Better Movie Rating with Goodfil.ms

We all love movies. Movies can be fun, but nothing spoils our mood like a bad movie. It’s so frustrating when a movie fails to live up to our expectations. You could turn to a typical movie rating application like IMDB to find out whether a movie is worth your time or not, but in my personal experience, half the time I found myself disagreeing with the rating given.

Your movie experience is subjective. What you don’t like now, you might love in the future, and vise versa. So, is it fair to quantify the movie experience? In this article, we’re going to find that out and see how GoodFil.ms fits in.

What is Goodfil.ms?

GoodFil.ms is a Melbourne based movie rating startup founded by a couple of ex-Envato employees Glen Maddern and John Barton. They’ve managed to raise $150K seed capital within months of its inception. They’ve taken a different approach to solve the complex issue of better recommendations. Does that work? That’s exactly what we’re going to find out.

What’s wrong with the system?

Before answering that, let’s take a look at how a typical website rates a movie. Let’s say I’m watching ‘The Matrix’. It’s a Science-fiction film, so I’d expect to see a good plot, dramatic action sequence and some inspiring graphics. After watching the movie, if I liked it, on a scale of 5, I’d give it a sweet 5, and on the other hand if I didn’t, I’ll give it a 1 or maybe 2. But that’s my personal opinion and not necessarily be a pointer to the general quality of a movie.

Researches have shown that the 5 point system doesn’t work on a larger scale. If you take a look this graph from YouTube, over 80% of the users/critics have given the video either a 5 or 1, implying that the video is either too good or too bad. There are only a very few people who’ve taken the middle path.

A similar trend can be observed at Amazon. Most of the products have at least 30% poor rating (scores 1 & 2). So how can you judge whether something’s a suitable product? The existing system is not efficient and may not get you the desirable results.

Would that then mean that a simple yes-no type system is better for movies? No way. First of all, it collects only the bare minimum data available, and we’ll never know why a person liked/disliked a movie. What works for me, may not work for you. It’d a bad idea to recommend something to you without having all possible data in hand.

Okay, so what do you suggest? Well, I have been trying to solve the same problem for one of my own projects for a while now without any luck. As we’ve already established, bringing better recommendations is really complex. Sometime back, Netflix announced $1m prize for such an algorithm, which never saw the light of day. What we need now is a different idea, something thought through from the ground up. It’s easier said than done, I know.

What’s so different about GoodFil.ms?

Goodfil.ms redefines this problem from the very basics. They rate a movie on 2 aspects- quality and rewatchability. Both are two different things, as they show on their website. For example, Transformers was stupid (Thank you, Megan Fox) but it’d be fun to watch again. On the other hand 127 Hours was an awesome movie which literally made me cry, but I’d pull my tongue out rather than watch it again.

They’ve done a good job in combining these two factors, but that’s not complete without personalized recommendations. Think about all the movies you enjoyed the most – you’ll likely have watched them with your friends, or you’re at least more likely to have. We enjoy movies even if it didn’t win any awards, especially if our friends recommend them and they happen to suit our fancy. It makes sense to recommend movies based on your friends suggestions than millions of strangers, and that’s exactly what Goodfil.ms is doing.

Getting started

Once you login, you can rate movies based on the already mentioned 2 factors – movie quality and rewatchability – or you can add movies to your queue to watch in the future. If you’re looking for Movie recommendation, Goodfil.ms offers a few intuitive options. You can see movies from your friends list or what’s hot on the website or get a random list. Queuing is another great feature to manage your watch list. Another feature which caught my attention was the ‘Worst’ category. It’s really intelligent to have a separate list for movies that’s you don’t want to watch.

For getting recommendations from your friends, at least 3 of your friends should be using the service.

Getting adventurous

If you’re in a mood for an adventure, this one is for you. Just click on the small white dots on the graph depending on your mood and watch Goodfil.ms conjure a beautiful list of movies for you. And yeah, it works like a charm.

Netflix/iTunes integration

Another cool feature worth noting is the iTunes and Netflix integration. You can quickly view the list of movies available for download/ rent from these biggies and check out if it’s worth paying for. It would be even better if I could directly buy from the movie page. Hopefully, it’d be added soon.

Judging Friends

I was not able to check this out during this review, so I’ll not be able to give you a first hand account, but this looks really impressive on paper. You might not have fun movie nights with most of your friends. Some might insist on watching Slumdog Millionaire for the third time (True story!). So, you can judge your friends to understand their movie patterns.

Interface

The UI is neatly done. Rating a movie just takes a couple of seconds and I particularly loved the transition effects. The navigation is efficiently laid out and makes it easy to go around. The icons look stunning and are used effectively. I noticed a relatively minor design gap though. The movie pages are designed after FB’s auto pagination, making the footer inaccessible. If I need access the footer, let’s say to review the FAQ’s or to visit their blog, I need to logout.

Overall, they’ve a pretty, user-friendly interface. A job well done.

Other thoughts

Goodfil.ms has managed to put up an awesome service in such a short span. I really loved their service. In the brief time I spent with their application, I found a few minor design gaps here and there. For instance, currently the system allows us to rate movies, which has not yet released. This could be solved if the system takes the release date into account, before allowing a user to rate.

I found a few duplicate movies in the list. The system seems to be displaying the list by users rather than the movie itself.

And a few of the posters are broken. Though it’s quite understandable, a fallback image would be a face saver. All these are really minor and doesn’t affect the system’s efficiency. I’m positive that the future versions will resolve these issues.

Wrapping up

Goodfil.ms has taken a new approach to improve the quality of movie recommendations and they’ve built a pretty solid app. Through their unique approach they’ve manage to leave an impression. With better Netflix integration, Amazon Instant integration and a Facebook timeline app on the horizon, I can only expect things to get better. I’d encourage you to check this out.

How was your experience with Goodfil.ms? Have you tried any other Social movie recommendation apps? Do join us in our discussion below.