How I Rate Movies

I've had this post drafted for a bit and after reading Robb Knight's post about their movie rating system, I thought it's about time I finish and post it.

I like watching movies and I try to watch a lot of movies. For the past few years I've been using Letterboxd to track movies I watch. I didn't rate for a long time because I thought it was pointless and the rating only really applies to me but then quite a few times I found myself rewatching a movie that I had already watched because I didn't remember what I thought about it or completely forgot that I watched it.

The main motivation for me building a micropub client was so that I could track my movie watch history on my site and move away from Letterboxd. I used to take a few days to log a movie on Letterboxd mostly out of forgetfulness but having my own client that I need to test makes me log movies sooner.

This rating system was created so that I could remind myself generally what I thought about the movie without having to write a review and more importantly, make it easy to know whether I thought something was worth coming back to later. It doesn't always make sense but it works for me.

Here's how I rate movies (updated 2024-01-01):

★★★★★: I loved this
★★★★: I really liked this movie
★★★: This is where all movies start
★★: I didn't like this
★: I really didn't like this
Half stars represents "rewatchability". What this means varies but it's really just a way to let myself know that it might be worth a rewatch in the future.

To clarify a ★★★ and ★★★½ film I generally liked the same, but I'm more likely to come back to the ★★★½ one. Rating something under ★★★ is rare and it doesn't speak to the quality of the film as much of whether or not it was able to interest me.

Totals by Rating