Sawyer Petrick is an aspiring screenwriter based in New York City. During his time as a writer with Whole Picture Films, Sawyer Petrick wrote and consulted on scripts for web series and feature films. When he is not writing scripts, he enjoys reading film reviews.
Metacritic is an entertainment review website that draws on reviews from respected film critics around the world. Several aspects of the Metacritic methodology are subjective, such as assigning numerical scores to reviews and using formulas to produce a weighted average score. The result is a single number that reflects the general critical consensus, ranging from zero to 100.
Nine films have achieved a perfect 100 on Metacritic, though there are several caveats that should be noted. To start, Metacritic heavily favors older films. Boyhood and Three Colors: Read, released in 2014 and 1994, respectively, are the only top ranked movies released after 1972.
Furthermore, many of the older films ranked by Metacritic barely meet the four-review minimum required by the site: Tokyo Story, the No. 1 overall movie on the site, has just 18 reviews. By comparison, Boyhood’s perfect score is based on 50 critic reviews. Popular mainstream films, such as Avengers: Endgame, carry even more reviews, making it more difficult to maintain a perfect rating.
Finally, Metacritic only polls a selection of film critics. Boyhood has 336 critic reviews on the film review website Rotten Tomatoes, plus more than 50,000 audience ratings. When expanding the Metacritic list of top reviewed films to movies that scored a 99 with critics, the same trends are apparent: Moonlight, released in 2016, is the only modern film, with movies like Charlie Chaplin’s City Lights scoring a 99 with only 15 reviews.
