Re-Making the Grade

My ongoing use of Flickchart has now called into question a few things about the way I review things -- movies in particular, but really anything I review in general.

For starters, there's my non-conformist use of letter grades (A, C+, so forth) in reviewing, when iTunes, Amazon, Netflix, and just-about-everywhere-else uses a 5-star system. I suppose my original inspiration for grades was the fact that Entertainment Weekly (the one magazine I actually subscribe to) uses them. Or maybe I just find it novel to use grades, because I never had them until my years in college. (I went to schools that either used unconventional grading systems, or no grading systems at all.)

Flickchart looks at the placement of a movie on your list, and helpfully tells you how many stars you should rate it based on that placement. They even tell you how you should score it on a scale of 0 to 100. Sure, you could do the calculations yourself, but they put it right there. So maybe I should just stop using the letter grades and be like all the other children?

But really, that's all just cosmetic. The larger issue exposed by my Flickcharting is that I have been grading on a curve unknowingly.

I've been rebuilding my Top 100 Movie list, last updated many years ago. As I looked at that old list, I knew some things near the bottom probably wouldn't make the cut this time around. Even some of the movies I knew I still liked, I would not have called "grade A" movies. For example, consider The Blair Witch Project. When I recently reviewed it, I concluded by saying that I had a better sense today of the movie's flaws, and would only rate it an A-. But I still thought it would make the top 100 list. The clear assumption in there is that I've seen less than 100 movies that I would rate an A; somewhere on my top 100 list is the cutoff where movies get an A- instead.

The problem there is that Flickchart now tells me I've seen more than 1200 movies. There are 12 letter grades from A on down to F, including all the + and - modifiers in between. That means if I were to distribute my grades evenly, every movie in my top 100 should receive an A. It also means that I've seen 100 awful, grade F movies. I would not have thought either of those things to be true. So, should I keep grading on my pseudo-bell curve that is apparently pushing most movies into B and C status? Or do I go with what seems to make sense mathematically?

Mind you, I'm not planning to go back through all my old reviews and update my grades. This is more just a "going forward" thing. Thoughts?

And yes, toothygrim, Watchmen still gets an F.