How to deal with our changing taste over time ?

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livelove
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How to deal with our changing taste over time ?

Post by livelove »

I often struggle with how to accurately score movies. This topic is part of a series dealing with voting-related problems, challenges, phenomenons and paradoxes — all as part of a quest whose end-goal is to correctly reflect my appreciation of movies when rating them:


Like many other Critickers, I am at a point in my life where I realize that my movie taste has significantly changed.
When I was younger, I was quite impressed by Hollywood-style bombastic visuals and action.

But nowadays
• a deep story
• the complex display of feelings
• perspective on life
• philosophical thought
• etc.
... has grown much more important for me.

    Every person goes through a certain evolution in their life.
    So it's only logical that tastes change.

Question: How do you deal with your own changing movie taste over time ?

    1. My taste changes, but I never change my vote – I keep a "historical vote".

    2. My taste changes, and I change my vote accordingly to reflect that, but without re-watching the movies, so I guess how much I think I would like the movie now, if I watched it now.

    3. My taste changes, and I change my vote accordingly to reflect that, but only when re-watching a movie so that I can verify if the actual re-watching experience matches the expected re-watching experience.

    4. My taste never changed.


I would welcome if besides telling us in what category you are (1-4), you could explain your rationale and illustrate your experiences. Looking very much forward to reading your stories.
Last edited by livelove on Sat Sep 28, 2019 4:05 am, edited 11 times in total.

antidood1
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Re: how to deal with your own changing taste over time ?

Post by antidood1 »

This is not an easy matter. Although I really dislike seeing my old ratings in between my newer ones (the old ones usually feel terribly out of place in one way or another), I tend to only change my ratings on a rewatch — category 3.

My biggest reason is that constantly updating all my ratings simply takes too much time. I've done two big overhauls of all my rathings in the past, and it's really just a timesink more than anything else. And once you get going, I suspect that you'll want to update them every so often, taking even more of your time and never quite satisfying you.

Moreover, I think that preserving my old feelings on movies — rather than disregarding them and updating them according to my new standards — has merit as well. Of course this goes at the expense of consistency across all my ratings (I don't really think that Star Trek Into Darkness is worth a 65), but as I said in the other thread, I tend not to take my ratings too seriously anyways.

ribcage
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Re: how to deal with your own changing taste over time ?

Post by ribcage »

My taste never changes thanks to well persevered dissociation.

Although mostly i like all the same stuff i always have and find myself making room to appreciate more along the way.

livelove
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Re: how to deal with your own changing taste over time ?

Post by livelove »

Thanks both of you for sharing your thoughts.

@antidood1: I share your feelings on each single point you made.
In case you are interested: Here is my solution for not having to choose between
• "preserving my old feelings on movies" and
• having up-to-date scores for accurate TCIs/PSIs

I am using a spreadsheet, so there it is easy not to delete my old votes.
For users who use Criticker only, you could file a feature request to keep a voting history for each film (i.e. when you hover over a score you gave to a film, a floating window appears displaying the dates/times+scores of all your previous votes for this specific film).

fra paolo
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Re: how to deal with your own changing taste over time ?

Post by fra paolo »

I am definitely in category 2.

I rank my films in a relative order (the 92s are a little bit better than the 91s, which are a lot better than the 21s).

Whenever I add a film, I sometimes am confronted with the recognition that my mind has changed somewhat with the passing of time, and I assign different values to reflect those changes.

Of course, that means that sometimes a film that scored 55 when I added it has lost some of its lustre and there might be a film among the 49s that I now like better. It doesn't really bother me that my list includes these anomalies. Occasionally I decide to re-rank them and work my way through the list.

At the moment there is a bulge in the 20s that reflects an incomplete re-ranking.

paulofilmo
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Re: how to deal with your own changing taste over time ?

Post by paulofilmo »

livelove wrote:I am at a point in my life where I realize that my taste has significantly changed.
When I was younger, I was quite impressed by Hollywood-style bombastic visuals and action.

But nowadays
• a deep story
• the complex display of feelings
• perspective on life
• philosophical thought
• etc.
... has grown much more important for me.


i think i've gone the opposite.

yeah, it would be neat if there could be a weight added to the importance of the last (whatever) percentage of movies rated. Or a built-in decay/entropy/another word i'll pretend to understand.

for me i think it's ~15%. the last ~300 rated

chmul_cr0n
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Re: how to deal with your own changing taste over time ?

Post by chmul_cr0n »

I only change my vote for the worse when I feel it's justified. That justification would have to be some new discovery during the rewatch. Something I didn't notice before, so I wasn't able to realize the movie is actually much worse than I thought. But even then it's seldom guaranteed I'll downrank the movie.
Some movies become stale due to too many rewatches, due to you watching them at home instead of a big screen or due your current mood. Sometimes even the absence of 3D. Those things don't count.
Another reason might the accounting for novelty factors such as a director's style or something. Sometimes I'm really impressed by some auteur's movie, but 5 years later the things that blew me away I find to be somewhat common. They just weren't common to me, because I hadn't seen very many movies.
So unless I have a good reason, I try to never change a rating for the worse. And it has to be rewatch-based.

livelove
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Re: how to deal with your own changing taste over time ?

Post by livelove »

fra paolo wrote:I am definitely in category 2.

Whenever I add a film, I sometimes am confronted with the recognition that my mind has changed somewhat with the passing of time, and I assign different values to reflect those changes.
Aren't you "afraid" (for lack of a better word) that by re-ranking a film without re-watching it, you could miss the mark?

You could try the following:
1. Pick a film you watched a very long time ago and which you'd feel you have to re-rank.
2. re-rank the film
3. re-watch the film
4. rate this re-watching experience

Does 2. and 4. (i.e. the vote just before and just after the re-watching) always match ?
Or can there be appreciable differences?


fra paolo wrote:I rank my films in a relative order (the 92s are a little bit better than the 91s, which are a lot better than the 21s).
I am lost ... isn't that true for everyone? So what do you mean by "relative order" ?

fra paolo wrote:there might be a film among the 49s
Do you mean 49-ish by that?
Last edited by livelove on Sun Sep 22, 2019 2:53 am, edited 1 time in total.

livelove
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Re: how to deal with your own changing taste over time ?

Post by livelove »

chmul_cr0n wrote:Some movies become stale due to too many rewatches, due to you watching them at home instead of a big screen or due your current mood. Sometimes even the absence of 3D. Those things don't count.
good point. especially for movies for which the elements of surprise are very important.


PS: I also quoted you here.
Last edited by livelove on Sun Sep 22, 2019 1:00 am, edited 1 time in total.

livelove
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Re: how to deal with your own changing taste over time ?

Post by livelove »

chmul_cr0n wrote:I only change my vote for the worse when I feel it's justified.
[…]
So unless I have a good reason, I try to never change a rating for the worse. And it has to be rewatch-based.
This is an unexpected (and therefore very welcome) answer. I expected that people would be either open to changing their vote or not. I was not expecting that some would only upgrade/downgrade their vote.

How come you are willing to raise ratings but avoid lowering them ?

If it's justifiable to you to move ratings in one direction, why not in the other ?

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