Ratings

Ratings are tricky things. Sometimes they’re useful – hotels, for instance. From the star rating, you can tell the difference between an $8 a night room (comes with free bedbugs) and an $800 a night suite (comes with free … everything. For $800 a night, there’d better be free everything).

But for more subjective topics, ratings can be near-useless. Take music, for instance. There’s so much variety between songs, CD’s, and artists, that one can be loved and hated by two similar people. Whatever the majority of people think, someone, somewhere, will like it (see Fed, K-).

It’s a little better with movies, but not much. When critics say a movie is good, they’re not actually making a quantifiable statement about the movie. They’re saying they think it’s good. And due to differences in taste, it could mean the movie is terrible (for you).

Of course, critics also have another problem. It’s related to studying literature in school. I never enjoyed any book we studied in school because I was too busy paying attention to whatever literary devices the teacher wanted to point out. I think critics are the same way – they’re too busy thinking about what they have to write about the movie that they forget to sit back and enjoy it. I hope that doesn’t happen to me. I want to enjoy the movie, then (almost accidentally) write about it. I try not to think about what to write until afterwards.

Anyway, this post has gotten way off-topic. What I mean to say is: I’ve discovered a ratings system for the movies. From now on, I won’t be giving movies two thumbs up, 4 stars, B+, 7 splotches of goodness, or the colour yellow. No, I’ll be judging them based on how and where I’d like to see them. Good movies will be theatre movies, and moving down the scale to rental DVD’s, bargain rentals, free on TV, and avoid entirely.

So far, we’ve been lucky, in that the movies have been top-heavy. Ironman 2, Prince of Persia, the A-team, and Knight and Day have all been movies I’d like to see on the big screen. This doesn’t mean you must watch them in theatres. For instance, the action in the A-team has a lot of explosions, which should really be experienced on a huge screen. However, the action in Knight and Day is not as kaboom-y, so it could probably be experienced on a nice home-theatre system. But I’d want to see both of them in theatres.

Jonah Hex is a free-on-TV, maybe a bargain-bin-rental-if-it’s-only-a-dollar type of movie. Robin Hood is a change-the-channel-if-it-comes-on-TV movie. If you get it as a gift, take it outside and douse it in Holy Water (and watch it sizzle and melt). Seriously, avoid it at all costs.

Keep in mind, though, that these ratings are completely subjective, and likely wrong. Also, I have a much higher tolerance of trash than other people. Which, come to think of it, is a fairly accurate depiction of the state of my room.