How Our Scores Work
The Celluloid Score is our own composite rating — the average of five independent sources, shown transparently on every film page.
Take the Critic Score, Audience Score, and Metascore as-is (already 0–100). Convert the Letterboxd rating to a 0–100 scale by multiplying by 20, and the IMDb rating by multiplying by 10. Average all five, round to the nearest whole number — that's the Celluloid Score. For example: 90% + 85% + 88 + (4.2 × 20 = 84) + (8.1 × 10 = 81), averaged, rounds to an 86% Celluloid Score.
| Component | Scale | What it measures |
|---|---|---|
| Critic Score | 0–100% | Percentage of our critics who rated the film positively (6/10 or higher). |
| Audience Score | 0–100% | Percentage of everyday viewers who rated the film positively — a read on general audience reception alongside critic opinion. |
| Metascore | 0–100 | A weighted average of critic scores. 81+ is Universal Acclaim, 61–80 is Generally Favorable, 40–60 is Mixed, below 40 is Overwhelming Dislike. |
| Letterboxd Rating | 0–5 stars | A five-star average rating, with half-star precision, in the tradition of personal film-diary rating scales. Converted to a 0-100 scale by multiplying by 20. |
| IMDb Rating | 0–10 | A ten-point average rating reflecting broad, long-running audience sentiment. Converted to a 0-100 scale by multiplying by 10. |
Why average five scores instead of picking one?
No single number captures everything worth knowing about a film. A movie can be a critical favorite that general audiences find slow, or a crowd-pleaser that critics find formulaic. Averaging critic consensus, audience sentiment, and multiple rating traditions smooths out any one source's blind spots — and every component is still shown individually, so you can see exactly where the sources agree or diverge, not just the final blended number.