Too much good stuff

Or, "The Breakdown of my Personal Star Rating System."

If I look at my month of July so far on Letterboxd, it is nearly collapsing from the weight of all the stars.

I've seen seven movies in the young month, and only two of them have received a rating of lower than 4 stars (out of 5). In fact, the number that have received 4.5 stars, which was once reserved for movies that reached my personal cinematic stratosphere, exceeds the number that received 3 or 3.5 stars (three to two). And the one I gave 3.5 stars -- in other words, the second-worst of the month -- is one I'm still thinking about three days after I saw it.

This is good. It means I'm spending my time on good movies.

But this is also bad. It means I'm losing my grasp on which movies get which star ratings.

Take Mistaken for Strangers, a very good documentary that I saw last night. Is it a great documentary? It might be. But I'm not sure about that. I have to think about it a bit longer.

I gave it 4.5 stars, not necessarily as a sign of its absolute quality, but to differentiate it from the heap of movies I've been giving 4 stars.

And this is where my true crisis lies: the loss of my understanding of what makes a 4-star movie.

Let's go back a few months.

When I came out of Nebraska and gave it a 4-star rating on Letterboxd, a friend of mine wondered what my problem was with it. "Problem?" I thought. "I gave the movie 4 stars!"

The same has happened with a couple other movies, with the same friend (I'm not picking on him, it's just that I talk movies with him a lot), to the point that I started to think of 4 stars as some sort of "insult" to a great movie. The rating I used to give to a movie that did a lot right, but not everything, was 3.5 stars. Three-point-five indicated that I thought a movie did quite a good job, but it wasn't a personal favorite.

So -- are you sitting? -- when I finally saw 12 Years a Slave a few weeks ago, and was underwhelmed by it relative to what I was expecting, I felt the only "responsible" star rating to give it was 4 stars. Three-point-five would be like some sort of slap in its face. So even though my primary instinct after seeing 12 Years was to pick at the things I thought it could have done better, there I was giving it a ranking of 4 stars on Letterboxd.

And if I gave this movie that I found somewhat problematic 4 stars, then how could I give the same rating to Mistaken for Strangers, which I may have loved?

Four stars is a tricky rating. On its own it looks quite impressive, all those stars lining up together in support of a movie. But it's still two notches below the maximum. It still means there's something wrong with the movie, flaws you can clearly pick out -- or maybe just that it wasn't in your wheelhouse, so it had a maximum potential enjoyment factor just based on its subject matter.

I don't mind being the type of cinematic optimist that's implied by giving out so many high ratings. I mean, clearly I love movies, so I would rather enjoy watching them and shower them with praise than to spend all my time grumbling about how they could have been better. I'm comfortable with the fact that on Letterboxd, I've given 174 films the highest possible rating (5 stars) and only 20 the lowest possible (1/2 star).

But I don't want one of my most reliable ratings -- 3.5 stars -- to become too weak for me to employ it without worrying that it means I don't really care for the film. Four stars is really creeping up on 3.5, with 653 movies that now hold a 4-star rating on Letterboxd and only 804 ranked 3.5. You'd think that 3 stars should be the highest represented, because that's the midway point between the lowest and the highest rating. But it's only second at 730.

And if damage has been done to the 3.5-star rating, just think how much damage has been done to 3. Three stars means I barely liked it. Some people use 2.5 to indicate that, but I use 3. If I give that out less and less, then what kind of terrible sins does a movie have to commit in order to get 2.5 and lower? There are a whole five star ratings down there that need to get their share of the love.

I do have to consider the possibility that 2014 has just been a really good year for movies. I've seen 18 films this year, and only one of those have I disliked -- and even then only mildly (2.5 stars). Only seven of those 18 films (including the 2.5-star Veronica Mars) have been given a rating under 4 stars, in part because I used the above logic to inflate the 3.5-star Lego Movie to 4. To counterbalance that, though, I'm wondering if I might have given 4 stars to both Frank and Blue Ruin, if at the time I ranked them I didn't already feel I'd been giving out 4 stars too much.

