The Film Fewer Watched Rating System

Hello and welcome to The Film Fewer Watched Reviews!

My reviews are broken down into sections that are for the most part self explanatory, with the exception of the rating that each movie receives at the end of a review. The system I use is fairly simple, a scale called the binary + scale, created specifically for my purposes when it comes to rating movies.

In order for you to understand how it works, I will tell you how I came up with it. I knew that for my reviews, I wanted to give the movies a score at the bottom to summarize what I felt about the movie. However, I didn't really want to do something like 5 stars or a scale from 0.0 to 10.0. These have already been done, and the last thing I need is for people to cross reference my opinions with IMDb or Roger Epert. The first system that I considered using was just plain old binary. 1 or 0. "Yes" or "No". "See it" or "Don't see it".

I did enjoy the idea of a limited system like binary, however I think it is a little too limited. After all, am I really going to give the greatest movies of all time, such as 12 Angry Men a 1, just like every other movie? Surely 12AM deserves to be separated from the rest of the movies that I think are worth the 100 minute cost of watching. With this idea, I decided that there needs to be an above and beyond category for the truly great films in cinema, those films deserve a 2.

I took it one step further than that though, not paying mind to films that shouldn't be watched, and films that are truly great, I was concerned that there would be too many films receiving a 1, and that score doesn't really mean anything. Consider the recent block buster hit Avatar and the movie Hellboy. Do these movies deserve the same rating? I think it is worth our time to give Hellboy a 1-, and Avatar a 1+. Avatar was not only worth watching, it was really good. Hellboy is worth watching... it wasn't terrible, and was entertaining.

My system gives just enough diversity to categorize the movies into 5 groups, but does not offer some of the problems of other systems. The 5 star system, which is closest to mine in that it has 5 categories, however I think my 0 category is much broader and will be used far more often than a 1 or 2 star. In my mind a 2 star movie is a 0 movie. conversely, the 2 category is not the same as every movie that gets a 5 star review.

When it comes to the 10.0 scale, I feel like movies can be ranked in ways that are somewhat nonsensical, and tend to compare apples to oranges. Wall-E, Se7en, and Shawshank Redemption are all 2's in my book. How do they compare against each other? Please, enlighten me.

The ratings are as follows:

0: Not worth seeing. About 80% of all movies on netflix fit this category.
Example: Eragon

1-: Worth seeing. The movie is entertaining, though perhaps has a lack of greatness, or some major flaws in more than one area of the movie (i.e. cinematography, acting, screenplay, continuity, value)
Example: The Hunger Games

1: Solidly worth seeing. All movies that attain this score are definitely worth seeing, and are up to my standards. While this number is the middle of my rating systems, it should not be considered the middle in terms of movies. These movies are of good quality, easily the top 20% of all movies.
Example: Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol

1+: A must see movie (genre dependent). These movies are great, and should definitely be seen while they are still in theaters. They are movies that are above and beyond the norm, and have solid review in all aspects of the film
Example: The Pursuit of Happiness

2: The best movies. The elite of the elite. The truly great films of our time. Reserved only for movies that exemplify superb quality of cinema in all aspects: Screenplay, Production, Cinematography, Art, Acting, Sound.
Example: Shawshank Redemption

A few additional notes: if you are reading a review and see the score I gave for a movie, and wonder what score I would have given it if I watched it in 3D, I have an additional rating system I use listed below:

0: All 3D movies (except Avatar)
1-: Avatar
1:N/A
1+:N/A
2:N/A