Wednesday, August 08, 2007

What do three stars mean?


According to Netflix, three stars is neutral. I rate most movies on Netflix at three stars. I think it means the movie was OK, but not great, not bad, and still worth a look. I feel like I give every movie a three, so I decided to graph my ratings to see if I really do. The result is a kind of bell curve, I reckon. The data consists of just the 150 movies I've seen so far this year.

4 comments:

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  2. My definition of three stars: "It was OK. Watchable but not particularly noteworthy. I don't regret watching it, but I won't race to see it again either."

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  3. My definition of three stars: "I wanted to like it. I really did. It's not that I didn't like it; it's just that I thought it would be better than this. I guess my expectations were too high."

    For me, three stars is a weaselly rating, reserved for movies that I don't dislike enough to give 2 stars, or I kinda feel sorry for it and wouldn't want to hurt the movie's feelings, or I feel guilty for not liking it because it is a movie about war heroes (Saving Private Ryan).

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  4. Frankly I'm not a big fan of the star system. Rather than a film being out of 4 or 5 stars, I prefer to use 10 scale system. I feel you get a better idea of how good a film is if it is out of 10, rather that just 4 or 5. That said, if I had to give the 3 stars a definition, I would say it is around a 7/10...which is a pretty good move. Not amazing. That would be 3.5 or above.

    Billy
    www.filmmakerstoolbox.com

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