yeah, that's a pretty fun system, hows about the A (and C-F) range?
A is for greatness, reserved for when a movie leaves me in awe of itself.
A- is for greatness but where I have one or more reservations. With first time viewings,
A- is often code for "I'm pretty sure that was great, but I need to see it again to know for sure." I will grade a movie an
A on just a single viewing, though.
C+ basically means "I didn't like it overall (and can't recommend it), but it had its moments." There's a lot of variation there, though. It might be a film that's really middling except for a couple good scenes; or it might be a film that has moments of true greatness but somehow sabotages itself along the way enough to where I can no longer recommend it.
C is for either films that do absolutely nothing for me or for films where the virtues and flaws cancel out close to exactly. If I'm bored most of the film (but never quite annoyed), the movie gets a
C. If I do get annoyed, that gets the film into
C- territory.
I haven't graded too many films out in the
D and
F range, so that's all a little murkier. I guess it's all about the degree to which a film manages to piss me off or make me regret the time I spent watching it.
Lately, I tend to grade films in my head as they progress, usually assigned the initial grade like twenty minutes in, depending on my level of engagement, etc., and then periodically adjusting the grade up and down step-by-step as the movie unfolds. If I'm so engaged that I forget to do that, that's a good sign of greatness.
Short films are much more likely to earn
C grades than feature films because they don't have time to impress me one way or another.
pixote