I love IMDB, the 'Internet Movie Database'. I have loved this site ever since I first discovered it...it allows me to always answer that nagging question of 'Where did I see that person before?' I love that it lets me see parental guides about movies before seeing them with my kids (so I can stop them from watching them or at least know what's going on).
And I love the fact that, by its rating system, it allows me to know what I've seen before, or at least since I started rating movies and TV shows. Anytime I watch a movie now (or at least a few episodes of a TV show) I go on and give a rating, adding my stats to millions of others. I know my numbers don't affect the big picture, but it's becoming a more interesting part of community to me than seeing the silliness that is Facebook.
But how do I rate? That's what this post is about.
My median rate is, I suppose, a 7. A 7 is a score that says something is good. It means I enjoyed watching the show, but it wasn't the greatest thing I've ever seen, in fact, far from it. It was a movie or show that had some issues, but all in all it was still enjoyable. Here are some 7s: Mamma Mia! Anchorman 2. Oblivion. Flight. Heaven is For Real. Most of these will be movies that I forget about rather quickly...but now I can at least know I watched them.
An 8 is something that is very good, though not great. Many times I rate something an 8 when I really wanted to love something, but instead I just liked it. The other night I watched the Book Thief, and I wanted to think it was wonderful and life changing, but I just couldn't pull the trigger on anything higher than an 8. So it got an 8. 8s are also something that can be very surprising to me. Frankenweenie was an 8, as was 42. TV shows that I watch on a regular basis often get 8s: I Dream of Jeannie, Parks and Recreation, and Game of Thrones. Hard to put those three in the same sentence, but all get 8 for general excellence, but not brilliance.
A 9 is something inspired, something Oscar-worthy. Here we start getting into rarified air. Gravity was a solid 9. So was the old show Mr. Bean. Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog also gets a nine. It's hard to punch any holes in a nine or to sit around and think, "If they had done _____, it could have been better." As it is, a 9 makes my Hall of Fame.
(I do feel compelled at this point to speak about Mad Men. Mad Men is a 9 unlike any other, because there are episodes of Mad Men I've been sorely confused about and wished it would go away. But then it sometimes reaches heights where individual episodes make me go back through and watch them 3-4 times just to soak in the brilliance. Maybe Mad Men should be an 8 with an asterisk, but I love it too much to let it be any less than a 9.)
I have given one 10: Schindler's List. It's not like I want to watch this movie all the time. But every few years I feel compelled to go back and watch it. It's a movie I want to share with my children when they get old enough to understand. I don't see a lot of other 10s out there and am afraid to dilute a 10 based on a few great memories. I have seen pieces of the TV version of The Shawshank Redemption a hundred times, but I can't remember the last time I saw the entire movie as it was meant to be seen. So I will wait and judge it if I ever watch it on DVD.
Going the other direction, the ratings start to slide rather quickly. A 6 is a show that is mediocre. It's not a bad thing that I spent some time watching it, but I can't imagine watching it again. The remake of Red Dawn, which surprisingly was not lower than this, qualifies as a 6. Looking at my list I see a lot of remakes and sequels: the remake of Footloose; Star Trek into Darkness; the 2012 remake of Total Recall; Muppets Most Wanted; Iron Man 2. Maybe a six can best be described as something that simply had no inspiration behind it. Maybe a six is a money grab.
A 5 is something where we start getting into 'not very good' territory. The 'Bean' movie sits here. The Incredible Burt Wonderstone. This is where we watch a show and through most of it think, "you know, I really wish I was doing something else, but there's too much talent here to give up. How many more minutes does this last?" And then I keep hitting the 'Display' button on the remote and look back and forth at the clock. But you stick it out because you have nothing better to do.
By the time we get to a 4 we get to not a lot of movies, because a)I won't rate a movie or show I don't sit through completely and b)Some movies get turned off, especially if I only spent a buck at Redbox or got them free through the library. I did make it through Battleship and Tower Heist, though. Not sure how.
I only have two movies rated a 3: Cowboys & Aliens (wow, that sucked) and Mulholland Dr. (wow, that was a hot mess). By this point concepts like 'suckitude' and 'craptacular' come into the discussion.
And as you might have figured out by this point, I have never rated anything a 1 or 2. But why? Aren't there a lot of terrible movies out there that can be mocked in ratings perpetuity? Maybe it's just that I give three points for the very fact that a movie or TV show somehow came to my attention, so it at least deserves that, like an SAT student getting a few hundred points for spelling his name right.
More likely, though, I've seen a lot of movies in this category, and they are the movies used in Mystery Science Theater 3000. I went through IMDB's master list of the 'Bottom 100', which identify the worst movies ever made, to see what I have seen. I can be proud not to have seen Disaster Movie and The Hottie & the Nottie (that just sounds terrible)...but I have seen (via MST3K) Manos: The Hands of Fate, Final Justice, Track of the Moon Beast, Space Mutiny, and The Creeping Terror, among many others on that list. I'm not sure why I don't pour on the hate, but the MST3K versions make them all bearable. Maybe that's why I gave it a 9.
