A category-based rubric for evaluating whether a movie is worth watching.
Evidence standard: Use majority critical sentiment from serious long-form criticism and substantive long-form user reviews. Treat aggregate scores as context, not as the argument.
Category rule: A movie should not be punished merely for being a different kind of thing. First score its universal strengths and weaknesses. Then reward the lane it succeeds in. Subject matter alone is not a penalty. The question is whether the movie cashes out in one of the preferred categories.
Already seen rule: If the film appears anywhere in Movies I've Seen, the final score is 0. Do not recommend it.
These are the cross-category qualities that matter no matter what kind of film it is.
Do the people feel psychologically grounded, legible, and earned rather than schematic, quirky, or avatar-like?
Is the movie sharp in language, scene construction, or interpersonal exchange? Dialogue gets the most credit, but the deeper point is specificity and bite, not mere quantity.
Does the movie stay close to real pressure, conflict, intimacy, suppression, obsession, or breakdown?
Does the movie hold together as a legible whole, even if it is ambiguous or non-linear?
Choose the single best-fit lane from Categories A-I. Do not punish the film for not being in the others.
Characters in free fall through addiction, compulsion, war-zone death-wish behavior, or violent psychological unraveling, where the film does not flinch from showing the real cost. This includes horror-escalated versions of the same collapse, where obsession or devotion is pushed to a "be careful what you wish for" extreme.
Top 5 exemplars: Requiem for a Dream (2000, 5/5), The Hurt Locker (2008, 5/5), American Psycho (2000, 5/5), Obsession (2026, 4.8/5), Oslo, August 31st (2011, 4.5/5).