Honest limits

CINEOS does not grade a film. There is no grade and no figure for how good a film is.

It places a film. It does not say whether you will like it.

It works in English.

The films are a fixed set of 275. A film that is not among them has not been read.

Nothing is worked out while you read a film page. Everything on it was stored ahead of time.

A reading is an interpretation. It comes with its reasons so that you can disagree.

It does not tell you where to watch.

It has no comments, no reviews and no lists from other people.

Why each limit is there. A grade ends a conversation, and a sentence starts one, so there is no grade. The set is not a live feed: nothing arrives in it as a film is released, and a film is added only by being read and checked. The words that describe what you want are read in English because no other language has been tested, so none is promised. A film page does no work when it opens, which is why it opens quickly and says the same thing to every reader. A reading is an interpretation: five films were read first, to set the reference points, the rest are read against them, and two careful readers could place a film a step apart. Some things are not read at all: pace, humour, the director's signature, how lavish a film looks. What CINEOS can do is say where a film sits and why. Whether it suits you is yours to say.