As I commented on another website some weeks back, one of my pet peeves is the "four star" movie ratting system, which has resulted in the further absurdity of "half" stars. If teachers (on the non-leftist variety who still can bring themselves to give grades) can grade on a scale of 100 (albeite not using, for the morst part, grades below 60), then so can movie rviewers. I standardized tests can rate everyone on "percentiles", then so can movie reviewers. The "four star" system is both a cop out and one of the conspicious examles of intellectual laziness in our time. Even Internet Movie Database is better, with its rating scale of 10, but there is no reason reviewers cannot rate movies on a scale of 100 (thereby telling you whether they really regard one movie as better than another, instead of lumping so many from 2 to 3 stars).
As people who read this blog know, I DO occasionally review movies and books, although not on a very consistent, frequent, or regular basis. That lack of frequent reviews has kept me from thinking it made sense to try to institute my own preferred rating system. However, I have decided (as the Federal Government SHOULD do with gasoline demand by tightening its OWN belt and cutting its OWN use of gasoine by at least 20% IMMEDIATELY) to set an EXAMPLE--even if the entries providing that example for others are somewhat infrequent.
Therefore, I am going to review movies and books, from now on, on a scale of 0 to 100. A movie rating of 100 will mean that 99% of all movies are WORSE than that movie. In other words, it means that the movie is in the top 1% of all "serous" movies ever made ("serious", in this case, not referring to to the tone of the movie, but as to whether the movie was meant to be taken serously as a movie--thus excluding porn movies and the like). Since 1% of the movies ever made is a pretty large number, MANY movies rate a 100, and MANY movies rate a 0. It is not a matter of those ratings showing PERFECTION, but a matter of percentiles.
Let us use some concrete examples. "To Kill a Mockingbird" would rate 100 (for lack of a higher number), and so would probably a majority of Hitchcock movies ("Rear Window", "Spellbound", "Notorious", "North by Northwest", "Spellbound", etc.). I wouold not give "Psycho" a 100, but something like a 91, because it is--in the end--a slasher movie. It is the BEST "slasher" movie ever made, and the scariest, but it is still a limited movie. Similarly, most Preston Sturges movies would get 100. Barbara Stanwyck's "Ball of Fire" and "The Lady Eve" get 100. "Miracle on 34th Street" gets a strong 100. "Casablanca", of course, gets 100, as does "To Have and To Have Not". "Gunga Din" and "The Four Feathers" get a 100. Yes, you could say that most "four star" movies would get 100 from me, although some "critical darlings" would not. "The Lord of the Rings" (especially the practically perfect part 3) would get 100, but I would not give the same rating to movies like "Brokeback Mountain", "Full Metal Jacket", "Platoon", or a number of other critically "acclaimed" movies. I would, ironically, give a 100 rating to "Urban Cowboy", as a movie more about humanity than agenda.
I will not try to go through movies I would give a zero. However, I will mention a couple of major movies to show how the rating system works, and that it does not START at 60, or 50, but at ZERO. I would give "Ishtar" (with Dustin Hoffman and Robert Redford) a 2. I could easily give it a zero, and don't only because of the drunken camel. Ishtar is in the WORST 2% of movies ever made. 97-98% of ALL movies ever made are better than Ishtar. Similarly, I would givbe "Mission Impossible III" a rating of no higher than 25 (only for its reasonably exiting first half). That means that 74% to 75% of ALL of the movies ever made are better.
Now that we have an idea what we are talking about, we come to "Iron Man"--one of this summer's big movies. I have just returned from Boston, visiting my two daughters (will Boston SURIVE both of them there at once?), and I saw both "Iron Man" and the new Indiana Jones movie there.
In my rating system, I generally regard "60" as the dividing point. Movies with a rating of 60, or higher, are generally worth seeing. Movies with a rating below that are generally not worth seeing, although obviously some may have enough interesting elements to be worth seeing despite their overall flaws.
"Iron Man" receives a 63. My older daughter thought it was boring. In a lot of ways she is right.
The movie is about the comic book character, "Iron Man". Where the movie is pretty good is in the bringing to "life" the way in which Iron Man (Robert Downey, Jr.) is created, and showing the amazing comic book "superhero suit" in a way that could not have been done until modern movie technology.
That is the problem, though. Movies have fallen in love with special effects, and the STORY has been pretty much forgotten, except as a vehicle on which to hang the special effects "magic". This is even worse in the new Indiana Jones movie.
The reason "Iron Man" gets above 60 is the touches it has. It TRIES to develop a story in the character of the playboy played by Downey, who has a revelation as the result of his near death experience of almost being killed with his own weapons. Yet, he still retains the rather endearing BRASHNESS of the devil-may-care playboy, even as he develops a social conscience. Downey actually gives an interesting performance, while at the same time he comes across as such a womanizing jerk that it is hard to feel a lot of empathy for the character. Ghynnet Paltrow plays Donwey's long suffering secretary/love interest as well as it can be done (short of Sandra Bullock's amazing performace in "Speed"--about a 98 movie), but there really is not much that can be done with the character. Downey carries the movie, and does not do it badly. The humor and energy are refreshing throughout.
Still, the movie climaxes in an unbelievable, rather stupid "fight" between computer animated suits. That fight IS more boring than exiting (look at the end of "North by Northwest", if you want real excitement, or multiple sequences in "Rear Window" involving no special effects at all).
This movie is nowhere near as good as the original "Superman" movie with Christopher Reeve (rating 90). The characters, despite Downey, are really more shallow than those in "Star Wars". There is not much character development beyond the "politically correct" revelation that comes to Downey ("weapons kill people").
At its core, this movie is "politically correct" Hollywood. The real villain is an American weapons manufacturer. Worse, the subsidiary villains are vaguely "Middle Eastern", but pinas are taken to AVOID labeling them. They speak various languages, including HUNGARIAN, and every effort is made to make them NOT Islamic Extremists, even though essentially ALL of the terrorists in the world today are Islamic Extremists. This absurd polictical correctness almost made me lower the ratingof this movie below 60, and my private rating would be below that number. However, it IS a COMIC BOOK movie, and I rated the movie on that escapist level, rather than on the subliminal messages it conveys.
On an escapist movie level, I think "Iron Man" deserves the above rating of 63. But it is a movie with as many flaws as virtues, and many people WILL find it "boring". I think I can extrapolate my daughter's (Kenda's) rating into a 21. She found the whole movie uninteresting, and she has a point. The "excitement" in "Iran Man" is mainly ersatz--fool's gold. For me, there was enough there to very mildly rate the movie as worth seeing.
For even me, however, who grew up on comic books and science fiction, it is a close thing. "Iron Man" is an overrated summer movie.
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