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	Phenomenal perfection. A Classic. Still relevant in both message and tone. And the delivery has earned it a place in film history. MUST-SEE/PROBABLY HAVE SEEN.
	Excellent. Near-perfect, thoroughly well-done, and entertaining. Bears the mark of a great filmmaker, and of great performances. MUST-SEE.
	Very Good. Fewer elements that are realized fully, but those that are show brilliantly. OUGHTA-SEE.
	Good. Some surprising turns in creative ideas; nicely entertaining. Nothing that marks genius. RENT
	Fair. Some redeeming qualities in filming, but weighed down by mistakes. RENT IF THERE'S NOTHING ELSE TO SEE OR DO.
	Poor. A lot of modern escapist schlock fits here. AVOID.
No Stars	Utterly Forgettable. Not worth the effort to destroy. URGE OTHERS TO AVOID.
	Copies should be tracked down and burned. Or framed and lionized as examples of extraordinarily bad filmmaking. DESTROY.

Three notes about my rating system:

FIRST--It is large. I know this. It is therefore daunting...to me, mostly. If it creates confusion, let me know. But I can't stand the thought of, say, BRAVEHEART and CASABLANCA occupying the same "level" on critics' charts. I think small ratings systems are helpful mostly for the one writing the rating, not the one reading the rating (say that five times fast). Fewer stars are bigger "umbrellas" by design--so I use eight categories in order to refine things a little.

SECOND--I am a structuralist critic when the movie employs structure, and a post-structuralist critic when a movie eschews structure (sometimes the filmmakers are not aware they've done this--makes you wonder). I say this to keep from offending when I use words like "transition" and "theme." Some people really get ruffled over those words.

THIRD--A friend has asked me what number of "stars" constitutes a recommendation to see a film, and how few a recommendation to skip a film. So I have tried to address this in the explanations above. You'll note that the big gap comes at the halfway mark--between two and three stars. I guess that's my thumbs-up, thumbs-down delineation, in SISKEL & EBERT-terms.

There, now on with the shows. Email comments on my reviews to Jason Nash.