What I did know was that a programming intelligence put these three movies together. Nor would I have figured out that each movie had widely different audiences at the time of their releases - one thing was true, regardless of the rating, that all of them were very big hits. I would not have known that perhaps two of them had greatly significant status in the history of movies. I would also have assumed that their relative qualities were equal. Had I known nothing about these films, the ratings would have told me the three movies were worth watching, but not necessarily very good or excellent. What finally prompts my indignation to the point of writing now? A chance observation at a newspaper’s television grid a week ago revealed the following about three movies playing on AMC: Mad Max (1979), Easy Rider (1969), and Smokey and the Bandit (1977) were all given ***. Just give me the analysis, and from that I can tell whether the critic’s taste and judgment are worth anything. And while I believe that 5- and 10-star/points ratings are better, and a 100-point system most preferable, personally, I would abstain from all of them. I want my favorites to get the high ratings - my judgments are being challenged by anonymous forces whom I cannot confront. I realize that my response to these injustices merely draws me into the 4-star rating game.

Most of all, it never seems as if a truly great film can distance itself enough qualitatively from a three-star effort. Second, Ebert gave Donnie Darko (2001) 2 ½ stars at a time when he seemed to give 3 stars liberally to special-effect laden excuses for entertainment. First, in a newspaper, I saw 2 ½ stars for Last Tango in Paris (1972). Necessarily, the impetus to research such a piece comes after witnessing several egregious mis-applications of these stars. Besides, too many critics use it, thus creating the inconsistency, and their gauge - poor, fair, good, excellent - is too general.įor years I have been tempted to collate the ratings from the occasional no stars (I remember two receiving this distinction: Cat O’ Nine Tails and Ruby ) to 4 stars - not to mention the ½ stars in between. More than any other kind of ratings, listing, or grading, the four-star movie rating system is useless, less for its inconsistencies than for a lack of standards and context. “I want my favorites to get the high ratings - my judgments are being challenged by anonymous forces whom I cannot confront.”

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