It's a fun tool, a different way to find new critics, and somewhat reliable. But especially at 10, 25, and 50 films ranked (the extent to which most people will use the site), it doesn't mean much. I'll weigh in after ranking 500 and 1000 films and we'll see if it becomes more reliable.
Recommendations:
Now this is interesting. At 10 films ranked, Criticker's predicted score deviated from my actual score by 16.2 — pretty good on a 100 point scale. There are a few big deviations: the difference of 30 between my predicted score of 85 and my actual score of 55 for V for Vendetta is the difference between "loving" it and just "liking" it (with "enjoying" it in between).
The average deviation does become more accurate as more films are ranked, but it levels off after 50 at around 10, which seems reasonable enough. To use the example of V for Vendetta again, after 250 films the predicted score is now 65 (I will "enjoy" it). Not too bad.
But even more impressive is the way the size of the deviations shrinks. After 10 films, the biggest difference is 30. At 25 this falls a bit to 27, but at 50 it's only 18, and at 100 it's just 17. Throw out the aberrant difference of 34 for Silent Hill (predicted 26, actual 60) and only 5 out of 24 predicted rankings are off by more than 15 at 250 films ranked. And 4 are either exactly right (65 for Cinderella Man, 80 for In the Company of Men) or only off by 1 (78-79 for Donnie Darko, 64-63 for Citizen Ruth). That's impressive.
Conclusions:
Thus far I've collected insufficient data to conclude whether Criticker can succeed in this mission:"Criticker aims to match you with the people who share your taste in film most exactly." But I suspect most users won't rank more than 250 films, so it's fair to say that for most people, Criticker won't really fulfill this function.
But what it will do is deliver uncannily accurate predictions, based on the critics in your TCI, of what movies you will like. So, as a recommendation service, I heartily endorse it. I also endorse it as a delightful way for movie-lovers to amuse themselves if they're bored.
Notes:
Criticker will also match you with fellow-users, but I only tested the critics' option.
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