A couple of days ago I reviewed Killing Cockroaches, and I started to feel bad that I could only give it four stars. Not that it wasn’t really good — it is. It’s just that it wasn’t one of the greatest books I’ve ever read. I felt that I needed to explain how I rate things.

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

In movies terms, this would be a movie that I just walk out of, and demand my money back. I’ve never done this, but I can see reasons I would be either so appalled or so amazed at the poor quality that I would leave the movie. Heresy or utter incompetence are the only reasoning for zero stars..

★ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

Following the movie paradigm, this would be a movie that looked like a porn where the people forgot to take off their clothes. Think YouTube. Yeah, that bad. The one–star of shame.

★ ★ ☆ ☆ ☆

You know all those movies on Lifetime or Sci–Fi? That’s what you get with two stars. “Made for DVD” is another way of saying it.

★ ★ ★ ★ ☆

Three stars means good, but not great. Good enough to see, but not good enough to see again. Sadly, I can go through an entire video store and find nothing that deserves a rating higher than this.

★ ★ ★ ★ ☆

Great, but not the greatest. To be clear, I own several movies like this. These are the best films of the year in many cases. Getting four stars means that I unequivocally approve of the consumption of the product.

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

Five starts means that, without reservation, this is one of the most important things I know of. I can name a handful of movies that I would put in this category, if that many. These are movies I can watch, over and over.

I look forward to reviewing a lot of other stuff. Should be coming out soon.

status: published
lastmod: '2009-03-02T07:30:40.000Z'
excerpt: Explaining the stars I use in reviews
author: meadowhill login
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custom:
  section: articles
  custom_1: reviews ratings