The premise for most movie reviewers (except Pauline Kael), is firstly, the scale to choose for rating/grading the films, and secondly, how to use that scale.

In my country, the kingdom of Norway, most major newspapers deploy a scale of one to six, realized by the symbol of a die. While having only six different steps to choose from is few, the major problem with this system is, for me, that the purpose and notion of dice are something random and arbitrary. Linking this up to reviewing diminishes the scientification of an already vague science.

Commercial American reviewers have traditionally stuck to a system of four stars, with a total of seven to nine steps (depending on whether or not the zero-star is used). This is most commonly known from reviews by classicists Leonard Maltin and conversationalist Roger Ebert, as well as the number one online reviewer, James Berardinelli. Although I find the 4-star system useful, I opted for a 5-star system when I first started reviewing back in 1996, and would have made the same choice today.

To be fair, seeing as my lowest rating is one star, my total number of steps are the same amount as that of for example Roger Ebert. However, the realization becomes arguably different when having five stars, because a film given one star in a 4-star system that uses the zero star, will feel intuitively inferior to its equivalent two star rating in a 5-star system. To an extent, I think this notion continues up the scale as well.

For instance, my 3-star rating will equal a 2-star rating in a 4-star system. However, I would rarely label a film I gave 3 stars as a bad film. It simply isn't particularly good. It's alright.

Another aspect to rating/grading is whether or not to add a legend to your stars. A lot of reviewers do, labelling, for instance, their top rating as "excellent" or "masterpiece", and their bottom-rating as anything from "poor" to "sucks!". To me, an explanation like this is absurd. The point of any given star system is that it should be able to evoke the wanted adjective in the readers mind by itself. A rating system doesn't mean much if it isn't seen in the light of the ratings of other films from the same reviewer. Furthermore, I intend for my review to do the wording.

When it comes to other contemporary reviewers, I find that my system, and my realization of it, has most in common with reviewer Vince Leo of Qwipster's Movie Reviews. He uses the same 5-star system as myself, and also tends to place most his films at the centre of the scale. Some people have indicated that it is cowardly not to use the scale evenly, but such an arguement is completely off mark in my opinion. It is only natural that there are more movies that are "quite good" or "fair, but nothing more" than there are films that are "masterpieces" or "completely horrible". If a reviewer has as many films on his maximal rating as he has, for instance, on the rating in the middle of his scale, I will argue that the effect of his ratings are diluted. This has become the problem of one of my previous favourite reviewers, Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times. If you give as many maximum ratings as he does, how can you differentiate true masterpieces from the very good films? Ebert awarded his maximum 4-stars to 30 films in 2006. Does it really sound logical that in 2006, 30 films were produced that were equally good as Citizen Kane, Vertigo or Pulp Fiction? I believe not.