Between Netflix, Amazon Video, Hulu, and on-demand offerings from HBO and others, we have now have an unprecedented amount of movies at our fingertips, and that’s not even counting digital rentals and purchases. It’s great to have so much entertainment available, but sometimes the sheer volume of possibilities can make it tough to figure out what to watch on a given night.
Croovies is a new website that hopes to make figuring out what to watch easier by changing how we look at ratings. Current ratings systems are fairly basic, either assigning a numerical score, letter grade, or star rating that attempts to rate a movie’s objective quality. The problem is, objective quality might not always be what you’re looking for when you want to settle in with a movie for the night.
“A movie like Shawshank Redemption might have a great rating on Rotten Tomatoes or IMDB, but that doesn’t mean you want to watch it over and over,” Croovies co-founder Elliot Nash says. “A dumber movie like Half Baked or Hot Rod might have a low rating, but it’s the type of movie you would watch over and over. We set out to create a tool that could differentiate between conventional quality and watching experience.”
Checking out the Croovies website for the first time, the very first thing you notice will likely be the star-shaped area in the search section. This allows you to factor in different aspects of a movie, such as how rewatchable it is, how original or enjoyable it is, and the quality of the story or characters. You can also filter by genre, director, and actors as well as setting the time period you’re looking for, ranging from 1900 to 2016.
When rating movies on Croovies, it works the same way. You’ll need to click a total of five times for each movie, meaning you’ll also need to give your rating a lot more thought. Not only will these ratings help other users of the site, though, they will also help Croovies recommend movies that you might like based on similar ratings from others.
The site is new but growing quickly, with over 15,000 reviews logged so far, all of which were submitted by users of the site. The creators also aim for Croovies to be a site to discuss films in a deeper context than other sites, with each movie and actor page getting its own discussion board, while any discussion can be tagged with multiple movies, directors, and actors.
Those discussions are only part of the site’s community features. “You can compare your ratings to other users, and recommend movies to them,” Nash says. “If you recommend movies, you unlock rewards, like more custom recommendations from the site, and avatars we designed of famous characters and figures from the movie business.”
Until now, Croovies has been in beta, but as of this week the site is now open to anyone who wants to register. You can get a feel for how the site works before even signing up, so if you want to get started by looking at ratings before you jump in and start rating movies yourself, head over to the Croovies website and check it out.