For years, I refused to rate films, insisting that my appreciation of film is not linear, and that no system was fair. Eventually, I gave in to friends and tried out a two-scale system by which I rated how much I "enjoy" a movie with one number and rated my opinion of a movie's overall "quality" with another number. Many philosophical friends seemed to have major problems with this system, arguing that neither number could possibly be objective anyway, and that it was even arrogant that the numbers would normally be so close to one another! My response to this was that most aspects of a film contributed to both numbers, but that certain aspects affected the first more than the second because of what I "brought with me" to the film. For instance, if something in a film related to my personal life or dealt with a subject that I have a particular interest in, that would likely increase my enjoyment of the film without necessarily increasing my opinion of the film's quality. However, I finally dropped the two scale system, and now simply rate movies on a scale from 0 to 10 in 0.5 increments. I do this by deciding what adjectives I would apply to the film, and have a simple mapping from adjective to number:
| 9.5 - 10.0 | Awesome, one of my all-time favorites |
|---|---|
| 8.5 - 9.0 | Great (for a 9.0, I'm more likely to say fantastic, superb, etc.) |
| 8.0 | Very good |
| 7.0 - 7.5 | Good (for a 7.5, I'm more likely to say quite good, really good, etc.) |
| 6.0 - 6.5 | Somewhat good (for a 6.0, I'm more likely to say marginally recommendable) |
| 4.5 - 5.5 | OK, fair, about average (for a 5.5, I'm more likely to say slightly above average, and for a 4.5, I'm more likely to say slightly below average) |
| 3.5 - 4.0 | Somewhat bad |
| 2.5 - 3.0 | Bad |
| 2.0 | Very bad |
| 1.0 - 1.5 | Awful, terrible |
| 0.0 - 0.5 | Pathetic, one of the worst movies I've ever seen |
Currently, there are only 10 movies that I rate a perfect 10.0. In chronological order, they are: Casablanca, Rear Window, The Graduate, Midnight Cowboy, Taxi Driver, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Brazil, Hannah and Her Sisters, GoodFellas, Reservoir Dogs.