I stand corrected. The main points are still valid, though, I guess, whether it's 0-4 or 1-5, the same principles apply. I read too fast about Star Wars-- I see he says
I was taken aback recently when I received a couple of e-mails from Star Wars fans asking how I could have concluded eight years ago that the "special edition" rerelease of that film was "worthless" when it gave so much pleasure to so many people.
I jumped to the conclusion that it was a review of the recent release and overlooked the fact that it all happened "eight years ago." A pretty gross oversight on my part, partly due to my lack of specific interest in or knowledge of the Star Wars series.

I hope, though, that people will get the substance of Rosenbaum's review and my summary above about averaging together one's different personal reactions to the various aspects of any given movie to achieve an overall personal rating that makes both emotional and rational sense for one as a viewer.

That was the point. I think it's great that Rosenbaum is sure enough of himself and honest enough so that he shows the inner workings of his thought process in arriving at ratings. Very different from the kind of reviewers, who are legion, who seek to entertain and/or impress -- The New Yorker's Denby and Lane are of this type, and I would never write them off because they do entertain and they do impress -- they both write very well and Rosenbaum has repeatedly said that he admires how Denby writes (I admire even more how Lane writes, how amusing and witty he is, while still presenting quite sensible evaluations of movies 85% of the time) -- these guys don't want you to see the humbler aspects of their working methods; not really, anyway (though they may pretend to). And hence they entertain more than they instruct. One is amused, but one doesn't learn much.

And above all I also wanted to note that Rosenbaum, as I did, found the plot of Crash extremely contrived, but concluded, as I would, that the damaging effect of that was balanced against good work and good intentions, though it doesn't leave one with a "masterpiece," rather, with the next best thing, a "must-see.".