By Jenny Mather

It’s always a quandary: how many stars does a film deserve and how do you allocate them? If you enjoy a film, does that mean it should be given a high rating and if you don’t enjoy it, does the film deserve a poor one?

A glance at the stars we have given the 85 different films which our film group watched at this year’s Filmfest shows how our opinions differ. This is surely a good thing because it shows the originality of our thinking and the strength of our opinions. How we decide on the number of stars to give is usually a question of our enjoyment. If a movie makes us feel good, then we may overlook its bad points and give it more stars than it truly merits. On the other hand, does a movie which has been nominated for an award but which fails to impress us deserve a low rating?

When writing our critiques, we have to consider that we are suggesting that you watch a movie that we enjoyed or that you miss a movie which you may have liked because of our adverse comments about it. We have to hope that you make the final decision, ignore our comments and decide for yourself on a movie’s merits. Then come back and see if you agree with the comments in our reviews.