Metacritic is an Internet website that collates reviews of music albums, games, movies, TV shows, DVDs and books. For each product, a numerical score from each review is obtained and the total is averaged. An excerpt of each review is provided along with a hyperlink to the source. Three color codes of Green, Yellow and Red summarize the critic's recommendation. This gives an idea of the general appeal of the product among reviewers and, to a lesser extent, the public.

Many review websites give a review grade out of five, out of ten, out of a hundred, or even an alphabetical score. Metacritic converts such a grade into a percentage. For reviews with no explicit scores (for example, Amazon's reviews), Metacritic manually assesses the tone of the review before assigning a relevant grade. Metacritic also gives bias to the reviews of magazines such as Rolling Stone, and hence reviews from these publications have a marginally greater influence on the average.

Metacritic was founded in 1999, and in August of 2005 was acquired by CNET.

All-time high and low scores

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Albums

• Brian Wilson – Smile (97/100)
• Loretta Lynn – Van Lear Rose (97/100)
• Led Zeppelin – How the West Was Won (97/100)
• OutKast – Stankonia (95/100)
• Various artists – A Brazilian Revolution In Sound (93/100)

The Bloodhound Gang's Hefty Fine and Limp Bizkit's Results May Vary currently share the dubious honour of having the lowest scores (30/100).

Films

• The Godfather 1972 (100/100)
• Lawrence of Arabia (re-release) 2001 (100/100)
• Au Hasard Balthazar (re-release) 2003 (100/100)
• The Conformist (re-release) 2005 (100/100)
• Fanny and Alexander (re-release) 2004 (100/100)
• The Leopard (re-release) 2004 (100/100)
• Sweet Smell of Success (re-release) 2002 (100/100)
• Superman II 1989 (99/100)
• Dr Strangelove 1964 (96/100)
• Pulp Fiction 1994 (94/100)
• The Manchurian Candidate 1962 (94/100)

Bio-Dome holds the honour of lowest scoring movie (1/100).

Video games

• Ocarina of Time Nintendo 64 1998 (99/100)

*As of June 2006

Metacritic's best of 2005

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Movies

1. The Best of Youth (89/100)
2. Capote (88/100)
3. Nobody Knows (88/100)
4. The Curse of the Were-Rabbit (87/100)

Music

1. Sufjan Stevens - Illinois (90/100)
2. My Morning Jacket - Z (89/100)
3. Isolee - Wearemonster (88/100)

Books

1. David B. - Epileptic (92/100)
2. Uzodinma Iweala - Beasts of No Nation (90/100)
3. Hilary Spurling - Matisse The Master (90/100)

Video games

MetaCritic doesn't have a single list for 2005 because games usually don't come out on all systems. Resident Evil 4 won for the PlayStation 2 and GameCube, Ninja Gaiden Black was #1 for Xbox while Civilization IV had the honour of being the best game for PC.

External links

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• Metacritic
• CNET

Entertainment websites | Film criticism | Film critics | Film websites | Online databases | CNET websites | 1999 establishments

Metacritic