I've come to realise that marking movies out of 10 is futile. Below five, which of course stands for "average", are a multitude of numbers and their increments that prove too much in determining just how poorly a film has missed the mark. I concede that above five, there are plenty of helpful stepping stones towards the full mark in which to place a film in reflection of its quality, but when it comes to a film I generally dislike, finding the correct number below 5 is more often guesswork than it is an assured judgement. So I've come up with, or rather, adopted, the four star system; increments, warts 'n' all.
As well as providing less numbers for easier classification, the four star system also allows me to award the full mark of four to films I admire without carrying the hyperbole that one would associate with "five stars" or 10/10. The system also helps me avoid unintentionally ranking in order a select group of films belonging to the canon of a director or genre; this ranking you would ordinarily find in the carefully placed decimal points of a 10-mark system.
Here's how we work:
**** - Excellence. Must-see. Hells Yeah.
***1/2 - Pretty freakin' awesome. Near-perfect. Damn fine.
*** - Swell. Good. Check it, y'all.
**1/2 - Above-average. Ok. Worth a look.
** - Mediocre. Middle of the road. Just tolerable.
*1/2 - Heavily flawed. Unmemorable. Best avoided.
* - Really bad. Flaw-riddled. At its best, terrible.
1/2* - Just awful. Unwatchable. Disgusting.
I'll avoid the "no stars" rating because as aforementioned, there's only so many ways to rate a bad film. The 1/2* is awarded to those films at the very bottom of the barrel; excrement like Pirates of the Carribean 3, Outlaw, Doomsday and The Accidental Husband. To put into perspective just how the four star system relates to the 10/10 system, here's a helper:
**** = high 9 - 10
***1/2 = high 8 - low 9
*** = high 7 - low 8
**1/2 = high 6 - low 7
** = high 5 - low 6
*1/2 = 4 - low 5
* = 2 - 3
1/2* = 0 - 1
I'll go back and convert previous ratings according to this system, and all future ratings will be out of four stars. Oh, and I promise the Top Movies of 2007 list is coming soon.
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2 comments:
So...isn't that still out of 8 then? :P. Doomsday sure was a shitfest. Just saw the name and thought I'd vent again.
On reflection, Doomsday was honestly just a homage to the grindhouse of days gone by, as much as Planet Terror. No, I'm not going soft, I still despise it. It still gets my lowest score. It wants to entertain me, but I get very angry...
Out of 8 is better than out of 10. The smaller the better. Five-star system sucks though, as Empire have proven over the years with their handing out 3-stars like they're going out of fashion.
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