I added MetaCritic to my sidebar of places to go. It seems like a great service. It brings together all available reviews of movies in one place, giving the viewer an overall sense of what critics thought of it. A great resource - but it would be even better if I could have it with me in the video store.
Posted by scott at January 28, 2004 07:19 AM | TrackBackOk, that is cool. Thanks!
Posted by: jeep at January 28, 2004 07:44 AMcool. that's a lot like rottentomatoes.com which I think does it a little better.
Posted by: bobw at January 28, 2004 09:43 AMI'm a huge metacritic fan too. I much prefer their rating system to Rotten Tomatoes -- translating reviews into "percentage positive" is more subtle than simply declaring a review a thumbs up or thumbs down. It's a more accurate representation of critical culture.
Posted by: mesh at January 28, 2004 10:55 AMI like that, too, mesh. I was wondering how they managed that, though. I was looking at one of Ebert's reviews in which he gave the a movie a 3 1/2 star ranking, and MetaCritic transformed that into an 88%. Do you know the rule?
Posted by: scott cunningham at January 28, 2004 11:05 AMWell, I barely passed a math class this year, so of all the people who comment on this blog, you're definitely asking the wrong guy. But I believe that, in the case of reviewers who give star ratings, metacritic simply translates those ratings into an equivalent percentage. Three stars out of four equals 75%, and three-and-a-half stars equals midway between 75 and 100, or 88%. (It should be 87.5%, but why quibble?) In cases where a reviewer, like Anthony Lane, gives an opinion without a rating, metacritic estimates the ratio of positive to negative commentary.
Posted by: mesh at January 28, 2004 12:11 PMDuh. I'm stupid. THat sounds exactly right.
Posted by: scott cunningham at January 28, 2004 02:52 PMI have had used metacritic for a while now--really objectifies the movie selection process, and Ihave found it to be extremely reliable as far as reviews go. I usually guage the reliability of it with how far Roger Ebert is from the mean.
And as for its usefullness: Netflix, Netflix Netflix.
Posted by: Matthew at January 28, 2004 03:31 PMExcellent rule of thumb, Matthew. I've been following Mesh's advice and using A.O. Scott, Ebert and lately Anthony Lane to triangulate and identify which films to see, but I may have to try using your approach too.
Posted by: scott cunningham at January 28, 2004 06:24 PMScott, you can use the at the video store. If you have a palm (or the equivalent), you can download AvantGo (for free!) and use a pared-down version of the metacritic which lists the most recent 60 or so DVDs along with overall scores, and 5 or 6 quotes from the best critics for each. I definitely use it at the 'Buster. I wish they had that for their games section, though....
Posted by: Fleur at March 14, 2004 12:55 AM