A public service announcement

You saw a 4.7.
You thought "that's an F."
You were wrong.

School taught you 47% is a failing grade. Movies are not school. On the movie guru scale, 5 is the middle. A 4.7 is a perfectly watchable Tuesday night that you will not remember by Thursday. Most movies live within a point of 5. That's the whole point. If everything is an 8, nothing is.

01
The problem

Every site scores movies out of 10 and every site means something different by it. A 7 on IMDb is average. A 7 on Rotten Tomatoes doesn't exist. A 7 from your buddy means he liked the explosions. One number, no context.

02
Score-flation

Scales drift. Nobody wants to give a 3, so the floor creeps up until "6" means "bad" and "8" means "fine." movie guru refuses. The full 1 to 10 gets used, and the average stays pinned at 5 on purpose.

03
The fix

Two numbers. The movie.guru score ranks every critic and audience score against thousands of movies and blends them, 60% audiences and 40% critics. The Guru’s Take is movie guru’s own call, shown right next to it, and never counted.

The movie guru scale: what every score means
10Rarefied AirOnce a decade. You'll tell people where you were when you saw it.Full Price, twice
9.0–9.9EliteSee it in a theater. Buy the Blu-ray you will never open.Full Price
8.0–8.9GreatBetter than almost everything. No regrets, no notes.Full Price
7.0–7.9Above AverageClearly good. Worth the trip if you like the genre.Matinee
6.0–6.9SolidA good time with no hangover. You'd recommend it with a shrug.Discount Tuesday
5.0–5.9AverageThe mathematical middle. Perfectly fine. Most movies live here and that is not an insult.Wait For Streaming
4.0–4.9Below AverageSomething's off. Watchable on a couch, not worth a drive.Wait For Streaming
3.0–3.9PoorFold laundry while it's on. You'll miss nothing.Netflix & Chillin'
2.0–2.9BadSomebody's dad still loves it. That's who it's for.Straight To DVD
1.0–1.9Rarefied Air (the other one)So bad it becomes a story. Bring friends and a drink.Bargain Bin
Right-hand column is the usual Ticket Scale pairing. movie guru can override it when a movie is way more fun in a full theater than the number suggests.
The movie.guru score: how the sausage gets made
  1. Every source gets ranked against its own history. 86% on Rotten Tomatoes beats 73% of the 2,802 notable movies released since 2000. A CinemaScore B beats about a quarter of wide releases, because opening-night crowds grade like proud parents. Nobody gets to grade on their own curve.
  2. Bigger samples count more. 400 critics outweigh 40. A movie with 500 IMDb votes is still a rumor.
  3. Audiences count 60%, critics 40%. You’re here for what people think, so the crowd gets the bigger say. But a million IMDb votes still can’t drown out every critic, and the critics still keep a hype train honest. A side with thin data counts for less until it fills in.
  4. It lands on the scale. Score = 1 + 9 × the share of movies it beats. A 7.3 beats 70% of notable movies. The median movie is a 5.5, dead center of Average.
Critics (40%)Counts
Metacritic40%
Rotten Tomatoes average rating35%
Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer25%
Audiences (60%)Counts
IMDb users25%
Rotten Tomatoes Popcornmeter25%
CinemaScore (opening night)25%
PostTrak (opening weekend)15%
TMDB users (coming)10%
movie.guru visitors (coming)10%
Shares are within each side, before sample size. Missing sources drop out and the rest scale up. Every movie page shows its own breakdown: what each source says, how many movies it beats, and how much it counted.
  • Consensus, Critics’ Pick, Crowd Pleaser Whether critics and audiences agree, or one side rates it 15+ points higher.
  • The Guru’s Take never counts. Not an input, not a weight, not a tiebreaker. The build fails if it ever sneaks in. When movie guru and the world disagree, you see both numbers and the gap on The Guru vs. the World.
Scores refresh daily from Rotten Tomatoes, Metacritic, CinemaScore and PostTrak via Wikipedia, and IMDb ratings (information courtesy of IMDb, used with permission). Calibration uses Wikidata review scores and IMDb ratings for films since 2000.
How to read a review
  • The TLDR The personality. movie guru's plot summary, written to be funny, direct and tongue in cheek. This is the part you came for.
  • The movie.guru score Everyone else, balanced: critics and audiences ranked against thousands of movies, 1 to 10, one decimal. It gets its own section right under the trailer, with every source broken down.
  • The Guru’s Take movie guru’s own number on the same scale, in its own section with the TLDR. Shown for comparison, never counted.
  • Ticket Scale What to do about it: Full Price, Matinee, Discount Tuesday, Wait For Streaming, or Wouldn't Pay Me.
  • Couch Scale How it holds up at home: Blockbuster, Rental, Netflix & Chillin', Straight To DVD, or Bargain Bin.
  • Everything else Real data. Cast, crew, release dates, box office and critic scores, pulled from public sources.
House rules
  • 5 is average, on purpose. The Guru’s Take uses the full scale with the middle at 5, and the movie.guru score is built so the median movie lands at 5.5. If everything is an 8, nothing is.
  • The whole scale gets used. Ones and tens exist. They're rare, but they're real.
  • Scores are final. No rescoring after a movie becomes cool. The TLDR is written the night movie guru sees it.
  • The Take stays out of the Score. movie guru’s opinion is the personality. The movie.guru score is the receipts. They never mix.
  • The leaderboard settles it. Top 8 of All Time is the eight highest movie.guru scores, period.