See? I don't know what anything is anymore.

And at this point, I feel almost desperate to see something that is just unambiguously god-awful.

This whole discussion just lends further weight to my appreciation of the Flickchart model, which duels movies against each other to create a customized list of favorite to least favorite. The Flickchart guys have identified the weaknesses in star ratings, and their mission statement can be summarized in this slogan that appears atop the site: "If they're all 5-star movies, which is the best?"

If I keep going in the direction I've been going, pretty much all the movies I see will be 5-star movies.

A nice problem for a cinephile to have, I guess.

12 Years a Pitt

Sometimes when you are searching for something, you find something else.

I was looking up a poster to use in a post I was about to write tonight, when I came across this ridiculous thing on Google images.

Now, to my great shame, I still have not seen 12 Years a Slave. But I know -- I know -- that Brad Pitt does not have a role even approaching the size that this Italian poster for the movie would indicate.

I also know that the movie would probably not exist without Pitt, as his crucial role in its making has more to do with serving as a producer. So I don't think that this is some incredibly misguided attempt by Pitt to glorify his own role in the film.

I do think it's a very sad indication that someone thought Italian audiences wouldn't go to this movie if it was just a movie about slavery. I'm hoping that same someone isn't accusing Italians of racism, but that someone might be doing that as well.

In any case, I suppose it's one of those situations where the ends may justify the means. If a giant picture of Brad Pitt that makes him look vaguely like a lion got several thousand more Italians to see what I understand is an excellent film, then I guess that's ultimately a good thing.

Right?

Do I sound unconvinced?

Hilariously overdue post-Oscars piece

Hey there. Forgotten about the Oscars already?

Sorry about that. It's been a busy week, as I think I told you it would be.

However, just as it was not right to write nothing on my blog anticipating the Oscars, it's not write to do away with the post-mortem, either, just because it's being written at least 24 hours after everyone on the internet had already figured out how John Travolta would mangle their names.

Especially since year, something personally noteworthy happened that hasn't happened to me in 23 years:

The Academy crowned a best picture winner I had not yet seen.

That's right, that hasn't happened to me since Dances With Wolves won best picture in 1990.

I anticipated that this might happen, of course, and had scheduled a viewing of 12 Years a Slave for the Monday before the Oscars. However, the theater where I was going to see it -- Cinema Nova in Carlton -- doesn't post its Monday showtimes until Monday morning, which I think has something to do with the steep discount they offer on Mondays. In the past, the schedule is often the same as Sunday, so I was relying on that being the case this time. And though 12 Years a Slave was being shown only 35 minutes earlier than I was expecting -- 1:25 p.m. rather than 2 p.m. -- that was the crucial difference that made my intended viewing impractical. I ended up at a 3 p.m. showing of Nebraska instead.

As Will Smith was preparing to tell us what had won best picture, I found myself hoping he would say "Gravity," just so this indignity of not seeing the best picture winner could be avoided.

Ah well. That will make this a memorable year, even in addition to it being my first Oscars in Australia.

And how exactly did my geography manifest itself in terms of watching the Oscars? Well, instead of watching the show live, which we actually could have done, we were living through a regular Monday afternoon. Though it was actually quite irregular, as my father and his wife arrived in Australia just an hour before the show was to start, 24 hours late due to some weather and mechanical problems back in the U.S. As I was driving around town (borrowing my father-in-law's car) on this errand or that, I had to make sure not to accidentally hear Oscar results reported on the radio as they were happening, especially with Aussies particularly engaged in this year's ceremony as a result of Cate Blanchett's candidacy (and eventual win) for best actress. This is to say nothing of the two Oscars Baz Luhrmann's wife took home for The Great Gatsby (which, as a champion of that movie, I was pleased to see). I was actually lucky enough to hear one DJ on Triple J confirm that he was not going to be giving any Oscars spoilers, but that the DJ following him would be under no such restriction.

