Recently, I had a good convo with pal Stuart when, after seeing a mediocre star rating of a classic film, I shot off the snide line "We should only apply star ratings to new media. Sliding in in 2025 to give a 80 year old movie a 3 star review serves neither you nor the movie."
Stuart wisely pointed out that *of course* our ratings are subjective, transitory (will likely be different at a different time) and we cannot have the experience of those who experienced a movie in 1945. People are only able to give the rating they can give - and we cannot require homework of them to give a rating.
And, I agree!
Everyone is entitled to their rating.
Everyone is entitled to their opinion and review. If I did not believe this, this blog wouldn't exist.
Certainly social media has made us all experts and put us all out there expressing our opinions whether the world wants our genius or not. These days, I'm primarily exposed to these opinions through BlueSky's #film feed, which is often linked to folks' letterboxd accounts. For buddies like Stuart, JimD, Howard, and JAL, I've even linked their letterboxd accounts right on the version of this page (and, yes, you, RHPT) you see on web browsers not viewed in mobile versions (look over there in the left menu bar, we'll wait). It's how I track their viewing and opinions as dudes whose opinions I personally value, even - or especially - when it's different from my own.
Obviously, I am included amongst the teaming masses howling movie opinions into the void. In no way is this blog special.
While I keep this blog more or less, really, as my personal film journal to track what I have and haven't seen (just this weekend, I found out I'd once seen the movie Red Dragon, which, if you'd held a gun to my head, I would not have said I'd seen) it's also very much me publicly sharing my opinions. And, also also - It's a record of how I personally view film.
In fact, I would think reading the blog, day over day, would give people an idea not just my opinion on film, but also give you some insight into who I am (and I am sorry about that. I know it's unpleasant). And, yet, I publish links from this blog to Facebook, Insta, Threads, Tumblr and Bluesky with every post. So it's not like I'm quiet about all this.
The subjective nature of the experience of viewing film is something they only sort of taught 30 years ago in film school, tilting wildly from auteur theory to death of the author in the same class and without trying to reconcile the two. I don't know how helpful it is to say "there is a mind behind a film, a vison and we treasure that beyond measure. But ALSO... It doesn't matter once you release it as the audience makes it their own and 13-year-olds who can't understand your movie count as much as folks with a PhD in the topic of the film and film itself".
I'm egalitarian as hell, but I'm not that egalitarian.