Recently a friend of mine who loves action movies (that’s surely one of the reasons he is my friend) asked me how to watch a good movie.
What he meant by that is how to escape from bumping into an unexpectedly bad film.
He shared on Facebook that his recent film choice was so disappointing that he left the theater after just one hour in anguish.
I believe that the movie was ‘Baywatch’ (2017) with Dwayne Johnson.
Anyway, that got me thinking.
On one hand, this is a very subjective question that may have various and subjective answers.
People are different and everybody has a different perception about a good or a bad movie.
On the other hand, though, there are certainly some dos and don’ts that can help us chose the right movie in the action genre.
In the end, watching an actioner should always be an entertaining experience, right?
In this article, I’m going to share some best practices that work for me, as well as some bad ones that are more likely to mislead you when you’re picking up a film to watch in the action genre.
Sure enough, most of these practices can be applied in every other genre.
Without a further ado, let’s start with the best practices.
Contents
Learn More About The Movie
When you decide to vote or not for a candidate running for a president, you try to get an informative decision, based on certain facts that you learn about him.
You do the same thing when choosing your next destination for a vacation, or when you are purchasing a car.
You get the idea.
The same applies for a bit less important stuff as well, like for instance selecting an action movie that you really want to meet your expectations.
So a movie got your attention one way or another and now it’s time to decide –is it the one?
How you get acquainted with it?
Read Reviews
It is not a secret that movie reviews and critical commentaries can be a very powerful marketing tool for the production studios.
They can positively or negatively affect our decision to watch a certain film.
In that train of thought, they can be very helpful.
Many people don’t like reading reviews led by the fear that it is going to spoil their experience.
That is not necessarily true.
Most of the reviews out there are written in a way that they don’t reveal anything related to the plot in details.
In fact, every decent movie reviewer knows that he (or she) has to include a ‘spoiler alert’ notation at the beginning of the review in order not to provide bad user experience and frustrate the readers.
Good reviews contain information only about the overall impression of the author and his opinion about the quality of the film, based on facts such as the performance of the actors, the level of the cinematography, the execution of the action sequences, etc.
When it comes to trustworthy movie reviews online, there are several which stand out.
The Internet Movie Database
IMDB.com, founded by Col Needham and now a subsidiary of Amazon, inc is a splendid resource for getting an opinion about a certain film that you are interested in.
At the bottom of every flick you find, there is a section called ‘User Reviews’.
Which is awesome is the fact that the reviews start with a paragraphed title, generalizing the opinion of the reviewer about the movie.
For instance one review of ‘John Wick: Chapter 2’ is entitled ‘Kick-ass, entertaining and relentless throughout. This is what every sequel should aspire to be’.
By reading only the title you get an idea about the general opinion of this specific viewer.
What I like about IMDB is that the reviews are written mostly by ordinary end users, i.e. viewers, and not by film critics.
Sometimes the professional film critics can get too much deeper in their analysis and to be honest, that can be boring.
Plus, often, they use high language style which complicates things even more.
I’m not saying that it is bad but most of the time you just need to read a review imagining that you are chatting with your best friend.
So you see why the user reviews in IMDB can be very useful.
Rotten Tomatoes
As you probably know Rottentomatoes.com is one of the most popular film review aggregators and user communities.
The company was founded in 1998 by Senh Duong and later acquired by the giant Warner Bros.
The good thing about Rotten Tomatoes is that there are critic reviews and audience reviews.
That means that there you can find the opinions of professional critics from big media companies like ‘Entertainment Weekly’ or ‘New York Magazine’ as well as reviews made by ordinary viewers like you and me.
What I personally like about Rotten Tomatoes is that there are small fractions from the entire review that can be very helpful in acquiring a first impression about the movie without being necessary to read the whole review.
Moreover, there is a rating system for both the professional critics and the ‘amateurs’, which makes the reviews more trustworthy.
