How We Score Films and TV: Our Full Rating Rubric
Exactly how our ten-point scores are built: the six categories we grade, the weights behind them, the tie-breakers, and what each band means.
Read article →What a 6 Out of 10 Actually Means
Readers treat a 6 as a polite failure. On our scale it is nothing of the kind: it is the score that carries the most information, and the one most worth learning to read.
Tell someone a film scored 6 out of 10 and they hear “do not bother”. That reaction is not irrational, it is learned. A decade of inflated scoring has trained everyone to read anything under a 7 as a quiet failure, which has had the effect of destroying the most useful part of the scale. On our rubric a 6 is a real recommendation with a condition attached, and learning to read it will save you more wasted evenings than any other number we publish.
What a 6 Actually Says
Our scoring runs on six weighted categories: script, performance, direction and craft, emotional effect, originality, and rewatch value. A film in the 6 band has cleared the competence bar in most of them and failed badly in at least one. That is the whole definition. It is a film that knows what it is doing, does it adequately, and has one obvious hole in it.
That hole is the information. A 6 is never vague in practice, because the only way to earn one is to be specifically good and specifically weak at the same time. A thriller with a brilliant first hour and no third act is a 6. A comedy with four excellent performances and a script that stops writing jokes halfway through is a 6. A visually stunning film with nothing underneath it is a 6. In every case a reader can tell from the category breakdown whether the weakness is one they personally care about.
Compare that to an 8, which tells you much less. An 8 means everything worked. There is no shape to it, no hook for your own taste to catch on. The scores that are genuinely actionable for an individual viewer cluster between about 5.5 and 7.4, because those are the films whose flaws are legible.
Why 6 Carries the Most Information
Think about what you actually want from a review. You are not trying to find out whether a film is objectively excellent. You are trying to decide whether to spend two hours on it tonight, with the people in the room and the mood you are in. Those are different questions, and the second one is answered by flaws rather than by quality.
A 9 is a safe bet for almost anyone, which makes it a low-information score: you learn that the film is good and nothing about your fit with it. A 3 is a clear avoid. Neither requires thought. A 6 forces the useful conversation. Is the weak element the thing you will notice? If a film loses points for a limp ending and you are the sort of viewer who forgives endings, that 6 might be your favourite film of the month. If you are the sort who remembers only the ending, skip it.
This is why our 6-band entries are the longest things we write. The number is almost inert on its own. The paragraph is the review.
The test we apply before publishing a 6
Every 6 has to come with a sentence that names the specific viewer who should watch it anyway. If we cannot write that sentence, the film is not a 6, it is a 5. A 6 means “good for someone, and here is who”. A 5 means “competently made and for nobody in particular”.
How the Aggregators Deleted the Middle
There is a structural reason the middle of the scale feels like failure, and it is not your imagination. The big public numbers have each compressed their usable range in a different way.
On a percentage system built from binary verdicts, a film every single critic calls mediocre but watchable can score very high, because the system only asks whether each review was broadly positive. A genuinely divisive masterpiece can score lower than a film nobody has strong feelings about. The percentage is a measure of consensus, not of quality, and the two come apart exactly in the middle of the range.
On large public voting sites, the pressure runs the other way. People who disliked a film mostly do not finish it and do not rate it, so the sample self-selects upward. The practical result is a distribution where the mass sits between 6.5 and 8.0 and anything under 6 reads as catastrophic. A 7.1 there is not the middle of the scale, it is the bottom third of what you will realistically encounter.
Curated critic averages behave best of the three but still inflate, because the films that get wide critical coverage are not a random sample of films. We publish our own number precisely so that the midpoint stays usable. If our average sat at 7.8, our 6 would mean what everyone already fears it means.
Inside the Band: a 6.1 Is Not a 6.9
We score to one decimal place, and inside the 6 band that decimal does more work than anywhere else on the scale. The difference is not quality in the abstract. It is how much of the film the flaw contaminates.
