Pick your 4 favorites from my top 20 of 1999

moviemouth

It looks like your likely on a similar rating system i used to use before i changed to my current one in Sep 2014 as it used to be 7's and higher as positive and 6's and lower as negative but that is too limited as there were too many movies bunched onto the general 7/10 score and some of those were clearly quite a bit weaker than others which is where my new system is much better as it shifts many of those back to a 6/10 area. that's why i switched to allow 6's and higher as positive as 6's are pretty much movies i mildly enjoy but will still re-watch them here and there. so basically your rating for those two movies on my scale now would be a 5/10 given what you say as typically a 5/10 is one of those movies that's alright enough for a viewing but has no re-watch appeal. basically one of those middle-of-the-road/average types of movies in my overall enjoyment of it.

to nit pick on the details of a 5/10... 4.5-5/10(i.e. weak average) is borderline wasting my time where as more solid 5/10's (i.e. 5/10 or 5-5.5/10) i would say are decent enough to have seen once but ultimately have no re-watch value.

basically... if i were you i would switch to a better rating scale. like 5/10 is middle-of-the-road/average and then scales up and down fairly evenly from there. this way movies you mildly like can go on 6/10's and then ones that start to stand out, give it a 7/10, and so on.

My rating scale is this...

10 = As much as i can enjoy a movie, pretty much.
9 = Nearly as much as i can enjoy a movie.
8 = Great.
7 = A Strong Thumbs Up. (My Favorite Movies score here and higher)
6 = A Mild Thumbs Up. (My minimum score to re-watch a movie)
5 = Average/Forgettable/Thumbs Down. (while a negative score, they typically don't waste my time)
4 = Below Average.
3 = Failure. (i typically finished watching these movies, but they are just bad)
2 = Boring. (i could not finish watching due to boredom and boring is pretty much the worst crime a movie can commit)
1 = Greatly dislike. (a rare feat, in a negative way)

for measure... most movies i see get a 5/10 with a 6/10 being the next most common.

to state the obvious... i ultimately rate movies based on how much i enjoy them. the further they get away from that, the lower the rating.

with all of that said... from what i have noticed it seems the majority of IMDb users were similar enough to my rating scale as even though they might word theirs a bit differently i can tell they mean pretty much the same thing, give or take a little. but i have seen some people use your system with the 6's and less is a negative score and 7's and higher is a positive score but looking back on it i wonder why i had that rating system in the first place as it's simply too limited. that and as the years pass and you have seen plenty of movies you tend to get a pretty good feel for things etc.

just some thoughts

p.s. for the record... The Thomas Crown Affair (1999) is within my Top 29 movies and The Ninth Gate (1999) is within my Top 61 movies.