For some time now in conversation with friends I've found that movie rating are kind of broken for me, they conflate too many different things about a movie for me. So I wanted to propose a new way to potentially rate movies. Idk if this is really better, but something I wanted to try
I think movie rating should be broken down into three broad categories
- Quality - How good you think the movie is
- Enjoyment - How much did you enjoy the movie
- Disappointment - This is a bit weird one, but did the movie disappoint you? It didn't meet your expectations or vastly surpassed them. I will explain this a bit more later
I think these are good to separate because there are plenty of bad movies that are enjoy (think dumb fun movies) or clearly well made movies that are boring or not enjoyable.
I also think it is pretty important to separate your expectations and disappointment from a films quality, this definitely happens to me where I subconsciously think a movie is worse in quality than it is cause of the expectations set by myself or community
Quality
Obviously film rating is subjective but this section makes you try to separate the more objective qualities of a film, how good were the characters, the cinematography, the music, the pacing, etc
I think this can be a simple scale out of 10, and this is what most people think of when they talk about film rating already
Enjoyment
Next I think we should rate how enjoyable a film was, how pleasant was the movie watching experience. Did the jokes land for you, did the action work? Overall did you have a good time with this film and would you watch it again?
This can also be a simple scale out of 10.
Disappointment
This is definitely the weirdest category, and it might seem unfair to judge a film on your own built up expectations but quite often this can come from this films own marketing or pedigree or its role in a franchise.
For this I would rate it differently, by default every film gets a 0. For films that vastly exceed your expectations you give them a negative
-1 and for films that are disappointing you give a positive score. This positive score is not bounded by softly bounded around 5So essential the scale is
-1 to 5, but the positive end is flexible, so it can go above 5.Putting them together
I don't necessarily think the numbers should be just averaged back down into one number, I think that kind of defeats the purpose. That said it can be useful for quite comparison
So I propose a system like
I found that this better represents how I actually feel about some of the films I've seen recently
Example Rating
Now for the controversial part, these are some example rating for some movies from the past year with this rating system. I would urge you to not get triggered by my specific rating and rather think about how the separation works and why it is useful to separate these elements
Dune
Status
Quality (8)
Status
Enjoyment (10)
Status
Disappointment (1)
Status
Total (88.1%)
- Quality: Great movie. Slightly weak third act but incredibly well made
- Enjoyment: I was in awe of the second half of this movie, it moved really fast and I really loved it
- Disappointment: As someone who enjoy's Villenuve work but has no attachment to the source material I had high expectations but was completely blown away
Black Widow
Status
Quality (4)
Status
Enjoyment (6)
Status
Disappointment (7)
Status
Total (37.0%)
- Quality: 4 - This movie is like the meaning of average or passable but has a below average villain and third act
- Enjoyment: 6 - Scarjo is always great, and Florence Pugh/David Harbor land a few good jokes. I'd say it is slightly above average in terms of how enjoyably it was
- Disappointment: 7 - Bringing back one of the main avengers from the dead (ik it is set in the past) for a final outing that is so meh was extremely disappointing and totally not worth it. Nat deserved to have a better movie
Free Guy
Status
Quality (7)
Status
Enjoyment (7)
Status
Total (75.0%)
- Quality: 7.5 - This is a pretty good movie
- Enjoyment: 7.5 - The action in this movie is fun and I like ryan ryenolds style of comedy
- Disappointment: 0 - I didn't really have expectations for this movie and it didn't blow me away but it was a pleasant surprise
Eternals
Status
Quality (3)
Status
Enjoyment (5)
Status
Disappointment (1)
Status
Total (38.1%)
- Quality: 3 - This movie forgets how to tell a story, and is very uneconomical with its time
- Enjoyment: 5 - Kingo and Karun are great, everyone else is kinda boring
- Disappointment: 1 - Not massive expectations going into this, but an oscar winner director and kevin feige hyping with good trailers definitely got me a bit pumped that said I saw the reviews and expected a mixed bag
The Suicide Squad
Status
Quality (8)
Status
Enjoyment (8)
Status
Total (82.5%)
- Quality: 8 - I think this is a pretty damn good movie, I love how Gunn was able to make me get attached to characters like ratcatcher 2 in a movie with so many characters in such a short time. I also think this movie looks great and the music is great (like always with gunn)
- Enjoyment: 8.5 - I am definitely the target audience for James Gunn's humor and a good amount of it landed for me in this movie. I had a great time in theaters with this one
- Disappointment: 0 - I like Gunn's work so had fairly high expectations and they were met
Last Night in Soho
Status
Quality (8)
Status
Enjoyment (8)
Status
Total (82.5%)
- Quality: 8 - I think the movie is quite good, it is really beautifully shot, and the camera work is masterful. Its entire aesthetic and style is really great. It also tells a horror mystery story in a quite unique and interesting way, with some amazing performances.
- Enjoyment: 8.5 - I really enjoyed watching this movie in the theaters, edgar wright is a master and making scenes really engaging and the movie is really enjoyable to watch
- Disappointment: 0 - Edgar wright is another of one of my favorite directors and while this movie is definitely not his best I was pleasantly surprised as some reviews portrayed it much more negatively
Tenet
Status
Quality (6)
Status
Enjoyment (7)
Status
Disappointment (3)
Status
Total (58.7%)
- Quality: 6.5 - I think the movies pacing is quite terrible, but the movie is shot really well and has a really cool premise
- Enjoyment: 7 - I think the first half really drags, and not even to setup the story very well like inception. Once the temporal pincer stuff starts the movie is more fun, mainly by the uniqueness and the coolness of this concept
- Disappointment: 3 - Nolan is probably my #1 favourite director and this felt much less polished an much worse than the rest of his filmography. Every mistake made in tenet nolan has done perfectly before, which made this a frustrating film to watch
Shang Chi (The most controversial take)
Status
Quality (6)
Status
Enjoyment (4)
Status
Disappointment (2)
Status
Total (47.7%)
- Quality: 6.5 - I think this movie is decent and Tony Leung performance really elevates the quality of this movie. Without Tony Leung the quality would probably be a
5for me
- Enjoyment: 4 - I found the movie quite boring when Tony Leung was not on screen. Meh cgi dragon and I actually found Simu Liu quite uncharismatic and boring, especially compared to himself on social media or in interviews
- Disappointment: 2 - I didn't have much expectations for this movie even as a big mcu fan, but the massive hype around this movie and it being compared to the top of the mcu like GOTG set a very high bar which the movie never came close to