A 6.8 or 6.9 is a film that is genuinely good with one contained failure: a weak subplot you can ignore, a bad final scene, a miscast supporting role. The flaw sits in a box and the rest of the film carries on around it. Watch these. Most of them will be a good evening.
A 6.0 to 6.3 is a film whose flaw is structural and therefore everywhere. A thriller with no tension does not have a tension problem in act two, it has one in every scene. These are the films where you will understand the score by the halfway point and start checking your phone. They clear the competence bar on craft and performance, which is why they are not a 4, but the experience of watching them is flatter than the number suggests.
The practical shortcut: in the 6 band, read the decimal as a measure of how containable the problem is.
The Four Kinds of Six
After a few hundred of these, the 6 band sorts into four recurring shapes, and naming them is usually more useful than the number itself.
The first is the strong genre piece: a horror film, action thriller or romance that executes its formula properly and attempts nothing beyond it. It loses points on originality alone. If you came for the genre, add half a point to the score for yourself, because originality is the category you were not asking for.
The second is the collapsed ending: two excellent acts and a third that either rushes, explains itself or sets up a sequel. These are the most frustrating 6s and the most frequent. They are worth watching if you are the kind of viewer who values the ride.
The third is the beautiful empty one: superb photography, production design and score, attached to a script with nothing to say. Fine on a big screen with a drink, forgettable within a week. Add a point if you watch for craft, subtract one if you watch for story.
The fourth is the one great performance: a film that exists so that a single actor can do something remarkable, surrounded by material that cannot keep up. We score the film, not the performance, so these land in the 6 band regularly. If you follow actors rather than films, this is the kind of 6 you should always override us on.
How to Act on a 6
Three rules cover most cases. First, never read a 6 without the paragraph. The number is a filing system; the text is the recommendation. Second, check which category took the hit, then ask honestly whether you have ever walked out of a film complaining about that category. Most people have one or two things they genuinely cannot forgive and are tolerant about everything else.
Third, treat a 6 as a scheduling decision rather than a quality judgement. A 6 is a good Tuesday film. It is a bad choice for the one evening a month when everyone is together and the stakes are high, and a perfectly good choice for the evening when you want something on that you do not have to defend to anybody.
When to Trust the Number, When to Ignore It
✓Trust a 6 when
- The flaw named is one you personally notice and dislike
- You are choosing between several options with limited time
- The decimal is low, which means the problem is structural
- You want a reliable evening rather than a memorable one
✗Override a 6 when
- The points were lost on originality and you came for the genre
- You follow a specific actor or director above all else
- Craft and photography are what you watch films for
- Somebody you trust on taste has told you to watch it anyway
The Bottom Line
A 6 is a conditional yes, not a polite no
The middle of the scale is where reviews stop being decoration
If you only ever watch things scoring 8 and above you will have a pleasant and extremely narrow year. The 6 band is where a reviewer’s actual usefulness lives, because it is the only range in which the flaws are specific enough for you to overrule us on purpose. Read the number, then read the reason, then decide which of the two applies to you.
Questions About Our Scoring
Is a 6 a recommendation or not?
It is a conditional recommendation. A 6 means the film works for a clearly identifiable audience and will bore everyone else. The entry text always names that audience, which is why a 6 should never be read without the paragraph attached to it.
Why not just use a five-star scale?
Because stars force a rounding decision at exactly the point where distinctions matter most. Half a star covers a full point of our scale in the middle band, which is where the majority of films we watch actually land.
What is the average score you give?
Around 6.6 across everything we have published, which sits just above the midpoint by design. We choose what to watch, so the sample is better than a random one, but we do not inflate the band to be kind.
Does a 6 ever get revised upward later?
Occasionally, and almost always for rewatch value rather than quality. Some films that score a 6 on a first pass turn out to be better company on a second, which is a scored category in our rubric and can move a final number by a decimal or two.