Short & Sweet Reviews: The Story and Rating Scale
Scroll down to the bottom if you don’t want the cookbook-like intro
Since I was 8 or 9 years old I’ve had one true career goal: make movies. While what this means personally to me has changed as “making movies” involves so many people and responsibilities, the reality is I’ve yet to do this on any scale save for two shorts I wasn’t able to properly upload in high school and thus they’ve been cast out into the aether. After years of scribbling down ideas, writing scripts of varying lengths, and taking mental notes while watching movies, I figured if I wasn’t making movies I might as well review them on a platform. Still, it took awhile until I acted on this idea, all it took was for a 53’ truck to hit me.
It sounds worse than it was, but it did result in some lost money as well as the realization of the fact that life is short and fleeting and that, aside from working, I wasn’t doing much else for myself in terms of growth and career fulfillment. Shortly after that I started Short & Sweet Reviews as the name came from me being not in the mood to write a super lengthy review on Letterboxd. It’s caused me to be more selective with what films I invest my time into writing thoroughly about and given me greater insight into seeing exactly how a script translates to the screen.
Naturally as someone who continues to write creatively and still aspires to make movies, I am aware of the difficult nature of film-making. People spend years working on a script and weeks and months shooting and editing. It’s an art form that demands so much time and at the end births a few hours of content. All this work given in an effort to provoke or entertain just for some asshole on Twitter to post to the filmmakers “that sucked” or worse. I don’t want to be a contributor to a toxic culture that caused the likes of Jake Lloyd, Mark Patton, and Elizabeth Hurley to quit acting. It’s for that reason that I do my best to take a holistic approach when I decide to review something in an attempt to not be unnecessarily cruel, but I still won’t shy away from calling a spade a spade.
A big way this holistic approach is taken is that I do my best to manage expectations, sometimes in the form of keeping up with production news, other times just by some research. It isn’t fair to expect studio quality from a group of friends or students who have fund-raised to make their work happen. It isn’t fair to expect high levels of action from a comic book film trying to focus on character development. It isn’t fair to expect to be scared from a horror comedy. That doesn’t mean that indie features are exempt from bad reviews or that I will ignore unnatural or unnecessary shifts in tone, it just means that I want to make sure I am viewing a film how it is meant to be viewed. Same goes for older films, where I do have to view them to an extent in the time they were made, but I still want to be entertained and only recommend things I think can be enjoyed today, so I do my best to find the balance. Of course there are times when all of this stuff is less clear, but ultimately this leaves me with two main components on how I distribute my grades:
1) Does the film succeed in what it sets out to do?
2) Would I recommend it to anyone?
Clearly watching movies is one of my favorite pastimes and because I do believe there are more decent and good movies out there than there are truly bad ones, you will see the page filled with a lot of B’s. Any of the 3 B outcomes can have a variety of meanings, even within the same actual grade. In the case of Midsommar, which received a B+, my extended review in many ways rips it apart, but I still enjoyed it and would say most people should give it a chance even though many will, understandably, not like it. Then there’s Us which also received a B+, and this was mostly on merit as the acting is fantastic and the story is interesting, but due to some muddled storytelling it didn’t quite fall into the A category. Then another B+ was First Man, a movie that is spectacular to watch and hear, but the performances are relatively unremarkable and the story is a bit too technical and void of heart. While I would say Us is objectively the better of the 3 films, I feel they all deserve more or less to share the grade. As for an example of say a C+, the Aladdin remake serves as a perfect example. Despite being a bit lackluster there are aspects in the production design and some story changes that show a desire to do something different and to offer a unique viewing experience, but ultimately it was unable to execute it. It’s far from perfect, but enjoyable enough I wouldn’t advise avoiding it. One of my stranger choices for an A grade is Scooby-Doo on Zombie Island. While it may seem strange, I had to think about the way it was structured and done and if there was anything I could genuinely say needed to be added or removed and honestly there isn’t. On top of that the way the setting is utilized and moments from early on are utilized in the climax, it only makes sense to give it an A, because not every “perfect” film needs to contain a deep level of symbolism or social commentary. So with that, here’s a quick rundown of what the grades mean:
A) Perfect or Near Perfect in Execution. Effectively succeeds in its mission, enjoyable, highly recommendable
A-)Near perfect with one or two critiques, typically in regards to pacing or exposition
B+)Typically meets one criteria fully, not so much the other, usually highly enjoyable
B-)Actively entertaining and well structured; most likely a bit unrealized or underutilized premise
B-)Typically is awarded to high concept films that don’t land the mark, but may also go to a film that is enjoyable but unrealized
C+) Something that may be relatively bad, but is just entertaining enough or visually appealing enough to be enjoyed
Anything under a C+ I most likely wouldn’t recommend under normal conditions.
C) Typically just flat out average or mediocre, may recommend, but unlikely
C-) Some decent ideas are present, but not executed well enough
D+) Hardly any redeeming factors, do not recommend, possibly too difficult to even hate watch
D) Just avoid if you can, most likely very dull or incredibly poorly made
D-) Would have failed, but offered one or two decent moments to save itself
F) Fails on both a technical and creative scale, what good there is, if any is far too overshadowed by everything else
Obviously this grading scale isn’t perfect and as time goes on I may be able to put it into better words, but for now, this is pretty much it. Thanks for coming to my Ted Talk and I hope you enjoy Short & Sweet Reviews.