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THE ESROSE FILM RATING SYSTEM, A REVIEW

Based on some recent feedback, it is probably time to review the "system" I use to rate films that I rent from Netflix.

Sooner or later, I am going to be asked by Netflix to rate the film I rented and so I do it in the post that I write about it.

The rating is idiosyncratic. It is not necessarily an assessment of whether I think a film is good or bad, necessarily.

At its extremes it is based on whether I did not want to watch the whole film, once it started, a 1 out of Netflix5, or whether I definitely want to see the film again, a 5 out of Netflix 5.

A 2 is that I watched "all" of the film but used the FF. Not a good sign but still.

A 4 is that I liked the film a lot and would be willing to see it again but I am not going to take any steps to make that happen.

A 3 is just a "good film, good time, had enough for now". A pat on the ass, a thanks and on to the next one.

How can this not reflect whether I think a film is "bad" or not?

Well, for one thing, there could be something going on that I am not willing to sit through. I remember a great French film based on the idea of the Fugitive show in which a guy is falsely accused of a crime, killing his wife maybe.

A SWAT team descends on his house and first thing shoots and kills this enormously beautiful curly dog the guy has. Dead. I just quit. Done. I still think of that scene. I shudder to write it here.

Maybe a good, perhaps great film but I bailed on it.

On the other hand, there are films which I might agree are not great but that I want to see again because I admire something, am puzzled by something (less likely) or, perhaps, it has an emotional impact on me that others might not share.

Yesterday's film, Wild Grass would be an example of that.

This film by Alan Resnais features a guy who is at least a psychopath. It studies his obsession with a woman whose wallet he has found. The obsession begins because he does not think that she is grateful enough or has not been effusive enough in her thanks. Not a reward. Attention.

He sends her a note, he has second thoughts, too late, she writes back. It turns out she gets attached to his stalking which is what he begins to do.

Others surround these two principals, they have normal surface lives. The woman is a collector or men, superficial relationships. She has bought love. An airplane for christ's sake. A Spitfire. She never flies it.

The guy has violent fantasies. Outwardly very nice. A wife and sweet family.

He is obsessed with a film about death. The Bridges of Toko Ri, so the cinema comes into it. There are a lot of movie references. For example, it is a really nice cinema on a nice street where the two people actually meet for the first time. It is a set. They have a bit on how it was built as a set as an extra. There is a cutout Hitchcock outside the theater. Not a Hitchcock movie.

The war film also echoes the Spitfire.

There is a lot going on. To see the film references. The shots. The weirdness of it all. I like weirdness.

It is well worth watching. I have seen it three times.

There is a lot of irony in the film, quite a bit of humor, the woman seems to enjoy hurting her patients. And so on.

See? I can't quit writing about it.

I want to see this again.

A five.

I am not so gung ho that I am going to watch the war film again. I am sure I saw it when it came out. A James Michener saga.

Labels: films