PVLD CINE-MONDE Film Blog: Movies and Mirrors

The team consisting of Matthew Bloch, Amanda Cox, Jo Craven McGinty and Kevin Quealy at The New York Times examined Netflix rental patterns, neighborhood by neighborhood, in a dozen cities across the nation.

I was drawn to the regional differences in rental patterns of Netflixers more than the data about the most rented films.

It is clear that the most rented films may not be the ones that receive the highest metacritic scores (another sorting option) and some of the less rented titles boast really high metacritic scores (films I like to watch ).  It’s interesting to note which among the most rented also receive the highest metacritic scores and the ones among the least rented the lowest metacritic scores.

Should you choose to click on this link and land on the interactive map, I recommend you try sorting by metacritic score and most rented, then slide the pointer all the way to the right and back again while keeping an eye on the titles in big font. It’s like a crude animated version of titles flashing by really fast.  A fly-by view, if you will.

Check out New in Town (score of 29) in the Minneapolis area–it’s hot!!  That’s about the only area in the country that wants to watch it!

The Visitor– a great film–with a metacritic score of 79 was rented m0re in the Boston area than in the NY area. It has a scatter pattern I don’t quite understand, almost like some folks just did not hear about it, or if they did, then I don’t know why they did not see it!

Wall-E–with a metacritic score of 94 was not in demand in the Miami area.  What’s up with that?

Frozen River–we just presented it in December–was not a rental favorite anywhere (i.e, did not figure in the top 50).  It carries a metacritic score of 82.  It got more exposure in the Boston area than the NY area. It’s filmed in the state of NY.

The metacritic score for Julie and Julia is 66. For Burn After Reading, it’s 63 and for Valkyrie and Twilight, it’s 56.  The difference in the frequency of rental is huge. Guess which one is the least rented among these?  Yes, Julie and Julia. Great film!

Seven Pounds has a score of 36 and it’s among the top ten in rental. I gave that movie a miss, and I like Will Smith.

Still, the ones with high scores (at least 60) that were also profusely rented included The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Slumdog Millionaire, Gran Torino, Doubt, Burn After Reading, The Wrestler, Milk, I love you, Man, The Soloist, The Dark Knight, Revolutionary Road, Wanted, Rachel Getting Married, Role Models, Frost.Nixon, State of Play, Pineapple Express, and Vicky Cristina Barcelona.

Neglected films that need to be given a chance, more than a chance:  Man on Wire, The Visitor, Coraline, Frozen River, Happy-Go-Lucky (Ciné-Monde’s pick for March 2010!), Julie and Julia, Cadillac Records, and Adventureland.

The only foreign language film that made it to this list was I’ve Loved You So Long.

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