How I Rate Movies
I've had this post drafted for a bit and after reading Robb Knight's post about their movie rating system, I thought it's about time I finish and post it.
I like watching movies and I try to watch a lot of movies. For the past few years I've been using Letterboxd to track movies I watch. I didn't rate for a long time because I thought it was pointless and the rating only really applies to me but then quite a few times I found myself rewatching a movie that I had already watched because I didn't remember what I thought about it or completely forgot that I watched it.
The main motivation for me building a micropub client was so that I could track my movie watch history on my site and move away from Letterboxd. I used to take a few days to log a movie on Letterboxd mostly out of forgetfulness but having my own client that I need to test makes me log movies sooner.
This rating system was created so that I could remind myself generally what I thought about the movie without having to write a review and more importantly, make it easy to know whether I thought something was worth coming back to later. It doesn't always make sense but it works for me.
Here's roughly how I rate movies:
- ★★★ is the baseline score. This is where all movies start.
- Every time I wish I was doing anything else, the movie drops ½.
- ★★★½ if I think the movie is worth a rewatch.
- ★★★★ is a great movie but I probably won't be coming back to it.
- ★★★★½ is great AND rewatchable.
- ★★★★★ is a perfect movie or it means something to me.
Rating something under ★★★ is rare and it doesn't speak to the quality of the film as much of whether or not it was able to interest me.
Fun data: 908 movies rated (Last updated 2023-02-15)
| rating | count |
|---|---|
| ½ | 1 |
| ★ | 5 |
| ★½ | 8 |
| ★★ | 24 |
| ★★½ | 46 |
| ★★★ | 163 |
| ★★★½ | 179 |
| ★★★★ | 250 |
| ★★★★½ | 129 |
| ★★★★★ | 103 |