Everyone has different criteria by which they award a “perfect” score, and to discern what that may be you have to read some of their reviews and become acquainted with their opinions so that you know how big a deal it is if they give something an A+ or whatever.

You can't ask everyone else to conform to the standards by which you assign a 10 out of 10, you have to *gasp* actually read the review to get an accurate perspective on the person's opinion. Deal with it.

You can totally rate a movie like Evil Dead II a 9 out of 10 if you so desire and I think that's ok. It's more like you're grading the movie against itself. Out of the premise you gave me, how well do I think you did? Its like homework. I assign the movie to be “well paced, humorous, silly and with some minor scares” and I get turned in “Drag Me to Hell” and hey, what do you know I can give that an 8 out of 10 or whatever. But the main thrust (tee-hee) of this rant was that no matter the genre or whatever you want to compare movies against, 10/10 is rare and should be reserved for movies that, whether within their own genre or compared to every movie in existence, are virtually perfect.

And just on an aside, in terms of genre vs mainstream, two genre movies that definitely kick enough ass to be compared positively to any movie anywhere ever are John Carpenter's The Thing and Alien. Booyah.

Should one make concessions for movies with limitations is an interesting question, and I guess it's okay if other aspects of the movie are so strong that one can still enjoy it with these shortcomings (i.e., crappy/unbelievable special effects within a good story). And with genres, I think “good movies” exist within every genre, and even if it's a B movie within a B genre should be held up to certain standards, albeit not the same standards as something like mid-December Oscar bait. As you pointed out, it's a tough balance to find. I'm hesitant to make any ultimatums or standards in stone when reviewing, as I prefer to approach it with more a film-by-film basis.

But I'm kind of torn on your first point, about grading movies in relation to one another. I don't think the reviews should be directly related to each other, but should there be some kind of understandable standard for what the grades mean? Yes yes the detailed explanation is in the review itself, but the grade should still stand for something. I think. Maybe.

Which brings up a more specific thought I've been debating with myself for a while now… should the reviewer make concessions/allowances depending on the film's genre or budget? Like a horror movie gets an A within the confines of the horror genre but isn't a great movie overall… or low budget limitations are forgiven when those same shoddy effects or poor set design would earn criticism for a studio pic.

And I agree with your Away We Go assessment to a degree. A 2nd viewing highlighted things that bugged me more than I realized the 1st time.

That being said, I agree that praise is being handed out way too liberally, and I think it has to do with what deltavoyage was saying, that when you walk straight out of a movie you're still elated with the experience that you don't have time or space to think about it and assess it objectively. I had that experience with away We Go, a movie I really liked walking out of the theater but then I had larger problems with the more I thought about it. But the pressure of getting reviews up in a certain time I think often prevents people from looking at movies from an objective critical distance after the smoke clears.

That being said, I agree that praise is being handed out way too liberally, and I think it has to do with what deltavoyage was saying, that when you walk straight out of a movie you’re still elated with the experience that you don’t have time or space to think about it and assess it objectively. I had that experience with away We Go, a movie I really liked walking out of the theater but then I had larger problems with the more I thought about it. But the pressure of getting reviews up in a certain time I think often prevents people from looking at movies from an objective critical distance after the smoke clears.

Personally, I don't think critics are overrating movies. I think that random people online, like those who rate movies on IMDb or Facebook, are overrating movies. It's so easy to just put 10/10 when you think that something is good that you don't take the time to think about whether it actually is worth getting a 10/10. I used to do that, but then I stopped because I knew that all of the stuff I had give full marks wasn't actually worthy of those full marks. But District 9 was perfect and Up was perfect. I expect to see both of those films get Oscar nominations for Best Picture.