How do you review movies on a scale of 1 to 10?

Nobody else uses 0?
I don't like to rate movies and only do it to submit reviews here, but I feel like I have seen movies to which I cannot even give 1 point.

I can understand that. I just checked and I haven't ever given a movie a 0 but that doesn't mean I won't someday!

*I noticed I've given three movies a .5 rating which means I must have really hated them These are them


The Beast of Yucca Flats 4/27/18
by Citizen Rules
The Beast of Yucca Flats is so bad that the monster, played by Tor Johnson the Swedish wrestler who made films with Ed Wood, kills his first victim BEFORE he turns into a monster.




Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter... and Spring 2/11/18
by Citizen Rules
Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter and Spring (2003) Bom yeoreum gaeul gyeoul geurigo bom (original title) Director: Ki-duk Kim Writer: Ki-duk Kim Cast: Ki-duk Kim, Yeong-su Oh, Jong-ho Kim Genre: Drama Language: Korean




1941 1/06/18
by Citizen Rules
Ugh....Steven Spielberg made a lot of great movies, but 1941 has got to be the biggest pile of film wasted he ever made.

10 - Superb work / Favourite
9 - Very Good / Highly Recommended
8 - Good / Recommended
7 - OK, can be seen
6 - can be skipped
5 - somehow not good, skip it
4 - rather bad, avoid it
3 - terrible
2 - terrible
1 - terrible

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"Population don't imitate art, population imitate bad television." W.A.
"You can't depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus." M.T.

Seat of the pants judgement. 0 - 5 - ranging from not so good to abysmal, based on how PO'd I was when it was over. 0, 1,2,3 would mean that many technical aspects of the production were inept. 4 or 5 would mean that it's at least competently produced, acted and shot. I've never seen a 0, since I think that would require that the film caught fire and burned down the building.

6 - Worth watching but not interesting or compelling

7 - Good story line and production

8 - Enjoyably above average

9 - Terrific

10 - Never seen one of those, so I don't have an example but it would have to be better than my 9's. I reserve 10 for a movie that's better than all of my 9's, which include a lot of war horses, but so far it has not happened.

Like Wooley, I also don't believe in ratings, strictly speaking. But I only use them to give my future self some idea what I thought of a film, if my future self should find himself wanting to watch it. It doesn't actually have anything to do with the relative quality of the film.


So, 5 stars (or 10) means "You loved this. Watch it again or better yet, buy the BluRay."
3 stars means "You've already seen this. It was only fine. Find something else to do."
And so on.

This explains why I rated Dark Night of the Scarecrow 5 stars while Seven Samurai only has 4. It only has to make sense to me.

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Captain's Log
My Collection

Having once lived in the world of psychology research, ratings are important to me, but also clearly, unless they have specific "operational definitions". Movie ratings generally also lack what's referred to as "reliability and validity".

10 - Chinese (Pure)
9 - Japanese (Cute)
8 - Korean (Pretty)
7 - R̶u̶s̶s̶i̶a̶n̶ Ukrainian (Proud)
6 - French (Intelligent)
5 - Polish (Homely)
4 - Italian (Generous)
3 - German (Firm)
2 - British (Posh)
1 - American (Vulgar)

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Look, I'm not judging you - after all, I'm posting here myself, but maybe, just maybe, if you spent less time here and more time watching films, maybe, and I stress, maybe your taste would be of some value. Just a thought, ya know.

Exactly.

Not sure if this is true or not, but I think some publications avoided use of 0 because it looked like it may have not been rated by accident. And the tradition kinda stuck.

Also, a 0 wouldn't really accomplish anything a 1 wouldn't. A 1 already means don't watch this film under any circumstance. How worse can you get than that?

Cats vs. Dogs 2 versus Lust for Frankenstein. You're welcome.

Another point I'd like to add:
Movies add up to a 10. They don't start automatically start at a 10 and get deductions for each flaws.

A movie could be an 8 or 9 out of 10 - not because its flawed, but rather maybe you thought there were other movies that were just a bit better or more revolutionary.

