I'm sure this is a belabored topic 'round these parts, and I'm sure that my being motivated to register at these forums just to pose this question is laughable on a number of levels, but I really gotta know.

I'm all ears for someone to explain to me how Michael Wilmington's review of Bug translates to a 75 rating on Metacritic. Sure, I get subjectivity and all, and I even read the damned FAQ, but hell! Wilmington didn't have one negative thing to say about the movie. Fact, he slathered it with praise. Me no get.

On the right top part of the metromix.com review page, it says "rating (out of four): three starts". That translates to 3/4 or 75%. To me, three stars out of four is equivalent to a B, and if one of my students gets a B, that's a very positive grade. So the bottom line is that MC took Wilmington at his own rating's word.

Right you are. Somehow I had missed the star rating. So now the only question is, how did Wilmington arrive at such a rating for a film he seemed to have no reservations about?

Sometimes it happens because of the genre or the timing of similar films released concurrently; I don't know, but I think a 75 is definitely worth watching, at least if you trust the reviewer.

He did say it was a "nerve-rending, extremely unpleasant experience." That doesn't sound too positive to me. But he had a lot of praise, and thus I think the rating fits. Plus, a 75 review is pretty good.

See, I read that as a compliment, but who can say?

quote:

Originally posted by Smithie:
See, I read that as a compliment, but who can say?

For a movie like "Bug", I'd say it is a compliment. The previews look extremely disturbing & you can bet I'll be finishing my drink & nachos waaaay before the movie starts!

I think most critics really like a movie they give 3 stars to--but it might take a film they consider classic or Oscar-worthy to get the full 4 stars.

I agree with the initial premise of this thread though, that the number Metacritic assigns to some non-star-based reviews seems a little off. I remember one in particular that said only negative things (in no uncertain terms), noting that the only saving grace was one supporting actor's performance, which saved it from being a complete failure. I would have interpreted the review as a 40 or so, 45 tops, while MC assigned the review a score in the high 50s. Sorry, I can't remember which film, but that's not the only one I've noticed...occasionally the subjectivity of assigning a numerical value to the review is pretty wide-ranging.

While I can't find the whole review anywhere I notice that Kenneth Turan's review of the documentary 'crumb' is cited by many sites offering the dvd for sale...and all the excerpts I've seen appear to be quite positive. I'm surprised therefore that Metacritic has Turan's score as an outlier '30' when a startling number of reviewers were scored giving the film a perfect '100'. Is there any way Metacritic can double-check this anomaly?

Check out this post about how well critics and regular moviegoers agree on films:

http://shrinkblog.blogspot.com/2009/01/do-critics-and-r...-folks-agree-on.html

I think his rating was prey to the fact that he only had 4 stars to work with. It'd be very difficult to give a movie a 4 star rating if that's the highest you could give, and sadly, dropping it to 3 practically makes it an average movie...that's why scales on 1-10 or even better out of a 100 are so much better...if he had nothing but good things to say about the movie my guess is he would have rated it more like mid to high 80s, maybe even low 90s, but again, with only 4 stars, unless you think the movie is perfect you have to give it a 3...and a 3 of 4 is down to 75%