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Christopher Spicer
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I've done several film reviews for Collective Publishing this year. They seem to be pretty popular. Maybe not Roger Ebert popular, but they attract a small group of regular readers. The one thing my reviews lack, which is prominent in many other reviews, is a rating system.
Do you think they need one? Would you find it to be handy? Does it actually help in figuring out if a movie is worthwhile?
I stayed away from them at this point, because I felt the system to be rather arbitrary. My experience is that after a time, you'll start giving higher star ratings to a film that you actually didn't think was better than a previous. I also struggled with coming up with what made a 3.5 star film compared to a four star film. I'm still new to the game, and I was just trying to hone the craft of viewing a film critically and writing worthwhile reviews, and felt attempting to make a credible review rating would complicate things.
But I also recognize a rating system is pretty much standard in film reviews. So, I was wondering if readers actually feel that their absense is harming my own film reviews.
Or would a rating cause people to skip the actual review, and then not find out what actually earned a film four stars or whatever. A film may earn a low ranking or even a high ranking, but there is often a caveat attached to it. For example Taken 2 wouldn't get anything past 2 stars, but if you love Neeson and mindless action then you should still go see it. You wouldn't know that from a 1.5 star rating, but my write up makes that clear.
Do you feel my write ups give you a fair feel for the film? Would the ratings actually add any kind of value to my reviews? Or they just an archaic system that old school reviewers have trouble letting go of?
I'm really interested in getting some feedback and find out what my readers think.
Thanks.
Do you think they need one? Would you find it to be handy? Does it actually help in figuring out if a movie is worthwhile?
I stayed away from them at this point, because I felt the system to be rather arbitrary. My experience is that after a time, you'll start giving higher star ratings to a film that you actually didn't think was better than a previous. I also struggled with coming up with what made a 3.5 star film compared to a four star film. I'm still new to the game, and I was just trying to hone the craft of viewing a film critically and writing worthwhile reviews, and felt attempting to make a credible review rating would complicate things.
But I also recognize a rating system is pretty much standard in film reviews. So, I was wondering if readers actually feel that their absense is harming my own film reviews.
Or would a rating cause people to skip the actual review, and then not find out what actually earned a film four stars or whatever. A film may earn a low ranking or even a high ranking, but there is often a caveat attached to it. For example Taken 2 wouldn't get anything past 2 stars, but if you love Neeson and mindless action then you should still go see it. You wouldn't know that from a 1.5 star rating, but my write up makes that clear.
Do you feel my write ups give you a fair feel for the film? Would the ratings actually add any kind of value to my reviews? Or they just an archaic system that old school reviewers have trouble letting go of?
I'm really interested in getting some feedback and find out what my readers think.
Thanks.
Comments
I say yes, because ratings give people an idea of the overall quality of the film without providing spoilers, meaning that I could quickly check your opinion of a film without any risk of learning things I didn't want to know.
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