Grading on a curve

Do they still make bad movies?

It's a silly question to ask, of course. Did you see Hubie Halloween?

But I'm five movies into my new movie year, and I have yet to see one that I graded lower than 3.5 stars out of five. 

Of course, there have been plenty of times I've seen five straight movies that I liked, even from the same release year. But maybe never at the start of the year. Historically, the start of the year is when the studios shit out their worst prospects, which I use to lump under the all-encompassing umbrella of "January releases." That means something a little different in COVID times, but even last year, before the pandemic had really started, my first movie of the year was the execrable Dolittle.

This year things have started a bit differently. So far in 2021 I have seen Shadow in the Cloud (four stars), Penguin Bloom (four stars), Music (3.5 stars), The White Tiger (four stars) and now The Dig (3.5 stars).

The thing is, I think The Dig may actually have been a four-star movie too, after a slow start. But I graded that slow start and some later protagonist confusion more harshly than I might have in another year, and knocked The Dig down to 3.5. (See my full review here.)

The pairing of Penguin Bloom and Music is the thing that makes me wonder if it's not them, but me. Either one of these movies should have been my first stinker of the year, a potentially maudlin story of a woman whose life changes after a spinal injury, or a potentially bizarre misfire about a girl with severe autism who imagines musical fantasies in her head. Instead, I liked both of them. I saw them on the same night, so maybe I was just in a good mood that night.

It occurs to me that we are always grading on a curve, a bit. Now that I have gotten my Excel spreadsheet containing all my movies -- not to be confused with my Microsoft Word document containing all my movies -- up to date again, I can't help but be a little fixated on the cell that calculates what percentage of my movies I've given a thumbs up. In addition to the more finely detailed star ratings I use on Letterboxd, I also include a flat yea or nay in this spreadsheet, and update the totals at the bottom each time. Right now I am hovering around 68% in terms of the movies in my life I've liked, which either means I'm way too generous, or that this was indeed a good way to spend my 47 years so far since it brings me such pleasure.

But the former is the one I'm worried about, so any time I stray too high above 68% (I might have gotten as high as 68.05), I worry that I am turning into an old softie. So either I look a bit more harshly on the next movie I see, or I see a movie I know will be bad. I don't want to be held captive by that percentage (wouldn't most people be closer to 60/40?), but I do admit I breathe a sigh of relief when it goes back under that threshold again.

I guess the difference here might be between "most people" and "most critics." Most people try only to see movies they know they have a good chance of liking, because they value their time too much to waste it on crappy movies. See, they have other interests, unlike we cinephiles (ha ha). Most critics, though, are exposed to a random sample of what's out there, whether they are interested in watching it or not, so in the case of some really stern ones it might fall closer to 50/50 or even below that.

Maybe this means I'm somewhere between "most people" and "most critics." I have never felt my purpose as a critic was to tear down movies, even though I relish the opportunity to go off on a movie that richly deserves it. I'm a bit more inclined to forgive a movie its minor faults and see the greater good it brings to the table. I guess it's the optimist in me.

So it looks like I'm off and running on another year where I'm unable to adjust my star ratings downward, to make Music a three, to make Penguin Bloom a 3.5. It's something I've wanted to do for a while, use more of the range of available star ratings, but maybe that's just not in my nature.

And I guess seeing too many good movies is a better problem than the opposite.