Description
Rating System
★ Not Worth Seeing
★★ Maybe Worth Seeing
★★★ Worth Seeing
★★★★ A Must-See
I follow the star rating system but I do something a little bit different than my contemporaries: I don’t give half-stars. This is most interesting when I give a movie two stars. One might assume that just because I assign a movie two stars, it automatically means I don’t recommend it. That’s not accurate. Certain movies that are given two stars might “actually” be two-and-a-half stars which, 50% of the time, is a recommendation. The content of my review, which specifically mentions what I liked and what I didn’t like, comes into play. So just because you see “★★ / ★★★★,” I wouldn’t ignore the movie. You might be missing out on an interesting film.
10-Point Rating System
The ten-point rating system doesn’t work for me. I’m not sure it works either for most critics. How can people rate something as 5.3 and others 8.7? I consider it a mystery. I like being precise but assigning numbers to movies, in my opinion, takes the fun out of the equation.
Length of Reviews
Nobody likes to read essays. At least I don’t. When was the last time you read an essay? (Academic essays don’t count.) Out of all the professional film critics, on a regular basis, I only read Rogert Ebert’s full reviews. When a movie, in general, receives mixed reviews, only then am I compelled to read other point of views. I can read essay-length reviews for movies like Stanley Kubrick’s “2001: A Space Odyssey,” but I’m not willing to spent a lot of time reading long reviews for movies like Brad Sykes’ “Death Factory.” I take pride in getting to the point and my opinion, most of the time, can be expressed in one paragraph.
Movies vs. Films
I don’t discern between the terms “movies” and “films.” When I write reviews, I don’t focus on things like cinematography, lighting, and structure. I might mention them, but a recommendation is very rarely based on them. Such things are less important because they’re mostly relative. We can argue about cinematography all day but never actually get anywhere.
I didn’t go to film school but I know how to express what I liked and didn’t like about a movie. I tend to focus on how I felt or thought about when watching a particular scene. Sometimes, I provide an example from my life and relate that to the scene of interest. I enjoy putting something personal in my reviews because that’s what I feel is missing in most critics’ writing. A person can follow a critics’ work for 20 years and almost know nothing about them. I think that’s sad. Writing shouldn’t be robotic or impersonal, especially if I’m trying to persuade you to see or not see a movie. There should always be some kind of a connection.
FranzPatrick.com and Longevity
I plan to do this for a very long time. Either that or I die unexpectedly.
