Assigning star ratings to movies is a silly exercise, frivolous and shallow at best, a harmful way to engage the art at worst. I love doing it.

In addition, I love learning about other peoples’ star ratings. Letterboxd lets me get to know the variances in peoples’ star assignments to movies – those who are thrifty, handing out their stars with the utmost care. Maybe they give only 2.5 to movie they describe in positive terms. Do some people start a movie at zero and make the movie earn the stars as they go?

There are others clearly more generous than I when it comes to stars. Enjoyed the movie? Five stars. A tepid review that clearly belies boredom gets a mere three stars. One star is reserved for Birth of a Nation and nothing else. This watcher has five stars ready to give when the lights go down and the movie whittles it down. Under 90 minutes and there probably isn’t time to go below 3.5.

The downside to star ratings is that they are an over simple way to engage a movie – barely three steps up from the dreaded Tomatometer. What they are useful for is to set a tone for a review to come. That new highly anticipated movie got two stars? Something went wrong, we’re reading an autopsy. This unheard of indie gets a whopping five? Gotta look into this.

I’m under no illusion that my own star ratings are much use to anybody other than myself which is why I have tailored my system to myself. If I glance at my movie log it reads as a guide to what’s worth rewatching. I will never live long enough to accomplish this for every title, but if I live a long time I’ll have a handy guide. Above three stars and is in this realm: 3.5 means I wouldn’t mind seeing it again, 4 means I would like to see it again. Above that is when I start throwing around breathless adjectives and making active plans to see it again.

Three stars means I liked it but do not need to see it again. Two and a half is supposedly around the middle of a bell curve which, frankly, I’m picking enough about my viewing that I should be making something more like a ski ramp. I reserve this for bad movies with something to recommed or a pretty good movie wrecked by its worst aspects. Two stars is a failure and from there the failure compounds down to the downright offensive 1/2 (this alone wrecks the curve since zero stars should in theory be the bottom, but that makes it looks like I neglected to add a rating at all – a half-star is like leaving a quarter for a tip).

Your assignment, Soluters, is to give the definitive title for each (full) star rating! Not the best movie of its rating, but one that exemplifies your idea of a movie that fits that category. Or if you think ratings are for the birds, say why us star obsessives are wasting our time. Full warning: I will give these responses one star.

5: Night of the Hunter (Always fun to watch and one-of-a-kind.)

4: Erin Brockovich (This category often gets somewhat formulaic movies punching above their weight. I wouldn’t be above calling this movie great, but I wouldn’t defend its need to be canonized.)

3: Crawl (I enjoyed Crawl. Crawl is a fun movie. I never need to see Crawl again.)

2: The Whale (There’s skill evident but this is, in the end, just a bad movie.)

1: The Last Airbender (A total non-starter of a movie.)