Movie Reviews – The Ratings

These are all personal opinions rather than any serious attempt at film criticism. As opinions, they’re colored by my tastes and moods. For example, I like horror movies, so they’re generally going to get a better ranking from me than they might deserve from a critic trying to help a general audience pick a film to see (or harsher, considering that my tolerance for dull horror movies is much lower than my tolerance for bad examples of other genres). 

Also, if I happened to be in an especially good mood (or the opposite) when I saw a particular film, that might have made a difference, particularly for movies that were on the border between two ratings. In general I start every movie in the middle (“mildly amusing”) and give it a chance to work its way up the scale, sink down the scale, or just stay where it started.

So it takes a combination of an especially bad movie and an especially bad mood to earn a “wish I’d skipped it”). A lot of films are on the borderlines, particularly between “mildly amusing” and “see if desperate.”

My rating system:

• buy it = four stars
• worth seeing = three stars
• mildly amusing = two stars
• see if desperate = one star
• wish I’d skipped it = no stars

And just a quick note on my treatment of violence: in general, movie violence is okay with me; I’m not a person with a weak stomach, so my reviews don’t reflect much sensitivity to excess carnage. With one big exception: I don’t like watching a lot of graphic violence inflicted on helpless people and animals for the sheer psychotic pleasure of depicting such acts. I’m particularly dedicated to noting excessive incidents of violence against children or animals, especially when I’m not convinced that a particular instance was really integral to the plot.

Further, I should mention that I didn’t start writing capsule reviews until 1998. Obviously in the first 31 unrecorded years of my movie-going life, I saw a lot of stuff. Unless I’ve seen something recently (i.e. within a day or so of writing the review), I don’t review it. As a result, I sometimes make mention of some films that I’ve seen but haven’t reviewed. One of my long-term goals is to remedy this problem by getting around to re-watching all the films that are referenced herein. Indeed, some of them are high on my list. Others are in a more I’ll-get-to-it-when-I-get-to-it category. And I must admit that by the time I get around to re-watching a couple of the films I mention (such as The Toxic Avenger), it will be awfully cold to be watching movies because Hell will have frozen over.

In 1999 I ran up against a snag in my ratings system for the first time. As noted above, my four-star rating is “buy the disc” (of course at that point it was “buy the tape,” but more on that in a minute). I figured out early on that this would be an odd bit of advice in a review of a film that had just been released in theaters and wouldn’t hit video for months. However, I was able to ignore this incongruity until early July, when I saw Summer of Sam in a movie theater. I decided to go ahead and stick with the “buy the disc” rating, because I think it’s still a solid indication of how good I thought the film was (even though those who read the review right after I wrote it weren’t immediately able to do as suggested).

The following year, the ratings system became even more complex. After watching They Nest, I added a new rating to the bottom of the scale: “avoid at all costs.” The new slam has the same numerical value as “wish I’d skipped it” (i.e. zero), but it helps me express a certain added measure of disgust to films that go out of their way to earn it. An “avoid at all costs” movie must meet the usual cellar-dweller standards: it must have little or no redeeming value (usually not even earning points for technical merit), and I typically have to see it when I’m in a bad mood. However, these worst-of-the-worst pictures earn that additional spoonful of vitriol from me by not only sucking but also throwing in some especially distasteful element, such as truly excessive violence against animals or children.

The year 2000 also saw DVDs enter my life. Thus I had to ponder whether or not to change my highest rating to “buy the disc.” Initially I elected to create a distinction between “buy the tape” and “buy the disc,” with either descriptor equivalent to a 4-star rating. But the latter indicated in addition that 1. I actually saw the film on DVD, and 2. the disc actually included some feature that made it better than the plain old vanilla VHS releases. Usually that required a movie that really needs to be seen in wide screen format with the added picture quality you get with a disc, or perhaps a disc with special bonus features that make it worthwhile.

And then later discs fell by the wayside in favor of streaming. In order to avoid further modifications to the rating, I switched to the generic “buy it” as a general indication that the movie was worth adding to a permanent collection, no matter what form that collection took.

The only new element introduced by 2001 was the inevitable surrender to the forces battling against my attempts to see at least one movie starting with each letter of the alphabet every year. I felt confident early on when Quills netted me an elusive Q, but X turned out to be beyond me. I almost stooped low enough to re-watch Xanadu just to keep the streak alive, but in the end I decided it just wasn’t worth it. And yeah, I ended up watching and reviewing Xanadu later anyway.

At one point I had a fairly strict policy against reviewing edited-for-content versions of movies. Back in the day when movies came out in theaters and then got cut up for broadcast television, passing judgment on censored work would more often than not be unfair to the filmmakers (especially when it comes to horror movies, which make up a sizable percentage of my intake). Thus the only exception I used to allow was if I’d seen a movie uncut at some point in my life then I’d permit myself to review it based on a recent viewing of an edited version (at least if I recalled the unedited version well enough to be fair to the film).

However, a couple of things changed over the years. The first variable factor was the movie industry itself. We now live in a multiple-market environment. Arguably it isn’t fair to review a movie after seeing it in a movie theater because a few months later it will come out on disc in a “director’s cut” or “unrated” version that sometimes – not often, but sometimes – differs significantly from the theatrical release. Further, a lot of movies first see the light of day on television, particularly my beloved horror genre flicks (a specialty of the Sci Fi Channel). Sometimes these movies are also available on disc with the sex, violence and language left in. Sometimes they’re produced for television to begin with and what you see is what you get.

Thus in the 21st century marketplace the film school “pure art” approach is hard to apply as a practical standard. And that brings the second change into play. As I’ve gotten more experienced watching movies in the various different delivery media, I’ve gotten better at telling what’s been cut out for the home audience (even in movies I’ve never seen before). Also, as I’ve gotten older I’ve become less impressed with some of the stuff that typically gets cut to meet S&P dictates, particularly gratuitous nudity. Because the absence of a boob shot or two or an instant of silence while a character mouths the F-word isn’t likely to make a difference in my overall impression one way or another, under some circumstances I think it’s fair to review a movie even though it’s been cut and I’ve never seen it otherwise.

That, then, is the standard I live by now. Sticking to the uncut stuff is still my goal, but I’m willing to allow myself some leeway if I don’t think extra cussing, cheap sex or anything else likely to end up on the cutting room floor would have been likely to have changed my opinion much one way or another.

Also, once upon a time all ratings had “Verdict:” in front of them. It seemed natural back in 1998 when I was still a practicing attorney, but later it struck me as somewhat, well, judgmental. 

And as a quick final note, obviously none of this was written on January 2, 1998. But I thought I ought to put this information at the very beginning of the blog so it would be easy to find.