“You give too many things three stars,” my brother tells me. I take that to mean “certainly that many things aren’t that good.” I’ve never been able to verbalize what three stars means to me, or what five stars does, for that matter. Then, when I joined blogcritics.org, I came across their scoring system, and I realized that their determinations for star ratings are the same as the ones I’ve been using since I switched from the ten-point scale.

Three stars doesn’t mean something is good; in fact, it means that it’s just barely good enough. Two-and-a-half or three stars means that, if you come across the movie on cable one day, or somebody’s listening to the CD in their car, you should enjoy it. It’s decent. Anything below * * 1/2 isn’t really worth your time. Anything above * * * is recommended. At present, there are 18 movies rated above three stars, and by the time my next two reviews are written, that number will be at 20. Is that too many films rated “above average?” I don’t think so - they were all good enough to recommend. There are no movies ranked at five stars, and I’ll start being more liberal with that. Five stars, after all, doesn’t mean perfection. It just means that it’s a superb film. When the calendar year turns, I’ll change the numbered movie listings into a group according to star rating, taking some of the pressure off of weighing the films against each other.

Blogcritics Product Scoring System

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