My Criteria

Before I start posting my movie reviews, a word on what criteria will I be using is in order. In general, I'll try to avoid reviewing vapid dreck, such as pretty much anything coming out of Hollywood production, but also most other dreck coming out of the conveyor belt movie factories, such as Bollywood, for example.

After thinking hard about it, I've decided to forsake the numerical rating of the movies (such as '4 out of 5 stars'), and to introduce qualitative rating. Instead of stars, I will be using qualifiers such as 'poor', 'great', 'lousy' and such.

The above point bellies the fact that the movie reviews you'll be reading here are purely subjective. I do not profess any competence in being able to objectively asses any work of art, especially cinematographic work of art. So I'll be sticking to my unmitigated subjective view of the movies.

Here are, then, some of my subjective criteria that I'll be using when evaluating the movies in general:

1. Optical impact (I am a big stickler when it comes to optical aspect of the visual imagery projected on screen; is it consistently in focus, is the contrast realistic looking, are the colors and the saturation all right, how is the light treated, are the shadows realistic looking, and so on)
   
2. Visual impact (frame composition, camera angles, camera movement, pacing)
   
3. Audio impact (is the sound that is mounted over the imagery serving the visual message)
   
4. Timing (overall pace, transitioning from one shot to the next, etc.)
   
5. Acting (including casting)
   
6. Storyline
   
7. Underlying philosophy
   

The above list is sorted from the most important criterion to the least important one.

With this in mind, let's now start reviewing the movies.