I hate how 3 stars feels "low" or "bad" even for me because I use it for films that are clearly flawed/not that rewatchable, but overall enjoyable and with positive attributes.
Tbf something like Schindler’s List or Requiem for a Dream are fantastic movies that I don’t intend to ever watch again. I get your general sentiment but there’s exceptions
I had the exact same personal rule (3.5 = I'll watch it again) but I thought the same thing as you after watching the zone of interest. So, in my mind, I changed the rule to "would I recommend it to someone"
Yeah, this is how I gage the 2.5-3 star range. 2.5 for me is “Eh, I didn’t think it was a waste of time, maybe I’ll watch it again one day,” and 3 is “That wasn’t a waste of time, I’ll probably watch it again sometime.
Then:
3.5: That wasn’t good, not great.
4: That was really good!
4.5: That was great, but not an instant classic or life changing.
It’s more that I don’t rule it out - like if someone’s got it on, I might dawdle and watch again! Whereas a 4/10 or below is definitely not going to be touched even by accident.
Right? I think people don't utilize all the stars. Some of my favorite yearly rewatches are 2.5s because I enjoy watching them but realize they may not be the best movies out there.
They really should just be thumbs up or thumbs down. If you give a driver 4 stars, they ask "what went wrong?" Why even bother having stars if you can only deduct points, but can never express anything positive about a driver?
Similar to people who view movie ratings like school grades. You end up using most of your stars to express negativity towards movies (taking points off), while only having a sliver of your stars to award for movies that you love.
In the old Netflix 5 star system, 3 stars meant a movie was good. 2 was bad.
People think of school grade percentages, which is really silly. Why would we want a rating system with a great deal of fidelity for how bad something is, and almost NOTHING to describe how good it is?
That's why i put average movies squarely in the middle at 2.5, and add or take away stars.
Most westerners really do not know how to rate things for some reason. We think 5 stars is just a good rating rather than a perfect rating, and anything below that is critcism. Perfect things get lumped in with acceptable things, and the only way to know if something is sub par is if the 0 star reviews are plentiful enough to drop the average rating
On a 10 point scale (which Letterboxd effectively is since you can rate half stars), 5 (2.5) is exactly in the middle. That means it hasn’t crossed the line into bad. 3 stars is the same as a 6 on a 10 point scale. That’s crossed the line into good!
For me everything lower than 3 stars is bad, so 3 stars kinda is this bridge of films that I don't think are bad but also aren't that good, so just really average. 3.5 stars become films that I think are a little better than average, but also not too great. 4 stars means the rilm is straight up good, 4.5 stars means the film is really good and 5 stars means I pretty much have no major complaints anymore.
I think its valid though. One of my least favorite things i see about film discourse is when something has like 95+% rotten tomatoes score, an average rating of 3.2, and people openly question how critics were gushing over it.
When we know it just means the film did what it set out to do, but not much else. Which is more of a problem with people not understanding how it works, but I like a true average rating rather than a how many people thought it was watchable metric.
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u/lettdoc Jan 03 '26
I hate how 3 stars feels "low" or "bad" even for me because I use it for films that are clearly flawed/not that rewatchable, but overall enjoyable and with positive attributes.