I am just beginning a major overhaul of my film review archive, moving the entire library over to Wordpress in a new format.

As I do, I'm tweaking the reviews, dumping a few that make me sick to my stomach, and adding in the basic film details (cast lists, etc) that I've often left out before.

But this brings me to one of life's most important questions:

What rating system should I use?

I was leaning toward dropping ratings altogether, but you know, I like to put some kind of "stamp" on those that I really want to recommend.

So, I wonder does anybody has any daring new ideas for a rating system? Should I just go with the 0-5 star system? Or stick with the "Report Card" that I've done in the past? Greydanus's system is interesting: He rates things by: Overall Recommendability, Artistic-Entertainment Value, Moral-Spiritual Value, and Age Appropriateness.

What's your recommendation for the next manifestation of Looking Closer's Film Reviews?

Looking Closer ... hmm...

Magnifying glasses!

Microscopes!

Federal grand jury investigations!

I like the magnifying glasses suggestion... Heh.

How about Mr. Magoo heads?

Um, thanks, but I wasn't really asking about what SYMBOL to use.

It was more like: Is a point system useful? 1-5, or 1-10? Should I break it up into different categories of anaylsis like Steven does? Or should I just buck the system and skip any kind of ratings?

When it is only one rating it is more subjective. I personally like that since it's art and it isn't really something you have to defend - at least not in any real sense. I chose 2 stars for that one... 3 for this one. That's my opinion.

When you go to a more complex rating then it implies, and I think rightly so, that you are using a more finely tuned evaluation that takes into account the aspects of the various areas - acting, directing, editing, music, or whatever. That actually places you in a far more vulnerable spot since you need to, if you are going to use such a rating, justify why you rate it as you do. Its like the old joke of dissecting the cat in order to find its life. In my experience more complex evalutions take the art and dissects it and then wonder why it has lost its "life" in the process.

Denny

For what it's worth, Jeffrey, I'd say drop the rating scale altogether. If you want to really stamp that special movie, you could say so in the review.

When I reviewed music for my college newspaper, I used a GPA system (4.0 being the highest--an A+--and anything lower than 1.5 being pretty dismal). Problem was that most people just looked to see what I gave an album point-wise and didn't read the review at all. Seems like most adults do that too. Rating films on a scale has it's advantages, I guess, and many of my favorite critics use them (including you, SDG, Ebert, etc.). But I dunno...just getting rid of them to approach the film without tacking on some sort of numeric value seems more...something. I hope I'm making sense (it's past my bedtime, really!)

I kinda like seeing the up to 100 on Metacritic. Or one could devise a system like is used in wine (so many points for color, nose, taste, etc. that total 20) Perhaps with a 20 point scale you could set up something like 1-8 for artistic presentation, 1-4 for emotional response, 1-4 for moral content, 1-4 for importance of theme - or whatever.

Or maybe Exemplary, Wholesome, Caution, Extreme Caution, Excessive and Abhorrent.

I partially disagree. It is important for a review to stand up on it's own merits; however, I'd assume that a good movie reviewer is consistent across the board with their movie reviews, in regard to the technicality, storyline, mature material, message, etc of the movie. I think a rating system helps give the reader context, especially in regard to a movie reviewer's archives. And I gotta say, if a movie reviewer gives a movie a D rating (as opposed to A+ on the opposite end of the scale), it does save me reading the review if I'm in a hurry.

I think (and this is an educated guess) that the people who go to Jeff's site to read his reviews are not the type to grab the rating/report card and run. The people who want only a rating, and no explanation of the film, are the people who are only concerned with the amount of expletives in a movie. Jeff has built up an audience over time that actually cares about a film beyond the questionable material (as witnessed by all of us here who found out about A&F through Jeff's site and reviews), and want to know the impact of the film as it relates to our faith and our lives, not just our sense of hyper-propriety. I think it takes time to build up that kind of audience, as such readers are few and far between; however, I would hope that over the period of ten years, you Jeff, have attracted a real crowd of like-minded people.

I digress. Anyway, count me in for the pro-rating crowd.

I personally prefer a 0-5 star system. As a teenager I used to write a film fanzine (nothing fancy - a humble xerox job with a print run of a few hundred per issue) and I still like to rate films now as I did then:


Rosebud
Unmissable
Good/Interesting
Missable
Pluck it!

I really like this system.

Link to our thread on film ratings (including the "big table" of all ratings).

If you feel it's necessary to have a rating system at all, I think that the A through F grading system works fine; most Americans understand it immeidately. But 1-10 is good, too.

As for symbols: eyebrows, definitely eyebrows.

I can see where you're coming from, Joel, and I guess I don't disagree. Good points! Still, I like having a non-rating system. But we're talkin' 'bout Jeff here, not me.

How about a smiley face-based system?

= great film!
= pretty terrible
= Lynch

I like a four-point rating system.

Three stars: I think this movie is so good it's universally recommendable.
Two stars: I think this movie is good, but I can see why some others don't like it.
One star: I think this movie is a waste of time, but I can see why some others like it.
No stars: I think this movie is a waste of time for anyone and everyone.

This is actually pretty close to Denny's rating system, I think, except he gives even the worst movies one star. I also like the way that after the star rating he gives a one or two word description ("Thought provoking", "Profound") which is particular to that movie.

I have a good GPA in school, but I also have a lot of As that are barely As, and I have a few Bs that are almost As. But when I send my transcript off, all they see is that I made 15 As and 3 Bs. I want to cry, hey, two of those Bs are an 89. I like to know whether something is a high B or a low B. I want to know whether it is almost an a four star film, or whether it is barely a three star film.

