How to Rate Movies the Real Deal Way

Source: PhillyMag

Finally - a scientific way to effectively prove that your opinion of a movie is better than your know-it-all sister's. Let the winning begin (sorta)!

After a summer of watching and re-watching some great (and not so great) movies, I started thinking about what makes them as good as they are. I felt my opinion of a movie kept switching from good to bad depending on my mood or what my political stances were at the time. Therefore, I wanted a concrete way to think about movies based on fundamental factors.

The method is mildly scientific in the sense that it uses some basic math. My film industry peers will have opinions of their own (and most certainly negative ones) but I think the methodology is simple enough for everyone to understand and it would be hard not to justify the factors involved.

As a side note: the methodology is similar to models used in banking to measure the risk of corporate clients. The difference is that banking risk is based on quantitative factors that can be tested on various models. Rating a movie is almost entirely subjective.

The Method

Basically, you rate a movies attributes from zero to ten and then multiply it by the attributes assigned weight (ex. 15% acting weighting for a 7 rated performance). You then add up all the weighed ratings to get the final rating for the whole movie.

Ten indicates the best you've seen so far. Zero means that it was so bad it was painful to watch.

Anyway, here are the factors from lowest to highest weighted...

Film editor is also much more fun than banking analyst. Source: Mergers & Inquisitions

Score - 5%

John Williams conducting. Source: Awards Daily

Have you ever seen Mrs. Doubtfire? You know, the movie where Robin Williams dresses as a nanny in order to spend time with his estranged family? Funny and heartwarming.

Now imagine that same movie except replacing the background music with the soundtrack of Silence of the Lambs. Suddenly a man wearing makeup and crossdressing while deceiving his kids doesn't seem funny anymore.

The point is that the music, or score, has a powerful impact on a movie that changes its whole look and feel.

Scores can also become legendary in their own rite. Just ask John Williams, the composer of the Star Wars theme.

Cinematography – 5%

Among other things, the movie 300 was acclaimed for Larry Fong’s cinematography. Source: Legendary Pictures

The lighting, the angles, the colors.

Cinematography is what separates a movie from a play. Cinematography captures the mood and the environment through images and photography like how a score captures it through music.

When done right, it pulls you into the scene, feeling what the characters are feeling as if you were actually there. Given its importance, it’s no wonder why many directors work with only one cinematographer throughout their careers.

Examples include Darren Aronofsky’s Matthew Libatique (Black Swan, Requiem for a Dream) and Martin Scorsese’s Michael Ballhaus (The Departed, Goodfellas).

An example of great cinematography is Black Swan, the 2010 horror-thriller directed by Darren Aronofsky. The combination of dizzying ballet shots, contrasts between NYC darkness, the excessive pinkness of the ballerina, and the slow (and painful to watch) shots of self-mutilation creates a strong sense of discomfort – exactly what the movie was going for.

Writing and acting – 15%

Leo DiCaprio: One of my favorite actors. Source: Deadline

Although these two metrics are graded separately, they are very dependent on each other. You can have the best actors in the world, but without a good script, you’ll have a bad performance.

On the flip side, you can have a great script, but if the actors don’t match the role, you’ll also have a bad performance.

Writing represents the dialogue between characters in the movie and good writing will be filled with varying degrees of suspense, humor, and wittiness among other things. Just watch any Quentin Tarantino film (Django Unchained, Inglorious Bastards, Pulp Fiction) and you’ll quickly notice that the dialogue between characters has as much action as the shooting scenes – no matter how gruesome they are.

Acting is much more straight forward. For good writing to be demonstrated, an actor has to execute properly. It’s no wonder why they ask to read a script before agreeing to a role.

It also goes without saying that we often see a movie just because it has our favorite actor.

Plot – 25%

My favorite complicated plot: Inception

At the end of the day, a movie is a story. You can be funny and flashy, but if the plot is weak, so is the movie as a whole.

Unfortunately, there are too many movies out there that will shovel millions for shiny special effects and squads of A-listers, but when you see the movie you immediately notice the corner cutting on the plot.

Was it cliché? Was it boring? Were there obvious plot holes?

If you have a good story, everything else is secondary.

Genre specific rating - 35%

One of the best horror movies out there

So you have a bad plot, a bad script, the actors are terrible, cinematography is weak, and the score was cliché and out of character. Can you still have a good movie?

Yes you can and the reason is how well the movie stands relative to its genre.

In other words, if a scary movie scared you – then it did its job and should be given substantial credit for that reason.

Horror movies are perfect examples because, on almost all other merits, they are categorically bad movies.

The acting is laughable and the plot rarely makes sense. Or, the plot is filled with so much over-acting that you treat it like a comedy instead.

However, if despite all that the movie actually scared you, then you can’t really say it’s a bad scary movie.

The same can be said about action movies, romantic comedies, stoner flicks, sci-fi movies, etc.

You can make the argument that Sharknado is a decent movie because it’s plot, acting, and action is so absurdly ridiculous that it practically created a genre in of itself called sci-fi disaster comedy. Rotten Tomatoes dubbed the film “Proudly shameless and gloriously brainless”.

So there you have it. An objective-as-possible tool to help me determine whether a movie is good or bad without mixing feelings and judgement.

The Real Deal Motion Picture Association