The Awesome Movie Index (AMI)

The AMI a is an algorithm that zeroes in on five key components of a movie to calculate its final grade :

Acting

Actors can carry a movie, and lift it to unprecedented heights. And conversely, a grotesque performance, a botched accent or a horrible miscast can have an equally disastrous effect. (Think Eric Stoltz in Back to the Future. A Tom Hanks accent. A talking animal. Or Steven Seagal.) Acting is certainly not the only determinant factor in a great film, but it remains a pivotal pillar. It’s the difference between whether you whole-heartedly buy into a premise and lose yourself in a film, or whether you keep repeating to yourself for nearly two hours «Wow, Dustin Hoffman is really acting hard in Rain Man.»

Story

Just like there is a format to every screenplay — FADE IN, three acts, indented dialogue, FADE OUT — the story itself requires a certain architecture to hold its audience, it needs to be logical and consistent within the world it created. Flying cars and cannibal serial killers are fine, as long as they fit in the reality of a given story. Likewise, when a writer (or director) pulls a gimmick out of their ass to advance a plot point — «I don’t know why, I’m getting really poor cell reception here!» — well the whole thing collapses like a house of cards.

Cinematography and Direction

Every movie has a certain look and feel to it, a certain vision and unique stamp, and cinematography and direction, much like a toothy banjo player in Deliverance, are eerily intertwined. Whether it’s The Fifth Element, Pulp Fiction or Lawrence of Arabia, terrific films have a tantalizing texture and tenure to them.

Emotional Impact

Great acting. Solid story. Beautiful film. And yet here you are, checking your text messages every 12 minutes. The proverbial movie magic only operates if you become emotionally invested in a film. Will Dorothy get back home? Will Maximus win? Will McMurphy finally escape? Why do we care? Exactly.

The Awesome Effect

A movie may check out all the boxes, but how does it rate overall on the grander scale of awesomeness? If you have the urge to recommend it to friends, if you are incapable of NOT watching it a second time or better yet, if you are still talking about it an hour after having watched it — and you watched it alone — well, chances are, you just watched an awesome movie.