New and Updated Moral Rating System

The rating system we've been using up until now has been very simple (a Moral Value score of 1-5), but it's been hard to be consistent on our ratings given that we just looked at a list of criteria and assigned a score that we felt fit best.  We've recently developed a formula for a Moral Value score to help us be more consistent and hopefully make our ratings a little more useful.  We appreciate all the inspiration and feedback we've received from family and friends on this.

The new formula is:

Moral Value = Edification - Evil (non-relevant)

The Edification score consists of our deciding if a movie inspires us to do good, if it is praiseworthy (how willing are we to recommend this movie to a friend), and it's educational value (moral and secular education).  We've kept the range of scores for these factors very small to make it easier to rate, and hopefully more consistent.

The Evil score will take the rating for Language, Sex/Nudity, and Violence found on the kids-in-mind.com website (when available, otherwise we'll rate the movie ourselves in a similar fashion), and then we will adjust the score based on how relevant the Evil is to the overall message of the movie.  Evil is important in movies as long as it is accurately depicted and shows real consequences for wrong actions.  The more appropriate or relevant the evil is to the moral message of the movie, the lower this score will be.

The Moral Value score will be on a range from 0-10.  We've ran the formula against a good number of movies and feel fairly confident that what we have will work.  Somehow, we will need to provide a rubric for readers of the reviews to translate the numbers into something meaningful for themselves, but it may be sufficient to understand what is being taken into consideration in the rating, and that a 10 is a movie with a great moral message, and as you get closer to 0, the message gets weaker or is non-existent.  All in all, it will probably not be much different from our original rating system, hopefully just more consistent.

The Entertainment rating will also be changed to be out of 10, matching with how much we enjoyed the movie overall (similar to ratings on IMDB.com).

Please let us know of your thoughts regarding this change!  It may take some time to convert the scores of the movies over (plus, it's been a while since we've seen some, so it may be harder to accurately judge).  We will also try to put the moral score in the title of the post so that it is clear up front what we thought of the movie (e.g., On the Waterfront (1954) - 10; or Title (Year) - M10/E10; preferences?).

Some quick examples of Moral Value scores we've calculated with the new formula:

Adjustment Bureau - 8.5

Dinner for Schmucks - 2.8

The King's Speech - 9.4

Limitless - 1.2

When Harry Met Sally - 4.6

True Grit (2010) - 5.6

Source Code - 7.6

You Can't Take it With You - 10.0

Blade Runner - 5.2

On the Waterfront - 10.0

Animal Crackers - 7.0