I've watched 101 movies so far this year and I reviewed them all in this thread on Mastodon (I'll be doing this on Bluesky as well starting soon). Now,m truth be told, I love movies, and I think most movies I choose to watch are a pretty good time, but this is not the impression everyone gets from my films. Why is that? Well, two things come to mind.

What my scale actually means

I give movies one of four classifications, and I think despite trying to make these clear, they're still seen as overly negative by some people. Here's what I mean with each score:

• Loved it!: I adored this movie and it connected with me enough that I would consider it a movie that you could use to define my taste. I didn't just like it a lot, I adored it. I think everyone should watch these movies, even if you aren't interested in them.
• Liked it: I very much enjoyed spending my time watching this movie. It didn't elevate itself to the "this defines Matt" category above. Again, I very well may have liked the movie a lot.
• Decent: I am glad I watched it, but it probably didn't connect with me a ton. That doesn't mean it's bad, it's just decent. If you told me you were interested in a movie I gave this score, I'd say go ahead and see it, you might like it. If you aren't interested in it, then I wouldn't tell you to go out of your way to see it, though. This one seems to throw people the most.
• Didn't like it: I felt like I wasted my time. I did not enjoy it and I don't recommend it to anyone. This one I think is pretty clear.

Also, these are impressions moments after watching the film. Don't take them as dogmatic beliefs and don't think of them as objective measures of a film (this is why I moved away from scores called "great", "good", and "bad" which implied objective states rather than subjective opinions.

If I like everything, you don't get anything out of my opinions

Another aspect is that I'm posting a lot of reviews and if I just say I loved everything, then you don't get any useful information when I post one. I don't use the "loved it" score often, so when I do, it should make you raise an eyebrow. If everything is special, then nothing is special, after all.

Having a larger range in scores for the films I watch also gives you an idea of my taste. Maybe you have similar taste to me or maybe you don't, but if I say everything's good or everything's bad, then you don't know anything about me and you don't know how much weight to put on my opinion.

Of course, this is just for me and maybe you want to do things differently. That's cool, you do you! I just wanted to share why I review things the way I do and what my scores mean.