With this being said, I like the 100 point system.

Michael: Isn't that why there's a review attached?

Maybe schools should get the idea, and attach to the transcript with every grade one paragraph written by the professor which details what it means.

Actually, that's a really good idea; when I found a school, that's exactly what I'll do.

I like a combination of grades and stars, which would be something like this:

A+/
A/
A/
A-
B+/
B+/
B/
B/
B-/
C+/
C/
C-/
C-/
D/
F/

I find it tackles the "high B/low B" problem nicely.

In your post it looks almost patriotic - as the stars go waving on the page!

Denny

Personally, I think a grade/rating says "Looking Shallower," not "Looking Closer." But if you want a scheme that encourages a closer look, why not go for a system based on the "notes" talked about in Perfume?

Rate the “head chord” -- how the film struck you immediately.

Rate the “heart chord” -- how you felt about the film after the first rush dissipated.

Rate the “base chord” -- how much you value the film long term.

-------

The only rating system I've ever seriously considered is a percentage scale where p = (the number of minutes before something noteworthy or surprising happens) / (the film's running time). Entertainment value can then be calculated as v = (1.00 - p) * (ticket price).

If you follow that at all, congratulations.

In layman's terms, the system would tell you what percentage of a film's running time is sheer waste of time (1.00 - p) due either to lack or inventiveness, originality, or spoiler-laden trailers. The smaller the value of p is, the more surprising or interesting the film is.

The system occurred to me while watching Breakdown in 1997. I believe it was nearly an hour and twenty minutes into the film before anything remotely interesting happened.

And if you still think I'm serious, try to imagine me winking.

You mean like this? (I need to add the half-stars and fix the extra spaces above the table.)

I've never thought that movie quality was binary (in the "good movie, bad movie" sense). The two questions I always ask people when they're talking about movies are if the movie was well-made and if they enjoyed it enough to recommend it. The ideal system would be able to answer both questions in a single rating. What I've used over the past few months looks similar to the Greydanus system, with a positive or negative number from 0 to 5. The number shows how well I think the movie was crafted, and the sign shows whether or not I'd recommend the film. For instance, I'd rate August Rush +2 (for the music, mostly) and Pan's Labyrinth -4 (because, while masterfully constructed, I found the methods of the movie too dark). A film would earn a 0 by completely lacking anything recommendable.

I guess the sign could be left off for movies where your feelings are lukewarm, but that makes things more confusing. There's also the possibility that, for people unfamiliar with the rating system, the scale might be misunderstood to be between -5 and +5. It might seem that you loathed a -5 film when compared to one given a +1 rating when this might not be the case. But the impossibility of capturing the complete movie-watching experience is an inherent issue with rating systems. There's no substitute for a well-written review.

...then it would make most sense to put the +/- after the number, as in 5+

Thumbs are dumb. I like Ebert's reviews but I totally disregard the thumbs. Thumbs only grab my attention when they contradict what I was sure would be the verdict (ie. thumbs up for a movie I was sure he would hate and vice versa)

Stars are ok.

Points are best. I like Pitchfork's music rating system, which I guess is just like Metacritic, but for some reason I like the decimal.

Grades (C+ etc.) are good too.

I can understand that some reviewers want every reader to read every one of their reviews in its entirety to find out what they thought about each movie but that's just not going to happen. For me, the rating system is like the hook.

If a reviewer I respect gives a high rating, I will likely read the review even if I wasn't interested in the movie previously. Similarly, a really low score might entice me to find out why it was so bad, unless I already expected it to be so. I will probably skip mediocre scores unless I was already planning to see the film or expected it to get a higher rating. But I appreciate that. Anything that allows me to quickly sift out the mediocre cultural offerings and saves me the 5 or 10 minutes of reading a review is good. Just like a critic's review saves me from having to watch 10 bad movies to find one gem, a rating system can save me having to read 10 reviews of bad movies. Instead I can read 10 reviews of good movies, or movies I have an interest in.

I guess the most pertinent thing I have to say is this: while a rating MAY dissuade me from reading a review, overall I read more reviews because of them. On Pitchfork, for example, I always read the reviews of bands I love, regardless of the rating. But if there were no ratings those would probably be the only ones I would read. Faced with the sheer overabundance of unfamiliar bands I wouldn't have a clue which new ones to check out. But when I see an unknown album get an 8.8 I'll read the intro, make sure it's not a genre I loathe, and then read on. While I'm sure I've missed a movie (or album) or two because someone's rating steered me away too quickly, I'm confident I've discovered more good ones than I would have had I not seen a handy at-a-glance rating.

Sanshiro's idea (and Alan's refinement) of a two part rating system (4-, 3+) is great! This would work really well as a hook, since a 1+ would have me intrigued why it got a plus mark if it was so poorly made or why a 5- was not recommended.

Skip the ratings. Give your reviews headlines that draw readers in, while clue-ing them in as to what your opinion of the film is.

Within the review, you can explain what's admirable, objectionable, etc.

Scales, systems, and stars raise more questions than the answer, and encourage people to gloss over the content of reviews. They encourage less reading. They Are Bad.

I'm no reviewer, just an avid reader of reviews, but how about a 3 tier rating

* Look Closer
* Look
* Don't Look

It would be original to you as a reviewer yet not so elaborate as to encourage your readers to take the rating more seriously than your review.

Fun topic! Lots of opinions.

regards,
-Lance