New Movie Project
So I started the Movie-a-week plan. That lasted two weeks. It’s not that I lost interest. I should still make a coherent essay on my hatred for the DiCaprio ‘Romeo & Juliet” (the directorial choices, not the acting. Most of the acting was okay).
I will still post longer critiques of movies as I go, but I am going to try something which will certainly increase my blogging footprint (just what the world needs… another blogger, woohoo).
For several years I managed a spreadsheet which tracked every movie I watched and broke them down into categories. I think the motion pictures of today should be broken down to differentiate between what is an effective FILM and what is an entertaining MOVIE. So I made those two of the categories. The former considering the directorial and production choices, as well as how effectively the themes of the story come across, the latter merely equating how enjoyable it was.
The other two categories, pretty self-explanatory, were ACTING and WRITING. Everything was on a scale from 1 (shitty Van Helsing quality) to 10 (awesome Princess Bride quality) in each category. I then allowed for a bonus points to be given, 1 point each for things like exceptional cinematography or superior costuming. Things that would normally fall into the FILM consideration, mostly, but which warrant it’s own special attention.
I would then take these totals and add them all up and then divide by 4. Thereby coming up with a good score for the movie. An example might look like this:
Air Force One: FILM: 4; MOVIE: 8; ACTING: 5; WRITING; 4 BONUS: 0
4+8+5+4+0 = 22; 22/4 = 5.5
So Air Force One would have a score of 5.5.
Basically, I am going to revitalize this. Every time I watch a movie I will rate it and give it a little mini writeup on the blog. Sometimes these writeups will be abbreviated by time, but they will always be there.
Every so often, I’ll be able to analyze the stats, and see how things rank. Hopefully this will help me with my Top 100 rankings a little bit… but I doubt it.
So add this to my New Year’s Resolutions! I’ll see you on the blogosphere!
–john
johnlinkmovies 
While I prefer the traditional 5-stars per film, even as someone who is averse to numbers, I like your grading scale as a reader. I’m also encouraged by this to probably stop worrying about being too thoughtful in my reviews and instead go ahead and move forward with more casual writing and be philosophical when the mood strikes. Thanks for the help!