Rick's Cafe Americain

***** A timeless classic.  Reserved for the best of the best.  Citizen Kane, Star Wars, The Godfather (I&II), The Battle of Algiers, etc.  I would put the three Lord of the Rings movies, as a unit and in their extended version, into this category, but probably not any one of them, in its theatrical version, by itself.  Others would include Branagh’s Henry V, Psycho, The Graduate, Bridge on the River Kwai, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Dr. Strangelove, My Fair Lady, The Wizard of Oz.

**** An excellent movie.  Top ten %.  Movies from 2003 that I would give four stars to would be The Return of the King & The Fog of War.  Past movies would include The Shawshank Redemption, Casablanca, Pulp Fiction, The Pianist, Shakespeare in Love, Gone With the Wind, Forest Gump, maybe Spider-Man (right in between ***½ and ****), Toy Story, Rollerball.

If your system has 5 stars, why no 4 1/2 rating? 

Let me see if I’ve got this.  5 is good and zero is bad, right?  I think I’ve seen this system before.

Because my system is based on four stars, not five stars.  However, I wanted to be able to differentiate between great movies and the all-time classics.  The fifth star is essentially a “bonus” and there are probably only 25-35 movies (all time) that would get the 5th star from me.

You stuck The Passion in a category of movies that “does not offend.”

I think maybe you are revealing too much of yourself.  First with the homophobia, now this.  I hardly know what to think.

The Passion would fall more into the “Or possibly an ok movie that, nevertheless, sets back the movie making industry” part of *½ stars.  From what I hear, it is not a “bad” movie, but overly simplistic, over done and I think it will result in a whole slew of bad religious movies.

Also, I mean offend not in a political sense (I try not to factor that into ratings) but in a “I was pissed off at how bad this movie was” sense.

Spider Man?

As far as Superhero movies go (and I’ll admit I am a sucker for all that stuff even though most suck), it is hard to get much better than Spider-Man.  It is that or Batman for best ever in that category and I give the slight nod to Spidey (perhaps a little biased by him being my favorite superhero), sneaking him into four star land.

Although I can see we disagree a fair amount on some ratings, I like the concept.

I am curious though, would you give Hoosiers 5* or less?  How about James Bond movies? (think Connery and Moore or even George Lazenby in my personal favorite, but not Brosnan).

Hoosiers would get four stars.  Bond movies would vary, but of the top of my head, not sure if any would go higher than three stars.  Though perhaps some of the old Connery ones, it has been a while and I have not seen them all.  Look for a partial Bond commentary coming soon.