remember anything about them? Do you just give your best guess of what you think you thought of the film? Or do you just treat it as if you’ve never seen the film.
Should you rate films in a way to “help” get the best recommendations. In other words, give high ratings for films that you may not have cared for, but you might want to see in the future. For example, I never really understood Double Life of Veronique, but it’s the type of film that would interest me. If there a bunch of films like this, that I never really understood or enjoyed, if I rate films to reflect that, I might not get the kind of recommendations I’d actually like. Does that make sense?
Haha Jazz, you’ve just raised some of the fundamental problems with rating systems and memory! My suggestion is to just take it easy in rate or not rate them in whatever way you desire.
Regarding recommendations, I suggest you just rate films according to a single criteria of your choice. Most people use “liking”. But I think it would still be better to take suggestions from other people personally – those have served me much better than Criticker’s guesses.
Jazz——You’ll still like the Great Pumpkin. Trust me. Great film.
Rocky,
Ha!…uh, or were you not joking? Seriously, I don’t doubt that The Great Pumpkin could be a good film, and I might like it to some extent even now. But my guess is that this is not the type of film, I’d be interested in seeing. I mean, if I got a recommendation of a film like that, there’s a chance that I could really like it, but I tend to feel the odds are small.
On the other hand, I am reluctant to give a low rating that I think may be objectively good, but something I’m just not interested in.
Law,
But to get recommendations from people of similar tastes, the site has to find these people, and that’s done via your ratings, right?
Jazz, as in personal recommendations from friends and users on the auteurs or criticker rather than the system generated ones.
Well that works if you know that the people on auteurs and criticker share your tastes. To me, the value of the ratings system and database is that you can find people who come close to sharing your tastes. While the people at auteurs have similar tastes to myself, there is still often a high margin of difference (unless you know the tastes of the individual). Know what I mean?
Yes. Don’t worry about it Jazz, I am sure you will find people.
Worried? OK, I’m stopping now. I don’t want to sound too pathetic.
Haha, that was an expression but I am just taking everything cool like this guy:
Everyone here should sign up for this site! Seriously, it’s an amazing way of keeping track of what you’ve seen and of helping find stuff to see, and because of the way it works the more of us that join and rank films the easier it will be to find great recommendations.
If you click on the coloured boxes with the scores in then sometimes mini-reviews will pop up. I use these to keep track of what I thought about a film.
Law, I can’t actually see your account for some reason… Is there any way for me to see it?
I use criticker.
(I wish you guys would keep the same screen name, though. I’m pretty sure I’m not going to forget the connection.)
I still think it has a really weak database and I’ll stick with rateyourmusic.
As long as a film is on IMDb it can be added to the database. It takes maybe 2 minutes to add a film to the database.
1. Not everything is on imdb. This is one of the most frustrating aspects of criticker; Its persistent reliance on imdb.
2. The other thing I hate about adding new movies to criticker is the plot summary.
It’s way easier and faster to add new items to the rym database, which is probably why its database is so much richer.
I agree that its reliance on IMDb is frustrating. Still, I far prefer Criticker’s method of ranking to RYM’s method of just giving a score on a 10 point scale. I also enjoy some of the features Criticker offers that I don’t believe RYM does, such as being able to filter your rankings in such a way that you can see all your ratings for films from a certain director for example. The 500 character limit on reviews on Criticker means I can read a few opinions about a film very quickly and get an idea of whether it’s worth checking out (admittedly many lesser known film don’t have many reviews yet, but that’s all the more reason for people from here to join the site and post reviews). I just find RYM kind of like an information overload, whereas Criticker just presents what you need to know for the purposes of keeping track of what you’ve watched and ranking said things you’ve watched.
Also on a personal note I find RYM’s layout ugly and cumbersome.
Haha, okay, granted you’ve presented valid arguments, most of them are your subjective opinions (and I have no reason to argue with you about those)
Still I believe RYM offers many possibilities that criticker doesn’t as well. Lets just say that both sites have their ups and downs. One thing you mentioned was not being able to search for directors among your ratings… I also miss this feature. I worked my way around it though by tagging films with directors (see for example all my terayama films: http://rateyourmusic.com/film_collection/chumlum/stag/terayama/)
I do have a criticker account (http://www.criticker.com/profile/chumlum) and would love to use it more if the database was better. I would also help improve the database myself if the method of doing so was more efficient.
just found Risselada on there
shame on him for his dust devil score (:
I just made an account and started fooling around on there. I have to say that I’m not too much of a fan, but I’ll spend some more time on it later to get to know it a little better. It just seems like I’m doing a lot of work rating the films. I really don’t like the 0-100 rating system either. I started out trying to rate them realistically but then I just rated them in groups of 20 as if I were doing a 5 star rating. I don’t know. I think I like mubis much more, but I’m not comparing in any way.
Law
Criticker.
Does anyone use it?