For instance, the renowned professional critics on the website are rated ‘Top Critic’ and the highest rating for the ordinary viewers is ‘Super Reviewer’.
Nice and nifty, isn’t it?
While Rotten Tomatoes is famous with its neutrality, you should also keep in mind that the website is known for its rough rankings.
Sometimes it can be a challenging task to find a movie which is ‘generously’ rated.
Anyways, we will speak about ratings in a while.
Now, let’s jump to another great resource for reading reviews.
Metacritic.com
Metacritic.com is another wonderful and user-friendly resource that can surely help in getting acquainted with a certain flick that interests you.
The review aggregator website was founded in 1999 by four students from the University of Southern California law school and the movie reviews are just a small fraction of the website’s activity.
Metacritic covers also reviews of a large range of media such as games, music albums and formerly books.
Its movie database includes more than 9000 films.
In 2005 the website was bought by CNET which is now part of CBS Corporation.
What I love about this website is the fact that it is very well-structured and easy to navigate.
Shortly after seeing the title of the film you already have an idea whether you’re going to like the movie as the perfect match for you or not.
Similarly to Rotten Tomatoes, it provides an excerpt from each review with the option to continue reading.
Also, the reviews are structured in columns.
In the left column you’ll find the critic reviews and in the right one – the user reviews.
I personally use it when I already have read some reviews from IMDB or Rotten Tomatoes and I want to be informed about other opinions related to a certain film that I’ll watch.
I believe that is always useful to have as much as points of view as possible.
Besides, the reviews on Metacritic.com can be very perky sometimes which I find amusing.
Test and see for yourself.
Like you could imagine, there are numerous places online where you can read what others have to say regarding their viewing experience about a certain flick.
I can assure you that the three websites listed above will definitely be of a great help when it comes to reading movie reviews online.
However, if you want to go deeper and you like browsing different movie opinions I suggest looking at a certain title in Yahoo Answers or reading the reviews present on Rogerebert.com.
If you think that’s all you need to know about how to become a master in choosing the best films to watch, then you are questioning my thoroughness.
Take a break if you want and let’s continue with another ideal way of how to watch a good movie and guarantee yourself an enjoyable viewing experience
Ratings, a.k.a Scores
Ratings are subjective, you say.
I hear you and I know what you mean.
According to Usability First, however, “While the rating is subjective, it is often measured on a Likert scale, which allows for a quantitative measure that, when combined with ratings from multiple people in the target audience, can provide an objective estimate of usability.”
See, it’s not just me.
You can clearly rely on ratings when selecting a movie among many others.
I rush to precise that I refer to ratings as the score given to a specific film by a number of viewers, based on a certain scale (1-10 for example).
This is different from the ratings distributed by the Motion Picture Association of America, which serve as a criterion for a film’s suitability for a certain audience, based on the content.
Ratings can be a fast way to determine whether a movie has a good or a bad reputation, based on a number of viewers who scored it.
The more people rated it, the more credible is the associated rating.
For instance, Christopher Nolan’s masterpiece ‘The Dark Knight’ (2008) has an average IMDB score of 9.0 out of 10 based on 1 824 370 users.
Besides being very impressive this is also showing that almost two million people voted that the movie is well worth the watch.
Now, I do realize that if you are not a fan of the action-fantasy genre and more specifically of the movies in which the main hero is wearing a combat suit and a mask (in other terms – the films ending up with ‘man’), you are most probably not going to like it no matter how high the user or critic score is.
However, you’ll agree that things change if you are a fan of the genre and the ‘man’ movies.
My point is that ratings do matter and more importantly they can help you in making a well-founded choice very quickly.
When it comes to scores, I tend to refer to the already mentioned websites – IMDB, Rotten Tomatoes, and Metacritic.
Their rating system is very well-made and this combined with the solid reputation that they have, make it very trustworthy.
As you know, the IMDB rating system is a scale from 1 to 10, marked with stars and the rating page for a specific movie is updated daily.
