The Curious Science of Movie Recommendations

Would you recommend this movie?

I’ve been wanting to do an article about movie recommendations for a while now, and wasn’t quite sure how to go about it.  Quite frankly, starting this article, I’m not sure how I’m going to get through without sounding like a complete tool.  However, we’ll give it a shot and see where it goes (free-form writing and all that).

As someone who loves movies and sees movies with stunning regularity (if a week goes by without me seeing a movie, I’ve either been kidnapped or am at the morgue), I get asked for recommendations on a regular basis.  I LOVE to dole out advice on movies to someone like my brother or my close friends or even people I've never met, all of whom have known me long enough to know that A) I have harassed them into naming their favorite movies and have a decent idea of what they’d like and B) they’re not going to spend the next two years of my life haranguing me for saying that The Tree of Life was brilliant and then they hated the film.

I take movies personally, and while I can handle someone not liking my favorite movies (my buddy Pat and I have made arguing about movies a key attribute of our friendship), I cannot handle people saying something along the lines of “I didn’t like it because it was stupid.”  As an adult, I rarely hear it quite that way (though I do hear that sentence more than should be coming out of the mouth of a person over the age of four), but the sentiment is there.  The problem is that most people don’t understand their filmic limits (yeah, this is article’s definitely going to make me sound like a jackass…).

What I mean by filmic limits is that people have different expectations when heading into a film, and that’s totally okay.  I know multiple people who, for example, cannot handle a lot of profanity in their films.  This is totally all right-we all have our limits and know what we can handle.  The problem is when they get upset or dismiss a film because of that profanity.  A movie can be good whether it’s G-rated or X-rated (this, for the record, goes for a film’s sex and violence content as well), but if you don’t like swearing or nudity in your films, that’s fine-just don’t get mad when I don’t recommend the film knowing this.

There are other more subtle ways that people limit themselves cinematically, but you’re never supposed to mention them.  Since I’m already coming across as a bit of a jerk in this article, I’ll share one of my favorite cutting bon mots: “I find that people who say that they don’t want to think when they watch a movie are the same people who don’t want to think when they read, watch television or breathe.”

What I mean by this is not that every film needs to be an Ingmar Bergman treatise about death to be worth viewing.  I have Pitch Perfect on a constant loop in my DVD player lately, and that’s fine.  What the problem is that some people consider heavy-lifting at the movies to be a film like Argo.  Argo is a terrific flick, but it’s not going to the experimental levels that Terrence Malick or Jim Jarmusch are going toward.  I am always concerned to mention seeing something like To the Wonder because inevitably someone will ask “do you recommend it?” and I won’t say yes because I know that they don’t want to see the film even though I consider it of quality.

The question is, how do you go about this without coming across as a snob, and a condescending one at that?  I would never feel that way on this blog (mostly because the people who read this I'd either be very comfortable recommending a movie to or I've never met).  Recommending a movie to someone that you think they'll like is one thing, but recommending one you know they're going to hate is another.  It's kind of like setting them up on a date-I frequently ask my friends when they mention a guy  that they're friends with if he's single and if they could set me up.  Frequently (much to my chagrin) they say, "no, he's just not right for you."  This could mean a whole host of things (some of which are fairly insulting), but I don't take it personally.  Why is it that people take it personally when you say a movie wouldn't be right for them?  Movies, like guys, can be more promiscuous than you'd want, more crass than you'd want, they might be films that you have nothing in common with.  People and their friends have specific tastes, and is it so wrong to know that?

Of course, when it's a casual acquaintance whom you don't know very well, this gets considerably awkward.  You don't want to offend someone you don't know well by saying something wouldn't be right for them (people hate when you assume something about them, especially when it's the truth).  I usually go with one of four movies with people that I barely know and am trying to figure out their taste: Children of Men, Bringing Up Baby, Casablanca, or the most accessible excellent film currently in theaters, which at the moment would be Gravity.  I know that if someone doesn't like Bringing Up Baby or Casablanca, films made before Jaws are probably not going to be strong recommendations in the future (do you know any classic film fan who doesn't like both?).  The other two, if I get a description of "dull," "boring," "long," "not funny," or "stupid," or a synonym there-in, I'll know that modern prestige dramas are probably out and I should maybe do a little bit more probing into their tastes.

The reality is that, even though I'm admitting it and you aren't (unless you comment to make me feel less lonely in this post!), we all do something like this.  We'd never recommend Django Unchained to our grandmothers.  We'd never recommend Blue is the Warmest Color to someone we didn't know well.  And we all, like it or not, have our artistic limits.  I truly will see any film known to man, but I know better than to take reality television or video game tips, because nine times out of ten, I'm not going to enjoy what's coming.  I'll always try anything once (except voting Republican-that's a no go), but a shoot-em-up video game, no matter how artistic, is never going to be for me.

I'm going to leave it about there before I embarrass myself more, but I want your thoughts-do you ever feel awkward recommending movies to others, or am I being silly?  If so-what was the film?  And have you ever been on the receiving end of a "you wouldn't like it" comment, and how did you react?