Despite it forming no part of its basic mission statement, Amazon is one of the biggest user film review sites on the internet, offering hundreds of reviews on just about every film imaginable. And that status comes with a unique set of problems. Even if you liked Man Of Steel, you can probably agree that the majority weren't heralding it as a 5 star masterpiece. And yet as you can see on amazon.co.uk that's what its ratings suggest. There's people reacting to the haters in those 443 top marks reviews, sure, but most of it comes from overzealous people who think a film that they'd happily watch again deserves a full rating (the same is true of 1 stars - it's disproportionately bigger than 2). That's because the people writing these reviews don't need to be experienced in any form of film criticism, amateur or professional. Which is fine, but when other people are basing opinions off these compiled ratings (think of what you look at when buying a DVD), it can be pretty destructive. The same is true of IMDb, where most movies come between 6 and 8 out of 10 for the same reasons. You could argue this Metacritic and RottenTomatoes to a degree, with a skew meaning films can often sit higher than the general consensus, but with Amazon it's just impossible to tell what something's actually like.