What you probably don’t know is that the rating displayed is a weighted average, meaning that some votes have more weight than others.
They do that in order to avoid vote stuffing which is a method used by some people to influence a specific movie rating driven by reasons other than just their personal opinion about the film.
In case you’re interested you can read more here.
The votes that make the rating can be broken down in a way that you see how many people voted with a specific score (let’s say 9) and also it gives you an insight about the gender, the age and the location of the user.
Usually, if a movie on IMDB has a score lower than 6.5, then it is not my area.
The Rotten Tomatoes rating system is funnier.
The reviews aggregator uses the so-called Tomatometer – the most trustworthy measurement of quality of the movies according to the website.
The Tomatometer is the percentage of approved critics that have given the movie a positive review.
Basically, it means that there are three types of ratings based on the freshness of the tomato. (see the table above, courtesy of Wikipedia).
For instance, the most recent Stephen King adaptation ‘The Dark Tower’ received catastrophic reviews and its score is 16{79d35de7db29101ba9e6698f70e90b6e3dcdf27517e01d2784b5cf4bdf9b4e0e} which makes it a ‘rotten’ move.
Things are different for the hit Indonesian action-thriller ‘The Raid: Berandal’ which has a score of 79{79d35de7db29101ba9e6698f70e90b6e3dcdf27517e01d2784b5cf4bdf9b4e0e} which makes it a ‘certified fresh’ film.
Also, the ‘critics consensus’ includes a short summary of the reviews used in the specific aggregate score which gives you a quick insight whether the movie is good or not.
The third rating scale called ‘the audience score’ is the percentage of users who have given the movie a score of at least 3.5 stars or more.
So just after glancing over these quality measurements that stand at the very beginning of a review, you can judge if the movie is good or not.
If you are interested about how the ratings are calculated in details, you can read more here.
The other respected review aggregator website Metacritic.com uses a rating scale called metascore.
It is a scale from 0 to 100 and every movie present in their database has such score.
Just like for IMDB.com the metascores are weighted averages and some ratings mean more than others because of the stature of the individuals.
Another great thing is that besides the metascore there is a brief statement under every title providing information about the general type of reviews that the movie has received – positive or negative.
You can also see the critic score distribution – how many critics gave positive, mixed or negative reviews.
What a better and faster way to quickly decide if the movie is well worth the watch!
Our research continues with another helpful source for finding information about a certain film.
Online Movie Communities (Forums)
Such forums are a great way to start or to join a discussion related to a title that got your attention.
The advantage of joining such forums is the fact that there you can share opinions in a casual conversation with like-minded people about movies.
When it comes to roaming in such communities I tend to use mainly two of them that I consider the best:
- The CHUD Community – the name stands for Cinematic Happenings Under Development and it is a film review website that incorporates Community, Forums, Movie News, Focused Film Discussion, Pre-Release Movie threads, Post-Release movie threads and many more sections.
- The City-Data movie forum – this is a social networking and information website and the movie forum is very engaging and informative.
Let’s be more genre-specific now.
When it comes to selecting the appropriate movie to watch in the action genre, you might seriously increase your chances to make the best possible if you…
Browse By Directors
I totally realize that often, some directors can make a flawless movie and their next one happens to be a huge disappointment.
Every director has a weak film (except for maybe Christopher Nolan for now) but in general, you can make a good choice by selecting an action movie, directed by one of the following directors, known for their achievements in the action genre:
- John Woo – John has an impressive collection of action movies behind his back. Some of them are ‘Hard Target’, ‘Face/Off’, ‘Red Cliff’, etc. My experience with his movies is that every film he makes has its ups and downs but one thing is sure – they are always spectacular.
- Peter Berg – with movies such as ‘Lone Survivor’, ‘Patriot’s Day’ and ‘The Kingdom’, Berg is known for the realism and the intensity of his action films.
