Let's get critical, critical...

I wanna get critical...

Two sites to check out if you're curious about movies, music, books, and games.

First up is Four Word Film Reviews. There are 14000 films reviewed there with classics like...

• Anastasia "Tsar Trek - Next Generation"
• Blair Witch Project "Tense. Intense. In tents."
• Best in Show "'This is Spaniel Tap.'"
• Passion of the Christ "Gory, gory, hallelujah."

Admittedly, they're not the most helpful reviews in terms of figuring out whether a movie is good or not, but it's entertaining, none the less. It will certainly include some of your favorite films.

A lot more helpful is Metacritic which takes reviews of movies, books, tv shows, games, cds, and DVDs from dozens of sources, assigns each a numerical value based on how well the reviewer liked the media item, weights each source depending on how well known and trustworthy the source is, and provides a numerical value for every item. It's a quick way to see what the critics around the country are saying about whatever you want to know. For example, you could wade through dozens of different websites to find out if the new Narnia movie is any good, or you could head to metacritic, see one page, skim a couple of lines from dozens of reviews, and see that it got a 77 out of 100 (good but not all-time great. I find myself using metacritic to get a quick snapshot of things more and more frequently.