How We Score Films, and What Each Criterion Actually Measures

A number at the top of a review is only useful if you know what produced it. Here is our methodology in full, including its limitations.

Five criteria, equally weighted

Every review scores five dimensions from 0 to 10, and the headline figure is their unweighted average. Equal weighting is a deliberate choice: any weighting scheme encodes an argument about what matters most in cinema, and we would rather make that argument in the prose than bury it in arithmetic.

Story and screenplay. Structure, pacing, dialogue, and whether the film’s own logic holds. A film can be moving and still score poorly here if it arrives at its emotion through contrivance.

Direction. Command of tone, staging, and performance. This is where we assess whether someone was making decisions, or whether the film simply happened.

Performances. Judged against the material available. A committed performance inside a weak script scores well here even when the film does not.

Music. Both the score and the songs, assessed for how they function inside the film rather than as standalone tracks. A hit song that stops the narrative dead is a problem, not an asset.

Cinematography and visuals. Framing, lighting, grade and production design. We account for budget, but not infinitely — a cheap film can be beautifully shot, and frequently is.

What the number does not capture

An average flattens. A film scoring 6.0 across the board and one scoring 9, 9, 6, 3, 3 produce similar figures and are nothing alike. The prose exists to explain the shape, and if you only read the number you are getting the least informative part of the review.

We also do not attempt cross-industry calibration. A 7 for a Punjabi mid-budget comedy is a judgement about that film against its own possibilities, not a claim that it is equivalent to a 7-rated international release.

How reviewers see the film

Every review states how the writer watched it — press screening, paid public show, festival, or screener. This appears on the review page because it is relevant to what the review is worth. A critic watching a comedy alone on a laptop is assessing something different from a critic in a full Friday-night house.

Our conflict rules

We do not accept payment for coverage. Reviewers disclose any working relationship with people involved in a film, and where the relationship is substantial, someone else reviews it.