I've been using various movie recommendation sites for about five years. The theory behind like minds has always intrigued me, and over time I've been able to see masters of algorithms better their predicting ability. It's exciting to think that one day I'll be able to list my feelings and opinions on just about anything, and in exchange receive from a think tank a suggestion of what I will like that is dead-on correct!

The first website that I used was called moviecritic.com. It was a pioneer in the movie recommendation technology. It had a rather basic interface. Sometimes it was right; sometimes it was wrong. My main beef with it was that I felt its creators failed to see the importance of expanding their movie database, therefore their recommendations were rather limited.

I tried Netflix and Movielens next. I felt both were rather mediocre.

I used Filmaffinity for about a year. It was a big step up from the others I had used previously. Filmaffinity's interface is extremely attractive; its recommendations are more-or-less reliable. However, because it gained media exposure first in Spain, there are a lot of Spanish users. Also, Filmaffinity encourages users right from the get-go to rate a whole bunch of classic movies. The net result, recommendations are often foreign and include an annoyingly high number of classic movies.

Lately, I've discovered Criticker. I think I'm in love.

First, Criticker offers a very attractive interface. It's dressed up with plenty of bells and whistles that captivate visitors. Unlike its predecessors, it's quite apparent that this young website has the intention of developing more than a simple movie recommendation engine. With features like users' ability to write mini-reviews, reward other's reviews with a star, add buddies, and chat in a forum, Criticker aims for becoming a movie recommendation community.

The most amazing part of Criticker isn't the bells and whistles though. It's the straight-up amazingly accurate prediction of user's ratings. Sure, every now and then, it has missed my opinion of a film. However, more times than not, Criticker outright nails my rating of a movie.

When users search for a movie, Cricker pulls it up and asks have you seen it? If you click that you have indeed seen the movie, Criticker will return a prediction of how you will rate the movie. The scale is based from 0 to 100, and from my personal usage, I can attest that more times than not, Criticker comes within 5 points of how I would rate the movie.

I can't tell you how many times my jaw has dropped when, after watching a movie, I've determined a really weird rating number like "68", then have gone to Criticker to pull up the movie and have been greeted with the very same "68".

I really hope the guys at Criticker make it. They are truly deserving of success.