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Shobhit had to work last night, which meant he couldn't make it to our Action Movie Night at The Braeburn condo theater. He was hardly the only one, with multiple others out of town, mostly for the holidays I think. We had an unusuall small number in attendance, only five: Tony, Jake, Ben, this new guy named Daniel (I still kind of can't decide what to make of him), and myself. One of the Chrises might have made it but apparently wasn't feeling well. He still dropped off a vegetarian pizza for the rest of us, which I sure appreciated—even though I made the pasta with pesto cream sauce dish I long ago got the recipe for from Ivan, for the first time in a long time. And Daniel brought macaroni & cheese. I had three high-carb items to choose from, should have really just eaten one, but didn't want to seem unappreciative, so I ate some of all of it.
My weight shot well past 164 lbs this morning, due to both all that food, and my choice of cocktail: boozy eggnog, spiked with extra rum, and (this part was a mistake) a shot of Bailey's. I need to keep in mind how radically even a small amount of Bailey's Irish Cream changes the flavor of something. I really could no longer taste the eggnog at all, although I had also cut it with some milk.
Anyway, enough about my calorie consumption. This week's movie was Jake's pick, and Jake is one of only two people currently attending—the other being Tony, who actually lives in the building—who has been doing so regularly since the year this started, in 2012. I looked at his history of movie choices on the movie log, and it seemed to be a pretty even mix of awful horror movies, and really great action movies. In other words, when it comes to matching up with my tastes, Jake's choices tend to be a real crapshoot.
Well, last night's choice was the 2006 remake of the horror film
The Hills Have Eyes. I spent a lot of time looking at my phone, which was easy to do without worrying about distracting others because no one else sat in the back row with me this time around. It was not hard to keep up, as this traveling family filled with one-dimensional characters played by bad actors was introduced to the story.
The movie has a few pretty extended, insanely violent set pieces, and I have to admit they are, by and large, staged very well. When that stuff happened, I couldn't help but watch—although I'm kind of on the side of
this Letterboxd reviewer and her complaint about the pointless inclusion of sexual assault, clearly meant to be part of the "thrill" of a horror film. There's no outright rape in the film, but it gets strongly suggested and comes very close to it, and it's just . . . gross. Otherwise, the violence that exists for its own sake, well, if nothing else it's in keeping with the genre, and thus not exactly pointless. I would never in a million years have gone out of my way to watch this film outside being a captive audience at one of these movie nights, though, because this just isn't my kind of movie.
Granted, it was entirely within my power to get up and leave. I have never done that, though, and I've only heard of one instance of that happening even before Shobhit and I started attending last year (if I remember correctly, someone walked out of
MidSommar—not the one example I might have expected). The way I see it, regardless of how awful I might find the movie, it's really a respect thing. If I want everyone to stick around to watch whatever movie I choose, then I should afford everyone else the same courtesy.
Plus, to be fair, I've already seen way worse movies than this one. Still I gave it
two stars on Letterboxd, myself. That's the equivalent of a C, at least the way I approach a five-star ratings system.
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My guess is that others on Letterboxd aren't applying it the same way, especially since what I do is "translate" the letter grades I give movies in my full reviews, to stars. But, this is the basic conversion rate that I go with:
A+: 5 stars
A: 5 stars
A- 4.5 stars, sometimes 4 stars
B+: 4 stars, sometimes 3.5 stars
B: 3 stars
B-: 2.5 stars
C+: 2.5 stars
C: 2 stars
C-: 1.5 stars
D+: 1 star
D: 1 star
D-: half star
F: half star, only because giving no stars at all makes it seem like I didn't bother to rate it
I'm putting this here for Gabriel's benefit as much as anything (assuming he even sees this post; there's a good chance he won't), since he pays more attention to my ratings than most. And in my
more than 2,100 film ratings in Letterboxd to date, there is no question that I have given a three-star rating to far more films than any other: 676, or 32%, of them. Honestly, this is only because I love movies, most movies fall at about that level in terms of my enjoyment of them, I avoid movies I can already tell are garbage, and truly standout films are rare.
Besides, even though a solid third of my movie ratings are 3 stars, I've still got a relative bell curve otherwise:
half-star: 5 films (0%)
one star: 13 films (1%)
one and a half stars: 18 films (1%)
two stars: 76 films (4%)
two and a half stars: 335 films (16%)
three stars: 676 films (32%)
three and a half stars: 351 films (16%)
four stars: 363 films (17%)
four and a half stars: 181 films (8%)
five stars: 116 films (5%)
Mind you, I am still working my way backward, to when I started reviewing movies in 2004, and I'm still only as far back as 2008 right now. These numbers will eventually shift a little, but the shape of the curve will likely remain roughly the same.
Anyway. The movie ended, I was glad it was over, I went back upstairs and Shobhit wasn't quite home from work yet, though he came in the door while I was washing dishes. I still had to put laundry away and clean up some cat puke. The life of a domestic goddess.
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[posted 12:31 pm]