Having strictly avoided the internet all afternoon, we ended up firing up the Oscars on our DVR after 8 p.m. that night, when our jet-lagged travelers and sleep-avoiding children were all tucked away for the night. With fast-forwarding through the ads, my wife was able to stay up to watch all but the last few awards. We even filled out predictions, and I got more correct than I usually do, even just running through and selecting them in about three minutes.

Did I have some catty observations about things that occurred/were said? Sure.

But too much time has definitely passed for me to dredge those up now.

And now it's finally, officially, on to 2014. I'll resign myself to catching 12 Years a Slave on DVD, and may -- just may -- be finally looking to see my first 2014 film this Tuesday.

That's three I won't be ranking this year

I haven't been worrying myself too much about Australia's new release latency. You know, that delay, sometimes lasting as long as three to five months, for some movies to open here. Until now, it hasn't had much practical impact on me, except forcing me to practice something I hate: being patient.

Until -- sob -- now.

Yesterday I discovered the third high-profile autumn release that I won't be seeing before my list closes on January 16th, with many, many more to come. If I'd been poking around more on the late-December release scheduled in the U.S., I'd probably already be aware of a number of other titles that will be denied me.

I was going to see Enough Said -- whose November 14th release date was delayed a modest two months from the U.S. -- when I saw an advertisement for Alexander Payne's new film Nebraska.

Then the release date:

February 20, 2014.

Sigh.

February 20th is more than a month after I close my rankings for 2013, which will be on January 16th this year. That's the morning the Oscar nominations are announced, which is my traditional deadline for finalizing the previous year's rankings.

Other victims of me being in Australia: 12 Years a Slave, which releases on something like January 30th, and Spike Jonze's new movie Her, which doesn't even get its U.S. wide release until mid-January. If I were in L.A., though, I would have been able to find Her open for a week for awards considerations, I'm sure of it.

This is significant, as Spike Jonze's most recent two films -- Where the Wild Things Are and Adaptation -- were my #2 of 2009 and my #1 of 2002. Let's just say I like the guy.

I knew there would be plenty of changes to accept by moving to Australia, many of which would relate to movies. But now that it's coming to brass tacks, I'm finding it very hard to accept that my 2013 film rankings won't be a thorough representation of the films released in the United States in 2013. And it won't get better in 2014, unless industry conditions suddenly take a major turn that causes the collapse of this three-month delay. Not anytime soon, I'm betting.

At least my whole holiday prestige picture season isn't going to be killed. The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug, The Secret Life of Walter Mitty and August, Osage County are three counterexamples of films that will be released here within a week of their American release.

They'll be competing with Joe Swanberg's Drinking Buddies, which was released in the U.S. on August 23rd. Here? December 26th.

Australia ... it's a mixed bag. One I'm committed to at least until sometime in 2015. 

The challenge, then, is just to not worry about it. If I want to change my list so that it incorporates films released where I am in 2014, I can rank Nebraska or 12 Years a Slave or Her next year. Can't I? Can't I?

I can. Do I want to? No. May I someday want to? Maybe.

I want to do apples to apples comparisons with other friends and critics ranking this same year, and I'm not likely to want to give that up very soon. Maybe if I read some Australian critics I'd feel differently, but so far, I don't.

I still remember, at the end of 1995, talking with a friend's girlfriend about her favorite films of the previous year. She listed Pulp Fiction as her favorite film of that year, because she'd seen it in 1995 after its October 1994 release. I vowed never to subject myself to such imprecise and arbitrary criteria for making year-end lists.

Even the Australians got Pulp Fiction by November 24th of '94. So I guess there's some hope looking forward that more of the movies I want to see will be The Secret Life of Walter Mitty than Nebraska.

For now, though, I mourn Nebraska and its brethren ... who will just increase in number the deeper we get into the end of this year.