- Antoine Fuqua – Antoine is a remarkable action director and I’m sure that you have watched at least one of his films. The first film for which he received critical acclaim was the Oscar-winning ‘Training Day’ with Denzel Washington. Among his other famous films are ‘Southpaw’, ‘The Equalizer’ and ‘The Sniper’. You can’t go wrong with Antoine Fuqua.
As you can imagine, there are a bunch of well-known action directors out there and if you perform a search in Google with the query ‘best action directors’, you’ll see a list of some of the best.
Some of my other suggestions would be Isaac Florentine, Andrew Davis, James Cameron or John McTiernan.
Now, I have a question for you.
Do you have friends?
Of course, you do. Then in order to receive a good movie suggestion…
Speak With Your Like-Minded Friends
For sure we all have friends with whom we share many interests but we also have friends whose interests differ from ours.
That’s normal.
What a better idea to ask a friend to suggest you a great action movie!
Of course, you need to knock on the right door.
The keyword here is like-minded.
The last thing you want is to ask someone who you know that has a different understanding of a good action flick than yours.
Your best movie friends can surely help you in making a suitable for you decision.
By the way, did you know that you can have many digital friends to ask for a movie suggestion?
That’s right. I’m speaking about…
Movie Recommendation Engines
These types of software become more and more popular these days.
Not only that, but they also become better and more sophisticated.
Some of them use artificial intelligence in order to sort the best movies according to very specific parameters.
A movie recommendation engine (MRE) is a software that analyzes data according to various criteria such as genre, mood, violence, sub-genre, actors, time-length, rating, etc.
You name it.
Some of the most popular MREs are:
- Suggest Me Movie – a very large database with a lot of options to play with including keywords (for instance ‘castle’ or ‘love’)
- Taste Movies – besides having various categories based on which you can search for a film, this movie recommendation engine creates you a profile.
When you use it for the first time it asks you to rate some random movies. For instance, it wants to know if you think that ‘Birdman’ is ‘awful’, ‘meh’, ‘good’ or ‘amazing’. Based on that, it offers you a flick that best matches your answers. Of course, this is just a small part of it.
- A Good Movie to Watch – an excellent engine that has popular high-grossing titles as well as some little-known movies. I like its ability to show movies based on various types of mood.
Speaking of mood…
Be Aware of Your Movie Mood
Your mood can be a crucial factor for choosing a movie to watch with a satisfying result.
So don’t neglect it.
For instance, today I feel like watching a well-made martial arts action movie like ‘Headshot’ with Iko Uwais and yesterday I was in the mood for some unpretentious funny action movie from the 80’s so I watched ‘Raw Deal’ with Arnold.
For sure both are action movies but they are very different in many aspects.
The people are often led by their emotions and mood when taking decisions and selecting a movie makes no difference.
Enough with the best practices.
It’s time to show you what to avoid when choosing a good movie to watch.
So pay attention because the following are the bad practices that you need to unfollow.
If there is something to forget when wondering what to watch next, then, please…
Forget About the Box Office
Box Office statistics can often be misleading.
I already gave ‘The Dark Tower’ (2017) as an example somewhere in the paragraphs above and I’ll give it now as well.
The movie starring Mathew McConaughey and Idris Elba was a box office champion shortly after its release and as of this writing, it is among the top five highest grossing movies two weeks after it hit the theaters.
That is an impressive result but there is one problem.
The movie sucks.
Not according to me, I haven’t even watched it, but according to the majority of the critics and the audience.
All of the popular review aggregator websites gave it a poor score and announced it as weak.
There are many examples of big-budgeted films that were bad to the bone but nevertheless, they conquered the box-office:
- ‘Batman vs. Superman: Dawn of Justice’ earned the mind-blowing $873 million at the box office but its Rotten Tomatoes score is 27{79d35de7db29101ba9e6698f70e90b6e3dcdf27517e01d2784b5cf4bdf9b4e0e} which makes it a rotten tomato.
