This is a revision of my earlier post on the subject of judging film, with several changes and additions.

I am a movie critic. But, I lack the expertise, experience, and knowledge of Rosenbaum, the readability and resources of Ebert, and the selfless discipline of Tim Dirks. My only qualifications are that I love movies, and that as a result I watch, dissect, and discuss them more than most people do. Below, I’ll share with you my own approach to film criticism - not as an argument that my tactics are correct, but as an explanation of my methods.

There is much more to film criticism than rating a film with numbers, letters, or stars. But, such ratings are a useful shorthand. They also enable me to easily create one of my favorite written constructions: lists! I will focus this article on what contributes to my rating of a movie.

Art and Craft

I inspect a film with two lenses: one for art and one for craft. Art refers to those elements of a film born of creative spark, daring to be different, and exploring the limits of filmic storytelling and presentation. Craft refers to the careful execution of those ideas. In most cases, art unleashes fanciful ideas to the turbulent winds of whimsy and craft catches and constructs them in consumable and appreciable form. Art without craft results in nonsensical chaos - or as Moe Syzlak put it, “Weird for the sake of weird.” Craft without art results in a stale derivative.

Art refers to the visual inventiveness of Murnau, the unique storytelling vision of Antonioni, the wild creativity of Kaufman, the experimentalism of Brakhage, the set design of Warm, the music of Vangelis, the cinematography of Hall, the acting of Brando, or the way bullet time technology in The Matrix complements the digital, endlessly transformable world in which the characters often act.

Craft is represented by the careful way Hitchcock builds tension, the lifelike but engaging dialogue of Tarantino, the carefully orchestrated relationships of American Beauty, the cause-and-effect of Chinatown, the technical fortitude and scope of Return of the King, the solid mythic structure of Star Wars, or the way Lumet and Rose keep us engaged for 1.5 hours in a room of 12 Angry Men.

The best films are masterpieces of art and craft, but these are rare. Thankfully, perfect craftsmanship can carry a film of decent art to greatness, and, less often, vice-versa.

I give more weight to craft than art for several reasons. First, a well-crafted film of limited art is still enjoyable for most people, while a film of immense art but little craft can be excruciating to watch and is often worthless except in how it may influence future, hopefully better-crafted, films. Second, because craft is a calculated process, it does not have the requirements for originality of art, and is therefore less subject to eventual exhaustion. Third, the mainstream audience seems to prefer craft over art, and if I refused to positively rate any film without significant artistic mettle I would find very few wide releases to recommend each month.

A Complicated Medium

Excepting recent video games (a topic for another article), film is the most complicated art & entertainment medium because it requires mastery of nearly all artistic formats - photography, narrative storytelling, acting, choreography, music, painting, sculpture, interior design, etc. This makes filmmaking an extraordinarily messy and difficult task that is far less likely to result in perfection than any other creative medium.

Some films have achieved excellence on all those fronts, but many of those elements are unimportant in other movies: photography in an animated film, acting and narrative storytelling in Koyaanisqatsi, music in silent films, etc. These latter examples are obviously not worse off for lacking in several common elements of film, but because of these variations one cannot make a scorecard with a categorical breakdown of point assignment. Such a magical scorecard would make the critic’s job easier, though!

Does Not Compute

There are several important aspects of film criticism that influence my opinion of a film but do not affect a rating. Box-office receipts, popularity, and cultural influence do not affect my ratings. Neither do moral or political responsibility or special difficulties overcome during production.

I do, of course, factor the dates of production (in terms of available equipment, techniques, and cinematic/storytelling library) into my ratings. Metropolis, for example, should be commended for its spectacular visuals - not slandered for how it compares to Blade Runner, produced half a century later. The stunning breakthroughs in camera movement and sound in Citizen Kane that once required the genius of Welles are now available to anyone with a Steadicam and free sound mixing software.

Taste

No human can escape the effects of personal taste on criticism. I do my best to acknowledge the merits of Das Kabinett des Doktor Caligari though I do not enjoy it. I also moderate my response to a mythical fantasy film like The Matrix that hits all my buttons just right. As such, my ratings do not remotely reveal my ‘favorite’ or ‘least favorite’ films. Ratings are my attmempt to measure the mettle of a film as objectively as possible using the criteria explained above.

Shorts

I deal with short films a bit differently. Generally, I handicap short films with my ratings because, due to their running time, they have less opportunity to exhibit brilliance, and also to fail. It’s far easier to make the perfect short film than the perfect feature-length film. As such, I will give the perfect short film a low-90s score, and the perfect feature length film a 100. No, it’s not fair, so leave it at that. :-)

Scale

Here, then, is the breakdown of my ratings system.

96-100: Supreme Achievement of Cinema (only three so far)
90-95: Absolute Masterpiece (about 60 so far)
86-89: Truly Great Film or Flawed Masterpiece (Network, Metropolis, Nanook of the North, etc.)
80-85: Excellent Film or Highly Flawed Masterpiece (The Sixth Sense, Faust, A.I. Artificial Intelligence, etc.)
70-79: Works Very Well; Rocky, Gangs of New York, Night of the Living Dead.
60-69; Okay - Works; Super Size Me, Hook, Bend It Like Beckham.
50-59; Bad - Doesn’t Work; Starship Troopers, Bean, Spider-Man.
40-49; Very Bad; Bubble Boy, The Return of Jafar, Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow.
30-39; Laughably Bad; Along Came Polly, This Island Earth, The Butterfly Effect.
0-29; MST3K Fodder; Highlander, Bring It On, You Got Served.

Any rating I assign is subject to change, and probably will.