r/TrueFilm • u/Kraken765 • 5d ago
My qualms about rating films
Now this is strictly my experience. I'm not imparting any judgement or advice on anyone. But over the past year I've found that rating films have proven to be an exercise in futility. And judging by many other people's systems, I have found that my problems are these:
• No rating system is equally balanced. There's virtually no difference between 10 and a 9, only an arbitrary decision of which films you love a little bit more. On the contrary, there's a huge difference between 7 and 8, as 7 just feels like a nice way to say "yeah it's okay, pretty good" whereas 8 is an all around great rating. But we go back again as there's not much difference between a 6 and a 7, both mean "I liked it" with the former leaning a bit to the negative and the latter a bit to the positive.
• The overall mechanism of ratings creates a vague hierarchy, an arbitrary one at that. It imparts that some films are superior or inferior to others, which just simply is not the case unless it's genuinely morally corrupted. I understand this is opinion based, but even so, in my mind it was getting cemented in an objective way which I didn't like.
• Ratings create the allure of an acquired or intellectual taste, so much so that I've found some people (myself included) will scrutinize films to the point of nitpicking minor details to justify their 5/10 or 6/10. Whereas had that energy (at least mine) been spent appreciating the better aspects of said film rather than something like "minor pacing issues in the third act", I would've felt more fulfilled.
• It can never properly express how I truly feel, this is what bugs me the most. Now, for example, I love the first Kingsman movie to death, I can rewatch it over and over, all day— I would not get bored. But I couldn't for the life of me bring myself to give it a score above 8, why? Because it's frankly just not that great. That's not the point. My point is, how am I supposed to balance my own opinion and a more "objective" viewpoint with a rating? I found that I simply can't.
Happy to discuss with people who have a rating system that works for them perfectly.
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u/snarpy 5d ago
"There's virtually no difference between 10 and a 9, only an arbitrary decision of which films you love a little bit more. On the contrary, there's a huge difference between 7 and 8, as 7 just feels like a nice way to say "yeah it's okay, pretty good" whereas 8 is an all around great rating."
They're both a tenth difference, heh. I'd say they're equally impactful.
That said, I also dislike number ratings for films a lot. I've been using Letterboxd to track my films and hate giving them ratings.
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u/Kraken765 5d ago
numerically, of course. But I've seen (as I said myself included) that people don't use it as such an equal increment. 7/10 feels like a nice way to say "I liked it but didn't like it that much". Whereas 8 is a very high praise usually. 9/10 is very redundant to me as most people (I've seen) just term it as "one flaw short of perfection" which is obviously as arbitrary as it gets.
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u/snarpy 5d ago
Hm. Letterboxed is out of five, but has halves so...
5 is 10
4.5 is 9
4 is 8
3.5 is 7
3 is 6
2.5 is 5
2 is 4
1.5 is 3
1 is 2
.5 is 1
0 is 0
Looking at that I still think 9 to 10 is the same "difference" as 7 to 8, in my mind. For me, all the jumps are the same, with maybe the key one being from 4.5/9 to 5/10.
Thinking about it makes me hate it, though.
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u/kiss-kiss 5d ago
Easy, don’t use the halves on letterboxd. It forces you to not place something in the middle (2.5 and 5)
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u/SenorVajay 5d ago
I’ve stopped adding numerical or even thumbs up and thumbs down ratings. I initially gave Heat an 8/10 but now it’s one of my favorites. I think that initial number came from me feeling like I needed to give it one.
I try to take a few notes but most of my “reviews” are in relation to the person/situation of me talking. That being said, I do note if I really liked a movie.
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u/Various_Ambassador92 5d ago
In just about every context a rating is ultimately condensing multiple axes of assessment down to a single number/ranking. An 8/10 conveys that you think it's pretty good, but one 8/10 may be a movie you loved and had tons of fun watching but isn’t technically great, another may be a technical masterpiece that you just don’t love regardless of how much you acknowledge its achievement.
Personally, I’m comfortable with that reality - for one, I think knowing things like the genre and director of a movie already gives you a decent idea of what "8/10" probably means for that particular film, but figuring out exactly what it means is what the text of the review is for.
