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I like chocolate, but I don't want to eat it all the time. That's how I feel about movies, too: I like variety. I dote on silent films and obscure movies of the 1930s but I also enjoyed the new Star Trek. I usually don't go for crude comedies but The Hangover made me laugh out loud. I don't see any contradiction in all of this; after all, variety is the spice of life.

For more than a decade I've taught a class at the University of Southern California's School of Cinematic Arts, and it's definitely been a learning experience for me. I have 360 students, only a fraction of whom are film majors; the rest come from all parts of the campus. I have football players, math and English and Economics majors, forming what I would consider a diverse audience of 20-somethings. We screen new movies every week and have one or more guests who worked on the film for a question and answer session. It may be the director, producer, or writer, or possibly the costume designer, composer, cinematographer, or one of the actors.

I learn the most during our discussion periods, where I've observed that my occasional tendency to rant about the younger generation is ill-advised. These young people aren't monolithic: some are liberal, some conservative. Some are curious while others are bored or jaded. Some of them are downright old-fashioned in their thinking.

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As the cost of moviemaking continues to skyrocket, studios are under greater pressure than ever to deliver hits-not just modest successes but blockbusters. But no one has ever figured out a formula for foolproof success.

Who would have thought a movie about talking guinea-pig spies would be a hit? But in the summertime, when kids are out of school, during a year when people of all ages are looking for escape, G-Force had a smash opening weekend.

Early in the summer, Universal had high hopes for Land of the Lost, but here was a product with no identifiable audience. Anyone who was nostalgic for the tacky 1970s television series would seemingly be out of the desirable audience demographic. Kids might have been attracted to a dinosaur film, but its PG-13 rating and foul language put parents off. And Will Ferrell's core audience of young guys probably thought it looked to childish. The movie tanked.

At the other end of the spectrum, studios that were gun-shy about R-rated comedies have changed their thinking, thanks to the box-office success of movies like The 40 Year Old Virgin and Knocked Up. This summer's comedy hit was The Hangover, but even Warner Bros. didn't anticipate just how big it would be-with women and men.

So within a week of its opening, Warners announced that it would make a sequel to The Hangover.

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When I worked on the first edition of Leonard Maltin's Movie Guide-then called TV Movies-some forty years ago, my editor, Patrick O'Connor, insisted that I devise a rating system. I protested the idea, explaining that I didn't think it was possible to boil every movie down to a number, be it ** or ****. He was insistent, and told me, "People love that kind of shorthand."

He was right. People do respond to these ratings and they love to debate the results. But I was right, too: it's often difficult to assess a movie with successful ingredients-and some unsuccessful ones-and assign it a number.

I decided then and there that I would rate each film on its own merits, instead of comparing one to another. If I'm watching a goofball teen comedy I don't try to measure it against King Lear, and vice versa.

People sometimes confront me with questions like, "Do you mean to tell me that Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein is a better movie than Revolutionary Road?" What I'm saying is that Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein succeeds better in what it's trying to achieve than Revolutionary Road does. That's why the horror-comedy merits ***1/2 stars while the challenging social drama gets **1/2.

But when all is said and done, this remains a completely arbitrary process. My editors and I often bemoan the fact that we don't have a **3/4 rating, to bestow on films that are pretty good but don't quite hit the bull's-eye.

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The phenomenon of the "overnight star" may be exaggerated, yet every year when we revise my Leonard Maltin's Movie Guide we find ourselves updating our cast lists of films made two, five, or ten years ago to add names that didn't mean anything then-but do today.

Did you know Robert Pattinson of Twilight fame was in Vanity Fair in 2004? Or that Michael Shannon, who made such an impression in Revolutionary Road that he earned an Oscar nomination, has been in films since Groundhog Day in 1993?

In the new 2010 edition of my book we've added credits for three other recent Oscar nominees, Richard Jenkins (from The Visitor), Viola Davis (from Doubt), and Taraji P. Henson (The Curious Case of Benjamin Button) as well as Sally Hawkins, Michael Sheen, and James Franco.

Last year we tracked down early credits for Amy Adams, Paul Dano, Seth Rogen, and James McAvoy. (Did you know Casey Affleck appears unbilled in American Pie, way back in 1999?)

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Saying you're in the reference-book business in 2009 is viewed in some circles as amusing, at best, and preposterous, at worst. I've been asked more than once why anyone would still labor over an annual volume like Leonard Maltin's Movie Guide when with a few clicks "you can find everything you want about a movie online."

My answer is simple: you can't. I know, because my colleagues and I derive the information in our book from first-hand resources, sweating the details inch by bloody inch. We've added 350 new reviews this year and each one offers its own challenges, about spelling, punctuation, plot points, and what can only be described as minutiae.

When a movie opens on 5,000 screens on the same day, how can The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Chicago Tribune, and Daily Variety report entirely different running times? Yet they do, all the time. (Will Smith's Seven Pounds was screened for the Hollywood trade papers before the closing credits were added on, so it was listed at 118 minutes. By the time it opened in theaters it was 125 minutes, but the damage had been done: many sources copied the 118m. figure. That's how mistakes get perpetuated.)

Why, when a familiar-looking character actor has a sizeable role in a new film, is his name not included in the cast lists you find on the movie's official web site? 

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Leonard Maltin is our guest blogger during the week of August 10th. If you have any questions for Leonard Maltin, add a comment to any of his posts. Here is some more information about Leonard Maltin's 2010 Movie Guide: