The New Rating Scale

I'm officially fed up with the JAA rating scale. It has quickly become too coarse in its ability to seperate movies at the top of the spectrum, and doesn't have nearly enough flexibility in terms of rating bad movies.

From this day on, I will be moving to a letter-grade format. To avoid some of the confusion inherent in letter grades, which I initially tried to avoid in formulating the original grading scale, I have decided to use Ryan Wu's grading scale, which I find to be the most comprehensive and fair among the options in the online film geek world (10 points, 100 points, James Bowman's absurd 3-point scale). I've eliminated some of his gradations (like A-/B+) for the sake of simplicity--I usually give movies the benefit of a doubt when I'm stuck between grades anyway, unless it's an odd circumstance. "The P&B Scale," modified for JAA, thus goes as follows:

A+: Pantheon
A: Masterpiece
A-: Great
B+: Near Great
B: Recommended
B-: Recommended with reservations
C+: Not Recommended but with redeeming values
C: Poor
C-: Crap
D+: Utter crap
D: Foul, disgusting crap
F: Burn the negative

My favorite part: the negative ratings.

I will also maintain my convention of marking ratings that differ from canonical opinion, as regards classic movies, with an asterix. I am now working through the process of updating my film log to accomodate the new scale. I hope you will find it more informative in discerning film choices.