Q: What is KBZ?
A: KBZ is the Internet’s largest collection of film subgenre and microgenre lists. This film classifications method will help you better find films in a certain category or that you might be in the mood for. Who doesn’t love a great Heist or Vampire film?!?
Q: Do you have movie recommendations or do film reviews?
A: Currently, we are focusing on movie recommendations for rare films, older films, or subgenre and microgenre films you might have missed in our ongoing series of articles titled Films You Haven’t Seen. These articles can be found in our Top 10 section. Though these articles often have mini-reviews of films within a specific subgenre and microgenre list to help you decide what to watch, we have not yet begun to do full reviews of films. We will be offering full reviews of films in the near future.
Apart from our movie review and recommendations, we also focus on categorizing and classifying films for specific subgenres and microgenres. To date, we have categorized over 29,000+ films and you can always see our latest updates for film categorization or new film subgenre collections created in our News section.
Q: Why are some movies not on your lists?
A: We had certain criteria when creating the lists:
First, we don’t include any movies on the list lower than a 4/10 rating. There are some exceptions to that rule if the film holds nostalgic value like Laserblast (1979). Yes, it’s horrible, but it’s also a film a lot of people grew up with and is part of their childhood. We also look for obvious tells that a film’s rating is not accurate either through ‘review bombing’ or if it’s obvious that the Director’s friends and family upvoted a horrible film to get a higher rating.
Second, our Film Lists generally start at 1970. There are also exceptions to this rule with classic films or films that are part of certain genre (i.e. Film Noir and Hitchcock Films). We might expand this to include earlier decades in the future, but for now is hard enough to maintain the lists just for the last 52 years of film!
Third, certain types of films won’t be on the lists. Adult or XXX content won’t be on the lists but there are a few NC-17 films that were mainstream releases so will be listed. There are also some films that we personally can’t ‘unsee’ and refuse to recommend to others. We won’t list those films here and don’t ask us to list them because we won’t.
Q: What is the difference between a subgenre and microgenre?
Typical film classification follows a genre – subgenre format. The problem arises when people start assigning ‘subgenre’ to films about specific events, people or things. As an example, Films About Vampires is currently noted by major film search sites as a subgenre. But, we take issue with that as Films About Vampires is about a specific thing – in this case vampires. So by current film classification methods, it would follow Genre (Horror) – Gothic (Subgenre) – Vampires (Subgenre). By this method, – Genre (Horror) – Vampires (Subgenre), you don’t have a method to sort between Gothic, Contemporary or other forms of subgenres that Films About Vampires would live in. That is why we created Microgenres to better identify and search for films about specific things so the classification would be Genre (Horror) – Gothic (Subgenre) – Vampires (Microgenre). Also, in this instance, the Microgenre (Vampires) wouldn’t be restricted to a singular subgenre (Gothic). There are many vampires films that fall within various genres (Horror and Fantasy) and subgenres (Gothic Horror, Dark Fantasy, Sci-Fi Biotech, etc.) Using Microgenres for classification is more efficient if you want to search for Films About Pirates, Films About Werewolves, Films About Ninjas, and so forth. We will have a more in-depth blog post in the near future that better explains our reasoning for Microgenres and how they should be used for film classification purposes. We’re also happy to entertain any microgenre lists from the community – Contact Us with your thoughts.
Q. Why are some categories like animated films not on your lists?
A. We decided to focus on live action films first. Our lists do include adult animation and anime films and we have also included live action films that have animated elements in them (i.e. Cool World (1992)). We will add animated films in the future once we decide if they should fit into existing subgenre and microgenre lists or require their own separate lists.
Q. In your News section you mention you use HI instead of AI for categorization – what is that and why?
A. We reference HI for Human Intelligence as our team at KBZ reviews every movie individually so you can be assured that each film is categorize and classified accurately and correctly. We are big believers in AI and how it will help transform film classification in the future. However, AI is still in its early stages and we don’t feel it’s quite ready yet for detailed and accurate film subgenre classification. Can AI properly identify the difference between a Time Loop Film vs. a Time Travel Film just by scanning the film’s dialogue, description or scenes? Not likely. Or can AI distinguish between a Romantic Drama or Romantic Comedy for any of the Hallmark Romantic films that are almost always classified within Comedy, Drama and Romance genre classifications? Doubtful, as that is already a challenge for human reviewers.
In fact, we have already seen AI in use for subgenre classifications on other sites and the results are not encouraging. Imagine you’re in the mood to watch a Film About Pirates and AI tells you that Highlander (1986) is a Swashbuckler film. Well, Highlander doesn’t share anything in common with Jack Sparrow but those are the limitations of AI at this point.
Q: Do you host movies on your site?
A: Absolutely not. That’s not what we’re part of and we’re happy to just be a reference site to help you find certain types of films and films we can ultimately recommend to you. We do have plans to eventually add affiliate links for movies on our lists that you can then find on YouTube, Netflix, Prime and other streaming services.
Q: Can I advertise on your site?
A: Once we grow our wings a little more, yes. For now, no.
Q: Can I pay you for a blog post or movie review?
A: Negative Ghostrider.
Q: Can I contact you to have my movie listed or to recommend a movie for your lists?
A: Absolutely! But we can’t guarantee we’ll list it. We’ll have to watch it first to make sure it makes our criteria (listed above).
Q: How do I contact you?
A: Contact Us.