Soft? Me? No Way Man!

Ya know, perhaps I'm getting a bit soft in my old age.  Okay, I'm only 42 but I still feel as if my critical sting may be lessoning.  Over at The Cinematheque I rank all the movies I review with a number set somewhere between 1 and 100 (though I have never given anything higher than a 99).  I know the idea of assigning a semi-random number to evaluate a film's greatness (or non-greatness) is a rather arbitrary thing to do, but hey, I love lists.  The only way to know what one truly thinks about a certain movie one must read what one wrote on said film.  Numbers are merely window dressing.  But I digress.

I began talking about getting soft in my critical rendering.  You see, I was recently checking out a few fellow sites that also arbitrarily rank films by the same numbering system as I do and wow are they all a lot tougher than I.  Mike D'Angelo has only 5 films listed with a score of over 80 and just 1 over 90.  Jason Overbeck, over at Bent Clouds, has a mere 4 films in the 80's and 1 in the 90's.  Meanwhile, Theo Panadiyas doesn't have a single film ranked above a 77.

Me?  Well I have 16 films ranked over 80 and another 3 over 90.  Is this softness or just a different way of evaluating cinema?  I suppose its all just smoke and mirrors anyway.  I am still pretty damn hard on many films (recent examples include Adam, The Stoning of Soraya M., Away We Go, Cheri, The Answer Man, Year One).

Well, I guess over analyzing such a silly thing is never going to get me nowhere. I should just shut the hell up and work on my reviews for Cold Souls and The Informant!.