Happy 4th of July to all of my visitors from the States and, to my friends to the North, Happy Canada Day which was celebrated on this past Saturday. It is a good day to watch Yankee Doodle Dandy, one of those special movie experiences I’m fond of.
This past weekend I watched another patriotic movie, Courage Under Fire with Denzel Washington, Meg Ryan, and a young Matt Damon among others in a terrific cast. It was one of those special movies that I yearned for in my last post on July movie prospects. It was a July 1996 release that wasn’t nominated for an Academy Award (how it didn’t get an acting nomination among several powerful performances astounds me). It earned a 94 out of 100 score from me. I loved this movie. The feeling I get after watching a movie this good is why I watch so many movies. It is the promise that there are more movies out there to see that I will love that feeds my passion for movies.
As I was thinking about special movies the last few days, a question occurred to me. Can I use my rating system to find movies I’ll “love” rather than just “really like”? Of course I can. Any movie that earns a rating of 85 out of 100 or higher meets my definition of a movie I will “love”. An 85 also converts to a five star movie on Netflix. I can rank each of the movie rating websites that I use in my algorithm from highest rating to lowest. I then can take the top 10% of the rankings and calculate the probability that a movie in that top 10% would earn a score of 85 or higher. Regular readers of this blog shouldn’t be surprised by the results.
| Top 10% Threshold | Actual % of My Database | Probability for “Love” Movie | |
| Netflix | > 4.5 | 9.5% | 81.4% |
| Movielens | > 4.2 | 10.7% | 76.9% |
| Criticker | > 90 | 10.3% | 55.4% |
| IMDB | > 8.1 | 10.8% | 45.8% |
| Rotten Tomatoes | > Cert. Fresh 95% | 10.4% | 41.7% |
High Netflix and Movielens scores are the most reliable indicators of “love” movies. Here’s my problem. There are no movies that I haven’t seen in the last fifteen years that have a Netflix Best Guess of 4.5 or higher. There are fewer than 10 movies that I haven’t seen in the last fifteen years with a Movielens predicted score of greater than 4.2. Here’s the kicker, the probability that I will “love” a movie with a Movielens predicted score of 4.2 or better that doesn’t also have a Netflix Best Guess greater than 4.5 is only 62%. It seems the chances to find movies to “love” are significantly diminished without the strong support of Netflix.
On the 1st of each month Netflix Streaming and Amazon Prime shake up the movies that are available in their inventory. The July 1 shakeup has resulted in a couple of new movies being added to my list of the Top Ten “Really Like” Movies Available on Netflix or Amazon Prime. This list is actually mistitled. It should be the Top Ten “Love” Movies Available. Take a look at the list. Perhaps you haven’t seen one of these movies, or haven’t seen it in a while. It is your good fortune to be able to watch one of these movies the next time you are in the mood for a special movie experience.
As for me, I’m still hoping that one of the movies released this year rises to the top of my watch list and is able to captivate me. If it were easy to find movies that I will “love”, I would have named this blog Will I “Love” This Movie?. For now, I will continue to watch movies that I will “really like” until that next special movie comes along.
Will I "Really Like" this Movie? 