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Comment by wvl | Hacker News Reader

I really disagree with the premise of this post. Emotional impact (United 93), psychological impact (Black Swan), intellectual demands (Primer) all equate to a lower rewatchability score, since watching the movie takes a lot out of me. However, the more of an impact a movie makes, the higher my opinion of a movie. Because something is light and fluffy doesn't make that movie "better", it just means it's easier to watch.

Rating films this way may do a good job of the "so bad it's good" camp (Snakes on a Plane), but will do an incredible disservice to movies like Black Swan.

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This is a really important point, and it'll probably justify its own blog post soon, but a quick response would be this:

I'd class United 93 and Black Swan as being, sort of, emotionally exhausting. And yes, I'm not going to rush out see them again. But that's very different to saying they're a bad film. I would suggest that, at high levels of quality, low levels of rewatchability makes it actually a better film, in a way.

Or, at least, it differentiates them from another terrific film like The King's Speech. If you're the kind of person who likes watching beautifully constructed but largely enjoyable films, your tastes will tend toward the top-right of the graph. But, if you enjoy more difficult or harrowing films, your favourite films might be lower on the rewatchability score, on average.

My point is, while quality is quality, a measure of skill and talent, rewatchability is personal, and groups similar films together in interesting ways. Where your favourite films come out on the graph is really not important to anyone but you, when you're looking for more stuff you like.

You may still disagree, but thanks for taking the time to comment :)

-glen.

I guess then, it depends on execution. If you're combining both of these numbers into one single metric of "goodness", then you'll just be accomplishing Pahalial's point of "legitimizing 'poor taste'". If, however, you can expose this information separately and well, then perhaps it will add value.

Personally, I'd like to break down the "rewatchability" metric into more components, to really get at the heart of the matter, like others here have commented. Pace, quality, fun, emotional impact, length, genre -- these are the things that really matter. But now we're getting into movie geek territory.

Speaking of movie geek -- I can't believe you left out the most interesting thing in that blog post. Where can we see a breakdown of what movies are where in that scatter plot? I want to know what those outliers on the high quality / low rewatchability scale are!

Yeah there's no sense in combining them. Or even averaging scores, really. Using a scatter plot you can get quite a good insight into the film at a glance.

As for which movies are the outliers, that you'll find out when you're a member :)

On your scatterplot, the correlation between the two scores looks incredibly high. By eyeballing it, I'd say > 0.8. Will you give the actual score in your upcoming post?

Ideally, it would be nice to find two axes that are orthogonal and let people rate on those. Clearly these two axes are highly correlated.

Glen it basically comes down to a genre by genre breakdown I think. If you're looking for a comedy which should inherently have high rewatchability, if any are rated as low then I can assume I should avoid them. For example, in college my buddies and I alternated watching 40 Year Old Virgin and Grandma's Boy for an entire semester. Neither would have the best quality ratings, but they were fun and sure had high rewatchability.

Now take the other end of the spectrum of film like Black Swan or even some slower paced films. I love 2001 A Space Odyssey but am not rushing to rewatch soon (though it has top quality) because it is way too slooow for me. Or take some dramas that while interesting on first glance don't really merit another watch.

Basically I think you should start with a top down approach by genre, and if something like comedy then the dominant factor is rewatchability but then for others it may be "quality" (which itself could be subdivided further into cinematographic elements for an auteur film, the musical score for a certain type, etc). But I feel like maybe you end up going down a rabbit's hole, so perhaps I'm asking more questions than I'm answering.

I think this is why they have both ratings. A quality rating and a rewatchability. As the site appears to be in private beta I can't play with it directly, but I would assume both ratings are exposed when you look at a movie, which will help you decide if you want to watch it. For example, if I come home on a friday night and I want something light and enjoyable to watch, I definitely don't want to watch Primer no matter how good it is. I'd instead go for something with a high rewatchability score. But if I'm in a mood for a "truly good" film then I can go for the quality rating score and ignore rewatchability.

I think a problem with "rewatchability" is that it can vary drastically with the amount of viewings. I'm going to substitute Aliens for Transformers, because "watchable" is not a word I would use to describe Transformers.

Aliens is very rewatchable. It has tense but predictable action (the aliens kill everyone, "get away from her", etc.). Sure, it's best the first time, but Aliens only ceases to be rewatchable when you get tired of watching Aliens.

Films like Primer, Fight Club, and The Usual Suspects, are very rewatchable once, with a sharp decline afterwards. The Soze/Durden effect is incredible once. The next time, you want to watch very closely to catch all of the obvious hints that you missed. You might still miss some, but not many. By the fourth time, it's almost pointless.

It's funny, because it makes me realize that for me, "rewatchability" is in large part all about catching all the details I missed the first time around. But I'm not sure if it's like that for other people or not. And it doesn't necessarily mean that I didn't enjoy it at least once. Some things are only good once. After that, there's just no point in watching them again.

Indeed. I could rewatch some movies effectively an infinite number of times. But that doesn't mean I think they are the best films, or the films I would put at the top of the list of recommendations for a friend.

I think that's certainly true for some people (e.g. you), but just the opposite is true for me.

I would like a meta-rating system where I could select the rating algorithm that would work for me. That would be nice.

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