Re: Restless rating syndrome
| 4 min read
"Hmmm, probably an 8. On the other hand, why wouldn't I give it a 9? It's among the top 3 movies I've watched this year." -- Robert, struggling to rate.
Robert wrote a post about rating movies and how hard it is to rate a movie on a scale, so much he's been avoiding it completely.
I have a suggestion to ease this terrible burden.
First off, what happens when a new movie wins the spot in your heart for best movie of the year? Will you downgrade the others? And the best movie of your life, the only one ever awarded a 10... A decade passes, you rewatch it and realize it didn't age gracefully and is, in fact, just an ok movie. Should it lose the 10 and get rated a 7 instead? How to rate a movie made by students with a tiny budget? It's not as good as a studio movie, but they put so much effort in it!
The struggle ends today. When rating a movie (or a book, a game, a boat tour, a visit to a museum), follow these simple guidelines:
- Never compare one movie to another. This is the most important rule!
- Remember movies are made by a crew of very passionate people. From the students in film school with no budget, to the documentarists with a handheld camera and a life's mission, to the carpenters, drivers, painters, electricians, puppeteers, musicians, cameramen, colorists, sfx and vfx artists, editors, directors, writers and actors of a major studio movie, they are all very passionate about their craft and they put a lot of effort in it.
- With the above in mind, never rate a movie based on how much you liked it. Instead, judge a movie within its own universe of possibilities.
Sometimes you love a bad movie, sometimes you hate a brilliant movie. Sometimes you need a few days to truly process your feelings about a movie. Emotions are irrational. What you want is to be objective with your ratings. To really get that number right, be that stars, grades, fractions.
To achieve the most accurate and perfect rating, ask yourself: within the universe of possibilities of this movie, how did it do?
Was the story good, well written, was everything well explained? Did the actors convey the emotions needed, did you believe in them? Was the editing absolutely invisible? If you noticed the editing, the cuts, that's bad. Was the music just right? Did it sit there discreetly, only rising to prominence in the right moment? What about the video effects? Did they do a good job given the budget they had?
You will soon realize very few movies deserve less than a 4, the vast majority of movies will be between 7 and 9, and there should be quite a few 10s and 5 stars too. You should not shy away of the 10. Regardless of your feelings at the end, if a movie did everything right, it deserves a 10.
You should also know something: using IMDB as an example, on a scale of 1 to 10 movies with a female lead will usually be awarded a point less. Seriously, if the same movie had a man on it, it'd be an 8, but because there's a woman people rate it a 7. I'm dead serious, I've been observing this for years now. It gets worse: movies with a black man lead will also lose a point. Movies with black female leads will lose two points!
Because of this, you should add social justice to your ratings. If you are rating on a private list, only to yourself, you can afford to be strictly technical and precise. However, if rating publicly, you should incorporate the social justice criteria to try to balance the scales.
If a movie with black women leads is technically an 8, you will probably notice it is rated a 6 on IMDB, therefore it shall be rated a 10 by you in order to bring a bit of equilibrium to the universe.
That's it! No more struggle! No more comparison! No more "the top 3 of this year get a 9, and the next 3 get an 8 and the 3 after that get a 7" nonsense! Just strict technical qualities plus social justice, and all your ratings will be fair and precise! Easy peasy.
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