An archive of Hindi movie reviews and ratings from 2010 to 2020.

FAQ

Q: So, how are the overall ratings calculated?
A: The overall rating for a given movie is simply an average of the ratings given by critics from various publications/websites.
I go through every publication/website in the publications/websites list (see below) looking for reviews for a given movie. For each review, I take the rating given by the critic and convert it to a 0-99 point scale. (For those critics who do not provide a rating, I assign a rating from 0-99 based on the general impression given by the review.). These individual critic ratings are then averaged together to come up with an overall rating.
Q. Is there an weighted average (some critics/publications getting more weightage)? Is there a normalisation of the ratings?
A: No and no. (I ain’t that good at math.)
At this point the site is meant to be a simple indicator of how a movie has been perceived amongst the top critics and to provide links to all the reviews on a single page. This might change in the future.
Q. How are the overall ratings meant to be read? What the difference between a rating of 20 and that of 68?
A: What do you think is the difference? Anyway, I am providing these phrases as an indicator.

General Meaning of Score Overall rating range
Universal acclaim 80-99
Generally favorable reviews 60-79
Mixed or average reviews 40-59
Generally unfavorable reviews 20-39
Overwhelming dislike 0-19
Q: Taran Adarsh on Bollywood Hungama gave Jail a rating of 3 stars but why the hell have you listed it as 75?
A: Well, to make the calculation of the overall rating easier, all the the critics’ ratings are converted to a 0-99 scale. It also provides an easy way to compare the individual critic ratings against one another.
If you really want to know the original rating, you can always click on the full review link and find out.
Q: What’s this conversion scale you talk about?
A: Since most (all in fact) critics use a 5-point star rating system, the conversion scale followed is:

Their rating Converts To
5 99
4.5 89
4 79
3.5 69
3 59
2.5 49
2 39
1.5 29
1 19
0.5 9
0 0
Q: I read Taran Adarsh’ review of Jail and I swear it sounded like a 88, why did you give it an 75?
A: Most critics include some sort of rating for the movie they are reviewing, whether it is on a 5-star scale, a 100-point scale, a letter grade, or other mark. However, plenty of other reviewers choose not to do this. This poses a problem for the overall rating calculation, which is based on numbers. Thus, I must assign a numeric score, from 0-99, to each review that is not already scored by the critic. Naturally, there is some discretion involved, and there will be times when you disagree with the ratings I assigned.
(However, when one reads 30 reviews film after film and reviewer after reviewer, you begin to develop a decent idea about the rating a reviewer might give.)
Q: Which critics and publications/websites are included in your ratings?
A: See the complete list of publications and critics. Additions and/or deletions to the list do happen now and then.

*Note: Some critics publish their reviews in more than one publication/website, in that case I only include one publication/website.

Q: Why don’t you have ALL reviews for every movie from ALL publications?
A: Umm.. I don’t think that is possible. Esp. since these days every Joe Schmo with a blog posts a review and rates movies.
Q: Why is Times of India included but my “Bollywood Dhamaka No.1″ website isn’t?
A: This is indeed a tough question to answer. But I can assure you that I spent considerable amount of time evaluating and researching and only then came up with a list. (I made chits and picked them out of a hat.)
Seriously though, I included publications/critics that (1) are well-regarded and known for quality reviews; (2) seemed to have quality reviews; and (3) actually had a good quantity of reviews and wrote them consistently.
Q: I don’t agree with how you go about _____ . “I can do it at home for nothing”.
A: Firstly, I actually “did it at home for nothing”. Secondly, if you have better ideas and means of going about things here, please do get in touch. (Or if you are good at math and WordPress.) I would love to know and improve. Thridly, the goal of the site is to be a simple indicator of how a movie has been perceived amongst the top critics and to provide links to all the reviews on a single page.
Q: How do you determine which movies to include on the site? How come ‘Kacchi Kali Ki Suhaag Raat’ isn’t included?
A: I include every movie that gets released nationwide and is reviewed by the publications listed above.
Q: How often is the site updated?
A: As soon as the reviews start rolling in on Friday and then every single day after that.
Q. Have you copied some of this FAQ from Metacritic?
A: Yes.
Q. Who designed the site?
A: I did. Some of it is inspired by the work of Josef Müller Brockmann.