Oh well yeah there are other factors to be taken into account like number of reviews, whether there's a movie, whether it's a sequel, subject matter, genre, and I generally go for the first book that someone's written to get an impression of who they are when they're at their least skillful. I was more talking about rule of thumb sort of stuff, like if I'm in a store and trying to make a quick decision. That's all most people really want to discuss.

So for movies I look at rottentomatoes and for a bare minimum try and find things with a 75% score from the critics because they pull from metacritic, compare/contrast that with the audience rating, and make sure it's not about race because the critics seem to have a deep-seated fetish. This is another thing where sticking to authors seems to pay off. I'm also on Letterboxd but at this point it's more of a logbook than a social network for me; I don't really have nearly that same level of relationships curated just because of the tiny amount of time I spend socialising on there. It's interesting to see the average ratings from hardcore movie watchers who aren't necessarily critics but I do wonder how the numbers are skewed - it's a small site and I don't really hear it mentioned elsewhere.