Ever since I entered this glorious and rewardng world of film criticism, I have occasionally been asked why I rate the films with a 5 star scale. Having spent the whole day in a hotel room watching one Walker, Texas Ranger after another, I've had a lot of time to think about things like that. Here are some critiques of other film ratings systems that will hopefully illustrate why I choose not to use them:
4 Stars - The most famous system, employed by Roger Ebert, Leonard Maltin, and about a billion other critics. The weakness here is that the smaller number of stars make the rating more about the quality of the type of movie, not the movie itself. Ebert once answered a question about his 3 star review of a silly comedy, explaning that a 3 star comedy is different from a 3 star drama. Thus, a 4 star score for a film like The Bourne Ultimatum (which was given by USA Today's Claudia Puig) is about the genre, not the overall greatness of the film. By contrast, a 5 star system allows me to reserve the 4.5 and 5 scores for truly great films, not just great actioneers or comedies.
A - F - Just like they give in school, and in Entertainment Weekly. This system suffers from a similar problem as the 4 star one. An "A" action movie might be a 3.5 star film. Also, it gets harder to express displeasure via score. Does a D- represent a really lousy movie or an unfunny comedy? If my goal were to make a right-wing documentary about abortion, would my movie deserve an "A" just for making a decent argument with good editing?
100-0% - Why not give movies a percent score? Simple: because if I did that, one day I'd jerk the wheel into a goddamn bridge abutment. Can you imagine the thought process? Well, I really enjoyed My Super Sweet Sixteen The Movie, but does it deserve a 97%, or a 98%?
No Scoring System - This one holds some appeal. I've talked to several people who have seen ever score I've assigned, but never read a word I've written. There are plenty of good critics who don't give out scores, but you can still tell how they felt. But as of now, I've nowhere near the confidence in my skills to feel certain that all of my readers are getting the point. The 5 star system allows me to offically endorse or reject whatever the NI or my dad paid for me to see.
4 comments:
Another problem with letter grades is that they carry over their association from school. In other words, the smarter readers would be a little uneasy about anything less than an A, and positively cringe at a C or lower.
The same could be said of the 0-100 scale, since the traditional grading scale in the academic forum tends to have 10 points each for A through D and another 60 for F. So when you give a movie a 55, you might be saying that it's mediocre, but our old associations might lead people to believe it's a failure.
The problem with stars it that you always have to clarify how many stars your rating is out of. Some use 4 stars, others use 5, and 3 stars in one system isn't the same as 3 under the other.
Personally, I like the 0-10 scale (no halves) as much as anything. It's much more understandable to non-movie geeks. You can use it in conversation fairly easily, much more so than stars or letter grades, in my experience.
Having read (and occasionally edited) your work, I have to say that I think a five star system works well for you. It allows you to have an absolute halfway at the three mark where you can begin to reccomend a movie.
Overall, your scoring system is as personal as your movie opinions, just because Roger Ebert does something doesn't mean it's going to work for you.
I agree with paul (above) about the letter grading, and I think that your point about it rating the movie in it's sub-type is a good one. For example, a really funny comedy could rate an A on such a scale but only a 4 on yours. This has to do with what paul says about it being linked to school. An A english paper has a much different structure and format than an A physics paper.
Overall I think you have a good system going, keep up the good work.
Also, you should email me about the clips you decided to use in your portfolio.
Paul - Nice comparison about the grades. Whenever I read my Entertainment Weekly and see with a B- or a C, it's hard not to take that as a bad review, although their words typically tend to endorse those. 0-10 is a pretty good way to rate movies, although I already reserve it for the way I critique women's appearences.
Ryan - Ebert has often said that he hates using stars because they take the focus away from his words. I know what he means, but I'm still driven to the star score. If people ask me through conversation what I thought of a given movie that I don't feel like talking about in great detail, I can say "2.5 out of 5" or whatever.
I'm just about done arranging the portfolio thing. Most of your suggestions were included, and I appreciate your memory of my better work.
You know, one of the most praised reviews I have written was my The Big Lebowski review. Lots of people went out of their way to tell me that they really liked it, but I was always disappointed in it, and the Colonel didn't care for it either, so I never even posted it online. I probably should, though.
Re: the use of 0-10 to rate women, that's why I like using it for movies. Because it's a scale that a lot of people use already for other things and everyone has a basic idea of what the numbers mean.
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