I Think Way Too Much About Star Ratings

It's been a while since I've had a real navel-gazer of a post. Today, I'm going to ramble a bit about the star ratings system. Despite avoiding numerical ratings in my written reviews, I do use them in other contexts, especially with films. They're handy shorthand for my gut feelings about a film - and with something as reductive as star ratings, they can only reflect something as subjective as gut feelings.

So, let's look at the typical five star ratings system. How do I determine what gets four stars and what gets five? What is the meaningful difference between one rating and the next? I've written a bit about using star ratings, but not about what those ratings actually mean to me.

Let's start with the star ratings I use most often, *** and ***½ stars. I feel that the average score for all films is probably lower, about **½, but I have the benefit of choosing which films I want to watch and write about. I don't watch movies for a living, so I can happily avoid the bulk of the dreck. However, being able to pick from the more promising films skews my average scores higher than they would be if I were watching every movie actually released. I've thought about adjusting for this, taking away a half or even full star from reviews to make my average **½, but that doesn't mesh with how I think about and categorize films.

Like most people, a *** rating is where I draw the line at a movie being counted as good or recommendable. That's easily converted to a 6/10 or 60%, which is the threshold for being a "fresh" film on Rottentomatoes. In most grading rubrics, that's also the minimum score for a passing grade. And that's more or less what I think of films that I rate ***. They get a pass. They're good enough to be worth watching for two hours. They provide an acceptable level of entertainment and diversion. They might do one or two things especially well, but there are also some flaws. Recent films I've given this rating include "Underwater," a solid action adventure film, and "Vivarium," an existential horror.

A ***½ rating is for films that strike me as more memorable, that are better put together and have more signs of creative vision. They're not always entirely successful, but these are the films that have managed to convince me that they have some real creative juices flowing. For instance, there's "The Lovebirds," which follows a pretty typical comedy template, but also serves as a good showcase for the particular talents and humor of Issa Rae and Kumail Nanjiani. Or there's "The Gentlemen," which is not one of Guy Ritchie's best gangster films, but it's an awful lot of fun, and Matthew McConaughy turns in a great lead performance. I also gave "Onward" ***½ stars, despite my not connecting to it very well. It's not one I enjoyed much, but it's clearly a very good film aimed at someone else.

Higher ratings are easier and more fun to talk about. A five star film is a rare bird, an indisputable classic. There are maybe one or two a year. The last film I gave that rating was "Little Women." A ****½ film is a very strong film that just misses the mark for being a classic - usually something in that tier that I have minor quibbles about. "Marriage Story" and "Parasite" are currently both in this category for me. These are among my favorite films of the year, that I connected with very strongly, but there just wasn't that gut feeling that I was watching one of the greats. Four star films are pretty common, displaying all-around strong technical and creative skill, but maybe with a few notable weaknesses. "Jojo Rabbit," "1917," and "Us" are all films in my Top Ten that I'd put here.

On the flip side, I use negative ratings more rarely and it's harder for me to differentiate among the lowest ratings on the scale. A **½ film is not necessarily a film I wouldn't recommend, just one with some noticeable flaws that affect my enjoyment. "Bloodshot" is a good example, an energetic cheesy action flick that stone-faced Vin Diesel is taking much too seriously. A two star film is one where something has seriously gone awry, often in the basic conception. Two star films can still have elements that are enjoyable, but the film as a whole doesn't work. See "Scoob!" or "Guns Akimbo." I still watch plenty of films in the two star range, and lots of them are popular.

I come across one star and *½ star films less often, because I'm usually pretty good at dodging these. The last *½ star film I watched was "Inheritance," a real stinker where 90% of the film was awful, but it did have a halfway decent performance by Simon Pegg that I thought was better than the film deserved. So, it wasn't totally awful the way a one star film would be. It's actually pretty difficult to get a one star rating out of me, because I'm usually able to find something likeable about even the worst piece of dreck. So my one star films are often also the ones that have managed to tick me off in some way, like the later Michael Bay "Transformers" movies.

And is there anything worse than that? Well, there's the worst of the worst, which I don't watch if I can help it. There are maybe five films that I've rated zero stars, but these were productions so incompetent that the finished product should barely even be counted as films. I'm talking about foreign knockoffs, ranty propaganda pieces, and amateur stuff like "The Room." In some ways getting a ½ star is worse, because that's what I give horrible films that at least display some technical competence. "Dolittle," for instance, got ½ a star. As for why I bothered to watch it, well, sometimes you've just got to see the disasters for yourself.

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