Monday, November 17, 2014

Blog Announcement: No More Numbers


Posting my best and worst movies of 2013 made me re-think a certain aspect of my reviewing process. More accurately, those were the straws that broke the bull's back. From this point forward, I will no longer include "MY SCORE" as part of my reviews.

Over the last few months, I've become disenchanted with finishing off my reviews by trying to sum it all up in one number, or a score. The score serves as a hindrance to lists like the two mentioned above which I do enjoy making. The problem is I start to beat myself up over ranking one movie over another even though the scores I've assigned to them suggests that it should be the other way around. After all, what if someone actually went back to those reviews and called me on it?

The fact of the matter is that the score is actually the least reliable part of my review. Instead of being a true representation of how I feel about a movie, it becomes how I think I feel about it at a particular moment in time in comparison to other movies I've recently seen. For instance, I rated Blue is the Warmest Color as my third best movie of '13. My initial score for it was 8.5/10. A number of movies I ranked behind it had better scores, including 12 Years a Slave which I initially gave a perfect ten. For Blue I saw it at a time when I knew I would still see many more movies from that year and had already seen a number of its better movies. Most of them I had given an 8.5/10. I loved Blue, but wasn't sure it was head and shoulders above any of the others, so that score felt justified. By the time I watched 12 Years, the tide had changed a little. My initial viewing of The Place Beyond the Pines blew me away, so I immediately gave that one a 9/10. I thought 12 Years was clearly better, so 10 it was. As the weeks and months passed, my opinion of Pines started to wane a bit while that of Blue elevated. See how complicated this became?


It's an unnecessary and silly stress, too.

My true opinion of a movie is much better summed up in the actual reviews themselves. That's why I write them. The reasons I like or dislike a movie are far more stable than a number I slap on after the last paragraph. Those things are hard-wired into my feelings on what I've just watched. They're less likely to change since each review is a self-contained examination of an individual film. Of course, exceptions are made for sequels, prequels, and remakes when I often refer to their predecessors. Still, they aren't comparisons to other movies released within a given time period.

Not including scores is beneficial to you, the reader, too. It's too easy to forget what's been written about a movie because whatever score it's given carries its own connotations which overwhelms everything else. I might give a movie a glowing review, but give it a score higher or lower than someone thinks it should be and that's where the focus is. I've done it myself on a number of sites, perhaps even yours. It's a pretty natural thing to do, really. We've been doing it ever since that very first time a paper we turned in didn't get the 'A' we think it deserved. Without having that tidy little summation, the reader is forced to deal with the reasoning laid out and then decide whether they agree, or not. That's really all I want for my blog. Well, that, and to not fret over my own grading system when trying to decide if one movie is better than another.

12 comments:

  1. Quite frankly, I only read reviews of movies I've actually seen due to the risk of spoilers. If I haven't seen the movie yet, I tend to rely on average ratings from multiple bloggers that I follow to see if it's worth seeing.

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    1. When it comes to newer movies, I, too, only read reviews of those I haven't seen. Though I'll occasionally give a few too many details about the setup I'm very careful not to spoil the movies I review. On the rare occasions I slip, I apologize.

      Including scores just became too arbitrary. I wasn't so much grading the movie as I was trying to figure out where it fits among those I had recently seen. I began to feel disingenuous about the scores I was giving.

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  2. I have been rethinking book and movie ratings lately, too. Honestly, I don't pay much attention to scores, grades, and ratings on reviews anyway. If I read a review for something I am considering reading or watching, I infer, from the reviewer's discussion of the book or film, whether it might be my cup of tea, regardless of whether he or she gave it a "thumbs up."

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    1. That's the way I feel it should be done. I'm just removing the temptation of relying on the score altogether.

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  3. I gave up on scoring and rating films a long time ago because I think it's pointless. I would rather have the review itself do the talking and let people figure it out.

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  4. I support this 100%. I'm a friggin' teacher and I loathe scoring anything. Most of the time it's so fluid and arbitrary, I just want to scream and/or jump out the nearest window. I don't blame anyone for doing them (or, well, previously doing them), but like you said, it can be an unnecessary stress.

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    1. Thanks. I got tired of trying to decide if something is a 7 or 7.5 or 6.5 and if its a 6.5 why not drop it all he way to 6 and so on.

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  5. I don't use a grade myself but when I hosted my blogathon i insisted people used one, so I can see both sides.

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    1. I can certainly see both sides, but I'm done with the side I was on.

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  6. Like you say, sometimes our opinions change, and I know from personal experience it can be tricky doing year-end lists when the scores might not match the final ranking.
    It's certainly a way for your words to do the talking rather than readers focusing on a number.

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    1. I absolutely prefer my words to do the talking. Besides, if my year end lists accurately reflected the scores I gave, they would be far different.

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