i'm laughing out loud at the A- for bring it on. i love it!

I'll trade you two wool for an ore.

As for There Will Be Blood, don't you give a "Tower of Babel" bonus? You know, where the character gives up everything he has to get something not worth having? I really value the spectacular failures depicted in TWBB, Citizen Kane, and the Godfather trilogy.

They're not entertaining per se, but can't they still be good?

Ok, I guess I need to explain my rating system.

I'm sure there are many movies that are very well made, with spectacular performances (whatever that means), and ground-breaking technique or style. Yes these movies are good by many measures, but I'll let the real movie experts judge those qualities because, to me, these things are nonessential.

When I grade a movie, I ask myself, "am I glad I spent two hours of my life that I'll never get back watching that film?" Considerations like technique, acting, deep truths about humanity, etc. are usually completely negligible in determining the answer to this question EXCEPT in how they indirectly affect the essential qualities I value in movies (listed in the main post). And for what it's worth, a movie can certainly have almost no "good" technical qualities and achieve a very high rating in the essential qualities (i.e. Bring It On).

Now I can appreciate a good tragedy, but if a movie is a downer, then it better at least be smart, interesting, thought-provoking, or exciting. For example, the first Godfather movie was very good because it was interesting and occasionally exciting. But TWBB was none of those things. Daniel Day Lewis may deserve an Oscar and the plot could portray a universal theme of life, but if these things can't make the movie interesting or exciting or something, then I'd rather spend my time doing something else.

i couldn't agree more with your approach. i try to do pretty much the same thing when i grade movies--entertainment is usually the most important thing to me. and that's the way it should be. i guess we just disagree about 'there will be blood' specifically, even though we have the same approach. if you click on my name above, it links to a post explaining how i grade.

i really liked the slow, downward spiral of daniel plainview--i kept hoping he would repent of his greed and redeem himself, but the fact that he never did somehow got me. i think what made it so satisfying was that he got his just desserts in the end. you can point to daniel plainview and say: "look, it's true; greed really does consume you." even though it was depressing, it affirmed my worldview, and so i think that's why it entertained me.