- David Ayer’s ridiculously expensive superhero flick ‘Suicide Squad’ full of stars achieved the spectacular $746 million at the box-office but it is a rotten movie with the pathetic 25{79d35de7db29101ba9e6698f70e90b6e3dcdf27517e01d2784b5cf4bdf9b4e0e}.
- Dan Brown’s adaptation ‘Inferno’ topped the box-office in 2016 and earned $220 million but its metascore shows the humiliating 42{79d35de7db29101ba9e6698f70e90b6e3dcdf27517e01d2784b5cf4bdf9b4e0e}.
The thing is that many people go to the theaters without doing the slightest research on the film they are about to watch.
Hey, that’s totally OK. There is a huge number of folks who just go to the movies for the sake of the experience and to spend two hours with their friends.
Many of them don’t even know what the movie is about.
They vaguely heard that it is a big-budgeted film with a huge star in the leading role and that’s it – they are hooked.
The other thing is that the big studios can invest big money in marketing campaigns so that even your 90-year-old grandmother living in a small distant village knows about the movie and thinks of it as something very special.
There are posters everywhere, the trailer is showing on all the media imaginable including in the public transportation.
That is just media noise and it doesn’t have anything to do with the quality of the film.
If you want to check the quality, then go to the review aggregator websites.
If it is a brand new movie I suggest you wait for the first critic reviews, they usually appear very quickly since for sure the movie aired earlier in another country than yours or someone watched a pre-screening already.
So choosing a movie based only on his performance in the box office can often be misleading.
Since we mentioned the trailers…
Trailers Often Lie
The trailers are the biggest marketing weapon of the production studios.
The main goal of the trailer is to look as cool as possible so that it can impress you and makes you a buyer.
It has the purpose to sell us on the idea of paying to see the movie.
Since the cinema industry becomes more and more competitive, the fight for the viewer’s attention is ferocious.
According to a recent study, Hollywood spends averagely $32 million for advertisement campaigns.
So the companies try to do their best in order to produce the most appealing film previews possible.
In these two minutes that they have for the trailer, they use flashy graphics, pumping soundtrack and include the most interesting scenes of the movie presented in a way that it boosts the customer’s expectations about the motion picture.
To be honest, I love watching trailers. I can spend all day doing it.
But I also take them with a grain of salt since history knows many epic trailers for movies that don’t meet viewer’s expectations.
As an example, just remember the mind-blowing trailer for ‘Terminator: Salvation’ (2009) which turned into a disappointment or the breathtaking trailer for ‘Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace’ (1999).
Both movies were heavily panned by the critics. And these are just two examples.
The point is that relying only on the trailer of the movie is like relying only on the color and the shape of a car when you make a purchasing decision.
There is one final thing.
Don’t Rely Entirely on Other People’s Opinion
Everybody is different when it comes to personal taste.
That is why it is always a bad practice to listen to what others think about a certain movie.
A bad movie for one is a wonderful movie for another.
No matter what you read, always listen to your own judgment and perception about the film.
I love the movie ‘Wild Wild West’ (1998) with Will Smith even though it is a box office flop and received several Razzie awards.
I don’t care about its 4.8 out of 10 stars on IMDB. I just love it. Period.
My point is that it is recommended to explore a movie and to read about it before watching but in the end what matters the most is what your inner feeling about the whole thing is.
If I have to quote the Swedish rock band Roxette ‘listen to your heart’ before everything else.
So In The End How To Watch a Good Movie?
We all strive to get the most from our cinematic experience and we hate it when it is not as enjoyable as we wanted it to be.
How to come up with the right choice when selecting the perfect movie and avoid watching a disappointing one can be a subjective question.
However, there are some orientation marks that one can follow in order to make a decision and not be frustrated with the end result.
Reading reviews, using movie recommendation engines, hanging out in forums or talking to like-minded friends on the subject are just some of the good tips to consider.
How do you choose which movie to watch? What you do and what you don’t do when selecting your next film? Are you assiduous when you make your choice? Speak your mind in the comments below!