Best Movie Ever?

Movies out this coming weekend are not many and are fairly low-profile.  The biggest one from what we can tell is Alice in Wonderland, and for various reasons, we aren't applying our prediction model to that preview.  However, we are bringing you something way better than Alice in Wonderland (even if it does star Johnny Depp).  It is a preview of what is predicted to be the greatest movie ever.  The catch is, though, that it isn't actually a movie.

Given our model is just a couple equations, we can apply it to pretty much anything, so we decided to apply it to this clip.

Predicted IMDB Rating: 9.1
Predicted first weekend gross: $160 million

With these numbers, the clip is set to be the highest grossing movie ever (just ahead of The Dark Knight), and tied with the best movie ever (right up next to The Shawshank Redemption according to this list).

Here's how it works...

Review: Shutter Island

This week, we have Shutter Island, the thrilller/horror movie starring Leonardo DiCaprio.  The preview clearly stands out from others, but not in a really quantifiable way.

Predicted IMDB Score: 7.2
Predicted Weekend Gross: $27 million


Preview here.


There are cool filters on some of the shots, and the shushing woman in every preview will haunt your dreams, but it's difficult to nail down exactly what makes this preview intriguing (which gives our model some trouble).  It's likely some combination of Scorsese's direction and simply DiCaprio himself.  I mean really, DiCaprio's 5 previous movies have received an average IMDB score of 7.8 which is quite stellar.

How did we do: From Paris with Love

In keeping with our need to see how are predictions are doing, we assess our predictions for From Paris with Love.  ...Though, looking at their weekend gross, it appears as though nobody really cares.

Our IMDB prediction was 5.7, and currently From Paris with Love has an overall rating of 6.5.  But as we said before, ratings after the first weekend will likely be inflated.  When we assessed Edge of Darkness last week, IMDB's score was 7.4, but since then it has dropped to a 7.1, bringing it ever (inexorably?) closer to our predicted score of 6.7.  Hopefully we'll see the same trend with From Paris with Love.

Review: The Wolfman

This week's movie is The Wolfman featuring Benicio Del Toro and Anthony Hopkins.  And it's predicted to be a good one despite having a tagline belonging to countless Disney movies ("When the moon is full the legend comes to life").


Predicted IMDB Score: 7.4
Predicted Weekend Gross: $20 million


Preview here.


To find out more about the predictions, read more.

How did we do: Edge of Darkness

So, how were our predictions for Edge of Darkness?

First, the OK news.  Our statistical model predicted an IMDB score of 6.7 and as of this writing, Edge of Darkness has a rating of 7.4.  We were a little off, but keep in mind that these ratings are from the first people to rate the movie (or in other words, these are people who saw it and were likely excited about seeing it).  We expect the score to lower in the next couple months, and then when it gets released for rental, we might be right on the money!

For now though, we'll cheer ourselves up and look at what we got right.  You might know that IMDB gathers demographic info from people who rate their movies so that different statistics can be broken out.  From here, we can answer the question, who do we best represent?  Judging from the image below...

... we represent Females Aged 18-29.  Awesome.  Maybe this will turn out to be a pattern.  See if the pattern continues next week.


And in our own self-interest, we bury the bad news after the jump.

Movie Review: From Paris with Love

First up, this movie looks pretty bad.  Secondly, it looks like our predictions for Edge of Darkness last week were just okay (or rather, the ratings predictions were okay, the box office gross predictions were way off)--but more on that in a later post.  The numbers are:

Predicted IMDB rating: 5.7
Predicted first weekend gross: ...more than Edge of Darkness

Find the preview here.

Details after the jump.

Review: Edge of Darkness with Mel Gibson

As stated in the first post, the purpose of this blog is to create movie reviews based on data taken from the movie's preview.  Here we give Edge of Darkness a score (based on IMDBs 1-10 ranking) and we also predict exactly how much it will make opening weekend.

Predicted IMDB score: 6.7

Predicted weekend gross: $35 million

Predicted per-theater gross: $8,000

Trailer here.

In about a week, we'll see how we do.  Details on the review after the jump.

Mid-Week Feature: 80s wrestler vs. that guy with the voice

Movies have lots of fight scenes.  Usually these fights follow the same setup.  The hero enters the fight reluctantly only to reveal himself as a tremendous badass.  Luckily, the villain is also a tremendous badass, and the resulting brawl escalates to include punches that most normal humans couldn't take.

In They Live, 80s wrestler Roddy Piper faces off with Keith David in attempt to get David to put on a pair of sunglasses.  Now normally, you wouldn't think this kind of disagreement would warrant a movie fight, but we're pretty glad it did.  The number of body-breaking blows in this scene is after the jump.

About this blog

This blog is, at its essence, a movie blog, and like every movie blog out there, we will discuss many different aspects of films. But what (we hope) separates this blog from the others is that the primary purpose of this blog is to write movie reviews before the movies come out. Or rather, our reviews will be based primarily on movie previews.

This concept in and of itself might not be entirely novel, but we do bring something to the table that we believe is original. Our reviews will be based around numbers produced from a statistical model. We've compiled data from movie previews and created a model which relates different parts of a preview to a movie's IMDB score. Some of the data clearly relates to a movie's score (movie genre) while for others, the relationship might not be so clear (number of explosions in the preview). The hope is that by using the statistical model we will provide entertaining (possibly insightful) movie reviews for anyone who happens by.

It is also worth noting that this blog (like other movie blogs) will have certain interests. While we would not want to specifically skip any movies, it is inevitable that we will be attracted to those that we like (or those that we would simply like to write a review for). To give some idea of what kinds of movies these will be, here are a couple facts about our taste in movies: We believe that Crank 1 provides possibly the greatest movie experience ever (really, any movie with Jason Statham is probably going to be a good watch), and zombie movies can be a great time if you've got a couch, some friends and a 30-rack.

New reviews should appear weekly, and there will probably be some mid-week features to look out for.

To not get too bogged down in this first post, we leave you with a list of variables that did not make it into the final model:

• Is Jason Statham the lead actor?
• Is it a "star-studded" cast?
• Does the preview include an excessive number of fades? (See the Knowing preview for an example)
• Does the preview have a narrator?
• Do people die in the preview?
• Is it a lot of people?
• What gender is the lead?
• How many bullets are shot?
• How many bullets hit?
• Is the plot 100% revealed in the preview?
• If the movie were a book, how would the name rate? (courtesy of Lulu)