Monday, September 21, 2009

Soft? Me? No Way Man!

Ya know, perhaps I'm getting a bit soft in my old age.  Okay, I'm only 42 but I still feel as if my critical sting may be lessoning.  Over at The Cinematheque I rank all the movies I review with a number set somewhere between 1 and 100 (though I have never given anything higher than a 99).  I know the idea of assigning a semi-random number to evaluate a film's greatness (or non-greatness) is a rather arbitrary thing to do, but hey, I love lists.  The only way to know what one truly thinks about a certain movie one must read what one wrote on said film.  Numbers are merely window dressing.  But I digress.

I began talking about getting soft in my critical rendering.  You see, I was recently checking out a few fellow sites that also arbitrarily rank films by the same numbering system as I do and wow are they all a lot tougher than I.  Mike D'Angelo has only 5 films listed with a score of over 80 and just 1 over 90.  Jason Overbeck, over at Bent Clouds, has a mere 4 films in the 80's and 1 in the 90's.  Meanwhile, Theo Panadiyas doesn't have a single film ranked above a 77.

Me?  Well I have 16 films ranked over 80 and another 3 over 90.  Is this softness or just a different way of evaluating cinema?  I suppose its all just smoke and mirrors anyway.  I am still pretty damn hard on many films (recent examples include Adam, The Stoning of Soraya M., Away We Go, Cheri, The Answer Man, Year One).

Well, I guess over analyzing such a silly thing is never going to get me nowhere. I should just shut the hell up and work on my reviews for Cold Souls and The Informant!.

2 comments:

Alex said...

Hah, I actually have noticed a similar thing about myself. I have very few movies that I've written about for my blog which I've rated under 3/5. I don't think it's being "soft", perhaps we are just more appreciative of certain aspects of cinema. I will often like a movie more than my friends because I'll become wrapped up in the visuals or cool premise or something. My sheer passion for movies in general can override the actual quality of a specific movie, I guess!

Basically: don't worry about it!

Kevyn Knox said...

I wasn't really worried or anything like that, but I do really like your explanation of the phenomenon. Sheer cinematic love it is.