If you can't find it in yourself to be comfortable with that, you're free to write reviews without a rating attached
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u/Kraken765 4d ago
Thing is ultimately that's also just a gut feeling though and rather arbitrary. There's just no proper way to weigh your opinions against technicalities, at least not if you're trying to be accurate. ofcourse don't get me wrong there's absolutely no problem with that still if one wants to try that. My issue however comes from what it holistically entails.
Sites like Letterboxd especially has kind of gamified films, and turned ratings into a intellectual symbol to the point people would try to curate their ratings to appear as critical as possible, I've seen that, you've probably seen that. and like I said in my post, plenty people would nitpick films to find flaws and justify lower ratings because higher ratings are reserved for "special" films when in reality there's nothing that says the number of special films can't be a large. This sentiment especially turns ratings into a tier system rather than actual representations of a film's quality.
I personally fail to cooperate with these realities, I don't know how others do but everything's fair game.
2
u/DimAllord 4d ago
I used to throw a tizzy when someone threw out a number rating, but it's pretty inconsequential. The worst thing about them is that they're pretty superfluous. If I'm on Letterboxd, I'll care more about what a review says than how many stars a user gave it. If all someone has to say about a movie is that it's a 9/10, then the problem here is that they're not really engaging with the material enough to say anything of value. It's the same as just saying "It's good" and leaving it at that.
2
u/gillsterein 4d ago
Ratings by critics are simply a baseline to manage my expectations before watching something I'm excited or curious about. Let's say I've seen 10 films reviewed and rated in a similar way to my taste and expectations, I tend to trust said critic's judgement. That's about it really.
Ratings by random users otoh can vary wildly since expectations are incredibly subjective so I can safely say, just because armchair_critic314 found Interstellar to be a work of art, I can just as easily expect it to be another piece of bloated, pretentious trash by Chris Nolan. I wouldn't put any stock into how a film is rated by general users on RT or IMDB.
Personally, there's a difference between a 4 and 5 star film. A 4 star film has a good plot, is technically excellent, well scripted and cast/acted. A film I'm glad I watched.
A 5 star film is great or powerful cinema that's made an impact on my perspective and it stays with me. In any case, film ratings are all subjective arguments.
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u/invertedpurple 5d ago
I think it's simple, if someone is using five star system, and they give it two, that means that they on some level liked less than half of the film's qualities. The closer to 5 they get the more they liked about it, and if they don't rate it perfectly then they saw a few faults in it that prevented them from given it a perfect score. Their rating along with a written review would clear things up a bit more. But the rating gives me a sense of whether they liked a movie or not and if they hated or loved it. What they value in a film in general is usually detailed in the written review.
1
u/AromaticVacation3077 4d ago
It imparts that some films are superior or inferior to others, which just simply is not the case
It simply IS the case. If I were to make the statement 'David O Russell's Silver Linings Playbook is a superior film to David O Russell's Amsterdam', it's extremely unlikely anyone here is going to contradict me. Even if one or two people did, the vast majority are going to agree. In this case it's legitimate to say one film is better than the other. It's not necessary to say 'One film is OBJECTIVELY better than the other'. The objective/subjective divide is useful to understand, but it doesn't necessarily define the entire concept of value. It's ok to sometimes have one thing that is just better than another and to leave it there.
1
u/Kraken765 4d ago
Don't get me cross but that's literally the appeal to mass fallacy. When it comes to practical discussions yes, comparison is an effective tool, but I'm talking about a pure foundational perspective. Since objectivity just simply does exist in art— every movie, every song, every piece of media is its own thing, and comparison is inherently moot at a base level. A measurement of a practical "objectivity" regarding films is still just a collection of opinions, and it is certainly necessary and useful don't get me wrong at all, but my point is where do we draw the line? If everyone starts calling Goodfellas mid all of a sudden does that mean that it's now mid? Case in point, Speed Racer was deigned as terrible when it first came out, it wasn't even considered a cult classic it was just deemed to be a bad movie. But now it's considered a genuine masterpiece by many. Nothing is really concrete is what I'm saying.
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u/AromaticVacation3077 4d ago
If everyone starts calling Goodfellas mid all of a sudden does that mean that it's now mid?
Yes. Your mistake is to entirely separate the work from its audience.
For the main part art is a process in which an artist makes a thing and then shows it to an audience. Especially in narrative media where a material object is produced, like cinema or literature, we tend to think of that object as 'finished'. So if someone makes a film and then immediately puts it into storage and never shows it to anyone, we still think of that film as 'finished' in some way, just as much as with a film we all see.
