Filmmaker Fancy #9: I Have A Rating Problem

(Quote taken directly from Filmmaker Fancy #8)

"NOTE: I feel rating a movie based on a star system is unfair and minimizes the countless hours of work that was put into any given film. As such, I do not rate any of the films I watch on any basis."

I wasn't always this way. In fact, this is an extremely new revelation for me (we're talking within the last three weeks. Easy.)

It's my belief that your average audience member goes to the theater to see something cool and have a good time. It's just a bonus if we, as filmmakers, can make them think about the world a different way or be able to reflect on their own life. For those of us cursed to find meaning in every nook and cranny of anything that lights up a screen, something cool just is not enough sometimes...

...but is this a good way to think about films?

This may sound obvious, but cool films have a place in film history. Even films that we may not consider "good" by a traditional definition can be some of the most entertaining media you've ever encountered.

Personally, I'm a huge fan of your average romantic-comedy. Man meets girl, girl meets man, they get together, they fall apart, they get back together again, and the audience gets to listen to some pop hits as the credits roll.

I love it. Every damn time.

My opinion of most rom-coms, however, is not very high. I think most are fairly average with the occasional interesting concept or filmmaking technique.

...but to say most are "fairly average" is just something that has been rubbing me the wrong way. What does "fairly average" mean? When I was a Letterboxd rating addict, that would have meant a two and a half star rating.

By the time I've seen ten of these movies, half would probably be two and a half stars. That's awful.

Do I think the films are something special? Not always, but is the two and a half star rating really all you need to encapsulate your thoughts and feelings? The answer is definitely NO.

Films are not only the sum of their parts. Films, to me, function similarly to a clock or watch (one with gears). Maybe a couple gears are not working right, and the watch doesn't work properly because of it, but there are other things inside the watch that are working properly.

Same thing with a film. Maybe the script is not working the way it should, but perhaps the cinematography is really something to write home about, or maybe the ideas, not matter how well executed they may or may not be, are really unique.

Unfortunately, sites like Letterboxd, Rotten Tomatoes, and IMDb are not helping this fact. Don't get me wrong, I love Letterboxd and IMDb. Especially when it comes to Letterboxd, I think it's a great way to interact with other cinephiles and read the funniest reviews for any given film.

I am a big fan of Ebert & Siskel.

Upon looking for a good place to watch the episodes, I found a Youtube channel that is solely Ebert & Siskel. An aspect of that show that I think is so valuable is that they don't rate movies based on a star system. They debate and troll over a film until they both reach definitive opinions of the film and then they respectively assign it a thumbs up or thumbs down.

I know, for a someone that is here discussing the diminishing of film criticism by star rankings, I'm talking about a literally diminished version of film criticism. However, what I get from the thumbs up/down system is the ambiguity. When it comes to Ebert & Siskel, there is a little way to know what they thought without reading an article or watching the episode. To this extent, you end up getting a richer type of criticism that points out a film's good aspects while also contrasting it with things that perhaps the filmmakers could have done better.

At the end of the day, it's only us filmmakers and film criticizers that think about this stuff deeply enough that we could touch the Mariana Trench. However, I do think the manner in which we all watch a film is important because...

...the way we view a film is the way we judge a film.

This article was written and edited by: Avi J. Peress

Filmmaker Fancy #10 - Coming: January 29th, 2024