I never liked the idea of giving films scores but recently I’ve begun to despair of it. On Turn Back Sarah I have always rated films on a straightforward ten point scale, trying to provide a score that combines what I feel the objective quality of the film is and how much I personally enjoyed it. The idea of assigning a number to a film to represent it doesn’t sit well with me however. I have spent far too much time in the last few years agonising over whether a film deserves a 7 or an 8 or what the difference is between a 9 and a 10. The fact that I can change my mind from one week to the next merely illustrates its obsolescence as a quality metric. You can’t provide a qualitative score for what is an opinion and so I won’t be trying any more.
From this point forward, rather than assigning a film a score out of 10, I will rank each film against every other film that I’ve seen that year in terms of how much I enjoyed it and how much I appreciated its qualities. The idea of comparing films against each other rather than against a rating system is a little more useful I think (whilst accepting that any rating system will be subjective and flawed).
There is the potential for this to be too specific to be useful though. For this reason I will also keep track of two benchmarks in my ranking. One will be the line above which every film is enjoyable and the second will be the line below which every film is not particularly enjoyable. Anything between the two lines will be rated as ‘somewhat enjoyable’. Consider everything in the top bracket to be wholeheartedly endorsed, everything in the second bracket to be cautiously endorsed and everything in the third bracket to be avoided.
With all this in mind, for each film from next week onward I will provide:
- A position reflecting where the film ranks in the list of films I’ve seen that year.
- The films either side of it in the rankings to provide reference.
- A couple of comparison films that can be used as a guide to the style and quality of the film.
- The films ‘enjoyability’ rating as a rough guide.
If this all sounds very long-winded and unnecessary well, then, I guess you’ve never met me because that’s pretty much what will be written on my tombstone. It should be pretty self-explanatory when you see it in action. To start off with, here is my ranking of every film I’ve seen this year. If you note that it doesn’t line up with the ratings the films were given then you’ve hit on my exact problem with the current system!
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