Ben Kudria » Weblog

I’m a big fan of great films. I try to seek out and watch those great movies that awe and inspire, that are beautiful and tragic, and those that are a work of art. And after I’ve seen them, I like to rate these movies, look for similar movies to watch, and give and receive recommendations. After searching low and high on the Internet for a site that would let me do this, I passed up several (IMDB, Flixster, and Rotten Tomatoes) I found one: Criticker.com.

Criticker.com is has all the basics: you can search and browse by film title, actor, or director. It pulls movie descriptions from IMDB, Metacritic.com, and several other sites. It includes a link to buy a DVD from Amazon, recommend the film to anyone with an email address, and they’ve very recently added a discussion board a la IMDB’s. We’ll see how that turns out. However, where Criticker.com really shines is in movie reviews. Users who sign up with Criticker.com are able to rate files on a scale from 1-100, and write short review on the movie. At this time, I’m not writing those reviews, but I’m still able to rate movies. After you rate 10 or more films, Criticker.com’s algorithm magic kicks in, and you start getting recommendations for films you might want to see. The system works by matching your set ratings with various other users on the site, and selecting films from their rated set that you might like. The algorithm is a bit in-depth, but you can read a pretty good explanation on their site. The algorithm computes a TCI (Taste Compatibility Index) for other users to indicate how much your film tastes match, and a PSI (Probable Score Indicator) for unwatched movies, to indicate to you how much the system thinks you would like a particular films.

You can view a full set of recommendations, or view a list of suggestions restricted by genre, year, or both. There is functionality to ‘remember’ films for later, I use this to keep track of films I haven’t seen, but would like to see. Finally, there is some basic social networking functionality, you can have your friends join the site and invite them to be your ‘Kumpel’ (German for “buddy” or “comrade”).

Criticker.com also doesn’t hold your data hostage. They have RSS feeds, and sometimes XML, HTML, and Plain Text exports of anything you might imagine. I used an RSS feed to create the list of rated movies you see in my right sidebar (more on how this was created in a future post), and I plan to use an RSS feed to fold in my film reviews into the ‘Asides’ section of this site.

Criticker.com has a bunch of great features, but I do have some grievances. Their website interface is rough in a few places, but they have just gone through a major redesign, so it is understandable. I sent an email to their contact address, and receiving a prompt reply from one of the creators of the site. I’ve seen improvements in the site since, and I’m excited to follow the progress of the site and the unveiling of new features on Criticker’s Blog. However, I still find myself using my second-choice website, IMDB. IMDB has more in-depth information about a film, including runtime, rating, an actor-character table (Criticker.com has only a list of actors) interesting trivia and goofs, and a sometimes-helpful FAQ. IMDB’s discussion forums are mostly cesspools of idiots, but there are occasionally interesting discussions. I hope Criticker.com’s discussion system does a bit better.

Finally, here is my information: my list of rated movies, my list of remembered films, and my profile page. Why not join Criticker.com and see some great films?