What makes a four-star movie worth four stars?

I was thinking about that recently as I was writing my review of "Menashe," a new indie film. The quiet story of an impoverished Hasidic man in Brooklyn, fighting to keep custody of his son, it's not a flashy picture.

It has no name actors or special effects. The drama never gets more heated than a few shouted insults. The whole thing's in Yiddish, it only runs a little more than 80 minutes and the budget wouldn't keep most Hollywood sets in cappuccino.

So why did I end up giving this tiny movie a rare perfect score? What do these ratings even mean, and why do critics give them anyway?

Frankly, I've never met a movie critic who enjoyed awarding stars, or letters, or X-out-of-10 grades. For one thing, it's a tricky calculation - what's the difference between two-and-a-half-stars and two? For another, it feels a bit like dumbing down your own work. After all, most reviewers of books or plays or performances don't give out grades. Why do movie critics have to?

I think the primary reason is that movie reviews - like restaurant reviews - are seen as both consumer guides and, unfortunately, marketing tools. Ultimately, readers want to know whether that Tom Cruise flick or veal Francese special is worth their money; studios and restauranteurs need an easy, instant badge of approval they can stick in their advertising. It all comes down to a quick, readily recognizable symbol that sums up a critic's experience, and bowing to tradition, and editors, most of us provide that.

Although the ratings can be a small pain to come up with I think they can be valuable. They force fancy writers to be clear about their likes and dislikes (how many times have you come to the end of a piece by a reviewer who doesn't use stars, only to wonder "So, wait, did they like the picture or not?") And if you get away from the most restrictive kinds of ratings -- "fresh" or "rotten," "thumbs up/thumbs down" -- they actually offer some nuance.

So what do my own ratings mean?

First off, my standards are pretty simple, and center on three basic questions: What is this movie trying to do? How is it trying to do it? Does it work? The replies should take some thought, and be backed up by examples, but answer those queries and I think anyone can do a review. What makes it worth reading is the writing, and what personalizes it are the reviewer's own convictions. Is form more or less important than content? Does a moral message help, or hinder? What are the advantages, and disadvantages, of ambiguity? Those answers aren't clear-cut and they change with every critic, and sometimes with every film.

My ratings themselves range from 0 to 4 stars here, with both the lowest and the highest grades being pretty rare, as they should be. If I give a movie no stars - as I did last year to Kevin Smith's "Yoga Hosers" - I'm not just saying the film is bad. I'm saying it's aggressively bad. I'm saying that it goes out of its way not to go out of its way, that it works hard to offer nothing of any worth whatsoever. It's not a movie, it's a mugging.

From one to two stars are poor, but a sign that at least someone, somewhere, was trying. Maybe there's one nicely composed shot. Maybe a supporting actress gets in a good scene, or there's a single decent joke. It's still a bad film, of course, and you shouldn't spend your time or money on it, but if you do you won't come out of it feeling robbed. Just, maybe, insulted - this is the kind of junk they think I want to see?

Most movies are mild mediocrities, landing at the two-and-a-half star mark; competently directed and acted, they're unassailably average. If they're a fictional film, they tell a straightforward story; if they're a documentary, they include some useful facts. If you had a real, die-hard fan's interest in the subject, or one of the actors, you might go to see them in a theater. For the rest of us, though, they're just run-of-the-mill timewasters, something to watch on late-night cable if we can't get to sleep.

Beyond two-and-a-half stars, I start moving into real recommendations. Three-star movies are worth seeing in theaters, and three-and-a-half star movies are worth seeing more than once. They may be solid entertainments like "Wonder Woman"; they might be sweeping historical dramas like "Dunkirk." What their initial ambitions are don't matter quite as much as how they accomplish them, and how much they linger in your mind after you leave the theater.

Although I think all three-star and above movies are good, that doesn't mean that they're all good in the same way - or that every moviegoer will like them equally. As a critic, you need to be open to all kinds of genres and subjects and styles; as a fan, you're free to dismiss some out of hand. So if you hate all superhero movies, or downbeat dramas, or foreign films you're unlikely to like "Spider-Man: Homecoming" or "A Quiet Passion" or "The Commune" no matter how much I rave about them. And that's fine, I guess. (Your loss, though.)

But what about the opposite number of the no-star flop - the once-in-a-great-while four-star achievement?

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I'm a hypercritical person - hey, it's the job - and there's rarely a movie that I leave, even one I love, without a quibble or two. Maybe a scene is too confusing or - alternately - too obvious. Maybe a supporting actor doesn't quite convince, or the editing is too busy. Maybe the whole thing just needs to be about five minutes shorter. They're small flaws, but they're there - and just vaguely annoying enough to make me want to knock off half-a-star.

It's always easy to find fault.

And - let's be frank - it's safer to snark. Although wrongheaded write-ups live on in infamy - check out what some contemporary critics thought about "Vertigo," or "Dawn of the Dead" - an unqualified rave can expose a critic to real ridicule, particularly from his or her too-cool-for-school colleagues. "You honestly liked that? Hmm. Interesting." Personally, I don't worry very much about other people's opinions - again, it's part of the job - but no one ever built a reputation by being an easy audience. It's hipper to hate, or at least nitpick.

Every so often, though, I don't have anything to complain about. (It's rare, I know.) The movie starts clearly, and with a strong point of view. The actors disappear into their characters, and the characters have their own emotional logic. The plot is intriguing as it unfolds -- and yet afterwards, often seems inevitable, because it springs directly from the way these people would act. The cinematography and editing and music are both artistic and modest - serving the story stylishly while never only calling attention to themselves.

And when I leave a movie like that, I think, that's a four-star film. That's a movie I'd like to have on DVD, and watch again. That's a movie that's already got a spot on my year-end list of the ten best.

That's how I felt about "Menashe," and the feeling shocked even me. This is a four-star movie? That's what I gave Scorsese's epic "Silence." That's the sort of garland critics usually bestow on serious, "important" films - three-hour star-studded epics, inspirational true-life stories that end with newsreel footage of the real heroes, and huge "For your consideration..." Oscar ads in the trades. Not tiny, subtitled movies about Brooklyn schlemiels.

But that's the wonderful, surprising thing about movies. They can still surprise you, wonderfully.

If you let them.

Stephen Whitty may be reached at stephenjwhitty@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter @stephenwhitty. Find him on Facebook.

