Here is the breakdown of my movie rating scale. It is borrowed in basic principle from Netflix’s rating system with the addition of the ability to give half stars for those odd-one-outs that skirt the inbetweens of these categories. Most of these will apply to movies, but if I ever feel like giving a game, comic, book or whatever else a rating, it’ll serve for those as well (just replace obvious words like “movie” with “game”, “moviegoers” with “readers”, etc.)

It goes as follows:

– Each reviewed movie has the possibility of earning 5 full stars and possibly a half if it doesn’t quite fit into a full star category.
– Half a star. It’s going to take a special type of shit to garner this one. There are almost no words to describe how awful this movie is. It is an abomination against mankind and whoever created it should be dragged into the street and stoned by moviegoers everywhere. You’ll almost never see this rating, but if you do, it’s well deserved.
– One star means I hated it. I may have watched the whole thing, but most likely I turned it off and burned the disc. I won’t see it again and my opinion of you will go down if you choose to watch it. I may not like you anymore at all if you say you actually liked it.
– One and a half stars is skirting the gray area between being god-awful and only just slightly crummy. I may not have enjoyed it at all, but I might at least respect it for trying. Like the previous half star rating this one will seldom make an appearance, but it exists should the need arise.
– Two stars means I didn’t like it. I don’t have pure hatred for it, but it just wasn’t good and I won’t watch it again.
– Two and a half stars is a place between where movies are bad and movies are good. You may see this more often than the previous half-star ratings. This would be the go-to rating for movies that are “so bad they are good”. Old or cheesy stuff that didn’t quite make the cut to actually be one of my likable movies but was minimally enjoyable.
– Three stars means it was OK. This is the minimum stars I would give anything that I enjoyed at least a little bit, but it had problems I couldn’t look past. I may watch this again, I may not. I may recommend it, I may not.
– Three and a half stars is going to be much more common than the other half star ratings. This is for movies that I feel were good at their core, but just didn’t quite try hard enough to be really enjoyable. This usually means gaping plot holes, annoying characters or other stuff like that which dragged an otherwise great movie down.
– Four stars means I really liked the movie. It’s not one of my all time favorites but it was great, I’d usually highly recommend it, and I’m sure to watch it again at some point.
- Four and a half stars is the true equivalent of coming in second place. You did a phenomenal job that nobody can deny, but something went a little wrong along the way and didn’t manage to solidify you as one of the all time greats. Maybe next time!
– Five stars, the gold standard! I absolutely loved it. It may not be a “Citizen Kane” masterwork of cinema, but it pushed all the right buttons. It was fun, enjoyable, memorable, made me laugh, made me cry, whatever. It was genuinely good by my standards, I enjoyed it thoroughly, I’d highly recommend it, and I will definitively see it again.