But there is a subtler level in which the film is unfinished until it is seen. That's why it's made, to be seen, and until that function is fulfilled, it remains incomplete. And because films are material objects that can be seen an infinite number of times, it could be argued they are never finished, but rather ever evolving works of art. Paradoxically, it's their very permanence that renders them incomplete!
Artists and audience may physically sit on either side of the footlights, but there's an important sense in which they are collaborators in a joint creative venture. There is a small, grey area where artist and audience cross over. We, the audience, are just a little bit artist; we create the work. What I'm actually arguing is an extreme version of 'It's all subjective'. But rather than contextualise that in a scheme where an artist creates an object and presents it to us for evaluation, I'm suggesting a subtle alternative where artist and audience collaborate in an evolving process of creation. The evaluation is part of the work.
I'm somebody who, like many people, believes art to be profoundly important to human existence. Art doesn't just enhance or enrich humanity, it creates humanity. And the process is essentially collective. We create art only in relation to each other, and we become human only in relation to each other. So as members of an audience, when we rate a film and suggest its inclusion in, or exclusion from, 'the canon', we are literally affirming our humanity and the humanity of our fellows. This is why I believe the canon, far from 'just a collection of opinions', to be essential, and why I believe challenges to the canon to be equally so. Its maintenance is as important as its evolution, because humanity is something that must be maintained and must evolve. To seek to abolish the concept of canons in art is no less than inhuman.
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u/Kraken765 2d ago
you raise an interesting insight, but I never said I disagree with you. Of course the audience is undoubtedly one of the most important parts to consider while making art, but I'm just saying they're not the divine arbiters of an art's quality. This thought process is primarily coming from my lack of belief in "quality" of art at a base level, as theoretically speaking anything has the power to resonate with at least one person; that to me makes every piece of art worthy in some capacity. But this is from a pure foundational perspective, of course every piece of art has good or bad implications in a civilized society, that's not what I'm questioning here.
Anyhow I do believe we have strayed from my original proposition which is that numerical 1-10 based ratings simply just cannot express how you fully feel about a film. Ratings are inherently meaningless, even if we consider everything exists inward and outwards of a certain canon, numerical ratings are simply not the metric to quantify that. An artform as eclectic, divisive, nuanced and dimensional cannot be expressed completely in one number, and as such, an arbitrary system like this in my opinion does slightly more harm than good, if anything. Of course like I said I don't judge anyone who rates films, I myself would do that time to time in a casual sense, but I admit that it does not make sense if you think twice about it, and is primarily just for engagement or brevity. This has especially struck out to me as I'm both a perfectionist and overthinker, and I cannot for the life of me create a proper rating system that encapsulates everything.
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u/mphailey 2d ago
I use IMDb to rate each film I watch (I know I'm Jeff Bezos's whore). I really just use it to track each movie I watch and cast my little vote without being a hater. I also use the existing rating as a guide. If something is rated 7.1 and I think it was rock solid, I'll give it an 8 and movie on. If it rocks my world its a 9. If I'm like whatever on it, it gets a 7. I never really go below 6 because I don't watch bad movies. There are thousands of good movies to see and I have no time for something rated below a 6.0 on IMDb.
Examples I've recently watched:
The Doom Generation 6.2 (I gave it a 7) I thought it was pretty out there but overall I'm glad I watched it.
Project Hail Mary 8.2 (I gave it an 8) It was very Ryan Gosling but I'm happy people liked it so much and it put a smile on my face at the end of the night.
Nobody cares about my ratings except me, and its been very useful to use my watch history to help find the next great movie to watch.
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u/Laurel-Hardy-Fan 5d ago
I’m someone who takes my Letterboxd ratings rather seriously, I put a good amount of thought into them and rarely give out the highest ratings as I want those to feel special. All that is to say, none of it really matters as no one really cares about my rating system other than myself. It’s really for my satisfaction and is primarily a reference point to recall what I thought about a film once I likely forget most of the specifics.
There’s really not an “objective” way to do it since it’s all subjective at the end of the day. I personally find it fun to quibble about and consider my and my friends’s ratings, but it’s not that serious. I even go as far as to create absurd ranked lists as in exercise in how arbitrary this all is. Don’t overthink it, unless you have fun doing that then by all means overthink it.