Well, that's what a 1 means to you.
To me, it means I awarded it 20 out of 100 points. Did the movie earn 20 points? Did it earn any? When I take an exam, if I don't get a single thing right, they don't just give me 20 points. They give me zero. And some films get nothing right. It's rare but every once in a while a movie actually gets zero points from me. Like there is not a moment during the film where I thought anything was added to looking at a blank screen and it may actually have been worse.
For example, I nearly did (and would still consider) "awarding" The Rise Of Skywalker zero stars. I couldn't even milk points out of the performances of Driver or Ridley as we had seen these exact performances before in the previous two films and, with brutally bad scripting and dialogue, the characters and performances actually got worse. And there was nothing else in the film worth the time it was on screen versus if I was just listening to an electrical hum from somewhere and was frequently actually aggressively off-putting. I couldn't find anything to award it a point for. Absolutely nothing. There was nothing on the screen that wasn't better in every previous Star Wars film and everything that was new was as bad as I could have imagined it being. I saw Cats right before it, the very same day in the very same theater, and Cats is Citizen Kane compared to tRoS. So what am I to give it? Am I to tell people, "there might be a 20% chance you'll think it's good"? Or 20% of this film was actually good (when it clearly wasn't)?
I just can't do that. It would be dishonest. And it would be giving the film too much credit when it actually took from me. And sometimes you just see movies like that. Where you almost want to give it less than zero.
I feel like giving a film a 1 says you at least acknowledge that a film at least deserved to be rated and sometimes that is simply not the case.

You don't have to be dishonest if you give ratings, but you do have to be consistent and have a scale with benchmarks. Nevertheless, a numerical rating always contains subjective factors, like, how do you rate a western if you hate westerns. I'd just not give it a rating, especially since I haven't sat through a western for a long time.

The important thing is to just acknowledge your subjectivity.....hate westerns, think Citizen Kane is just "pretty good", don't like dubbed movies (prefer subtitles), etc.

Here's my rating scale:
5 it must be great because the AFI says so
4 really good just small complaints
3 enjoyable but not perfect
2 not quite a 3 movie
1 so bad it has to be a 1
0 don't know I've not seen a 0 movie

The idea of genre hatred is contradictory to the idea of being a movie buff, IMO. To understand why a genre works, one must understand what it is that the fans like. That's what got me into Tim Hecker, and I hate drone music most times. Basically, you have to be willing to subject yourself beyond your "typical" preferences for a lengthy period of time in order to expand your horizons, as long as that's important to you. But the best trick to use is to connect aspects of whatever new horizon you explore to the aspects of things you already like, and then let those common factors drive the exploration and potential enjoyment.

I don't have genre hatred, but it's been a long, long time since a western hit the theaters. As I recollect, it's been even longer since a good western arrived. As a genre, my suspicion is that it's just worn out. Between the "closing of the west", culture change, the marketing problems in westerns (violence, racism, gender, etc), it's just hard to think of what you'd do there that would avoid the problems and still BE a western, since violence, racism and toxic masculinity seem to be baked into the old versions of the genre. I'm open to almost any possibility, but some types of movies have just aged out.

I never said YOU hated westerns. However, your use of the word hate was obviously in context so I replied towards that context. But it is true that incredible westerns are hard to come by these days. The first "western" I ever went to the theaters for was the remake of Magnificent Seven, which I was happy to pay for in respect for the late James Horner, my favorite film composer in terms of personal history. But it was certainly not legendary (still better than most people say).

1 - so bad I'm concerned about anyone who likes it. Needs to be outright psychopathic (e.g. ghost in the shell)
2 - so bad it's offensive (e.g. the parade)
3 - just bad (e.g. infinity war)
4 - more bad than good (e.g. birdman)
5 - *cricket noises* (e.g. the marathon family)
6 - more good than bad (e.g. doctor strange)
7 - just good (e.g. smokey and the bandit)
8 - really good, I'd recommend it to someone (e.g. the bad guys)
9 - literally fantastic, i.e. the kind of film you fantasized about but never thought would be made (e.g. The World's End, The Taste of Cherry)
10 - so good it raises standards (e.g. Apocalypto, An Event)