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Real Moviegoers Don't Care About Rotten Tomatoes
In a recent essay published on the Hollywood Reporter, Martin Scorsese inveighs against two conjoined trends -- the widespread reporting of box-office results and the grading of movies by consumers on CinemaScore and by critics on Rotten Tomatoes -- and blames it for "a tone that is hostile to serious filmmakers." In particular, he contends that this hostile environment is worsening "as film criticism written by passionately engaged people with actual knowledge of film history has gradually faded from the scene." Richard Brody, a movie critic at the New Yorker, thinks Scorsese is missing the mark. He writes: I think that film criticism is, over all, better than ever, because, with its new Internet-centrism, it's more democratic than ever and many of the critics who write largely online are more film-curious than ever. Anyone who is active on so-called Film Twitter -- who sees links by critics, mainly younger critics, to his or her work -- can't help but be impressed by the knowledge, the curiosity, and the sensibility of many of them. Their tastes tend to be broader and more daring than those of many senior critics on more established publications. And, even if readers of the wider press aren't reading these more obscure critics, the critics whom general readers read are often reading those young critics (and if they're not, it shows). This is, of course, not universally so, any more than it ever was. The Internet is democratic in all directions -- it's also available to writers of lesser knowledge, duller taste, and dubious agendas, and it may be their work that's advertised most loudly -- but the younger generation of critics is present online and there for the finding. [...] What Scorsese doesn't exactly say, but what, I think, marks a generation gap in movie thinking that his essay reflects, is the appearance of an increasing divide between artistically ambitious films and Hollywood films -- the gap between the top box-office films and the award winners. For filmmakers ready to work on lower budgets, the gap is irrelevant. The filmmakers whose conceptions tend toward the spectacular are the ones whose styles may, literally, be cramped by shrinking budgets -- filmmakers such as Scorsese and Wes Anderson, whose work has both an original and elaborate sense of style and a grand historical reach.
is hostile to consumers.
I have no idea what represents a positive outcome on that site.
I go there, expecting negativity, to find out what's rotten. I expect a golf score, where lower is better: less rotten.
I get there, it tells me things are fresh. 75% fresh. WTF? I never asked for this. I asked for a review of what's rotten.
*closes window*
That's why there are tons of shitty movies with tons of shitty sequels.
A good review isn't one that says if a movie is good or shit. It's not necessarily one that explains why a particular movie is good or shit. A good review is one that gives me a fair chance to judge beforehand whether or not I am likely to enjoy the movie. I'm finding such reviews amongst the writings of more "serious" reviewers as well as punters on IMDB or Rotten Tomatoes. Overall I'd say the availability of amateur reviews has helped me.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
That's a rotten thing to say about tomatoes.
Moviegoers have plenty of things to do with their time and many of them don't want to waste their time on crappy movies. For me nearly every movie with a very bad rotten tomato score (below 30%) is not worth going to the theater. I may rent it later but it isn't going to get $30-$40 from me. On top of that, there are plenty of movies which could be interesting but I'll wait for the reviews before going to the theater. Right now movies like Jumanji, Blade Runner, and Ready Player One are in that category for me. If they can get 70%+ scores I'll take another look, but otherwise I'll wait for the rental.
Bad rotten tomato scores are kind of like a resume with a lot of misspelled words when you have 1000 resumes to go through. It's a good initial filter criteria.
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
Uh, it's the other way around: review sites are so glutted with astroturfing and paid reviews on the part of the studios that the services are useless to filmgoers (this could be argued for ALL crowdsourced review sites, in fact). People leave poorer reviews than they might ordinarily to try to balance things out. Studios are also focus-grouping modern films to DEATH (Disney is easily the worst offender). They aren't even attempting to tell stories anymore. They are interested in pushing an agenda and raking in as many dollars as possibele, that's it. It doesn't matter if anyone remembers a film in five years if it made a billion dollars its opening weekend. Why is anyone surprised most people dont't want to willingly subject themselves or their $$$ to any of that? Hollywood has shot ITSELF in the foot, and yes, the few quality film makers that remain are suffering as a result. Any other explanation is pure bollocks, I have zero sympathy for the entertainment industry, and I will not give them my money.
When the marketing budget for a $200M blockbuster is $400M, Rotten Tomatoes doesnâ(TM)t noticeably influence much the box office...
Anyway, box office results are accurately predictable by analyzing the trailer trends. This helps to contain marketing costs if the movie is gonna be a flop. So total spending is $200M + $50M instead of $200M + $400M and then just move on. Thatâ(TM)s probably how it happened with Blade Runner 2049, which I havenâ(TM)t seen yet...
Zero fucks were given about critics
--
Hey Hollywood, stop making the same shit over again
If 30 critics out 40 hate something that is a BIG clue!
I have a real hatred of the media's obsession with 'record box office takings' because cinema ticket prices are always going up. I want to know the bums on seats for an opening weekend... how MANY people go to see a movie. I don't want to be reminded of the profit they're making out of me!
Even guys like you need to either adapt, or die.
#DeleteChrome
I didn't find a thing to support it in the summary or a skim of the rather ponderous article. Perhaps "real moviegoers" is Scorsese's shorthand for the rapidly diminishing population who will continue to just show up at the theater and pay for whatever slop is served up that particular week?
I do refuse to go to movies with low scores, and more importantly, I use it to discover movies with a high score that I was unaware of.
It's how I find Indie films to watch.
Maybe I'm part of the elite.
Or maybe the shmucks that dislike rotten tomatoes have no idea what they are talking about.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
Watch the trailer and see if the summary makes sense. Read some of the comments with a little bit more salt then you can make a fairly good decision to watch or not to watch a movie.
Return the bells of Balangiga.
Back 'then', when I was a kid, you saw the ad and decided if you wanted to see the movie. There was no Internet for public discussion, so if the movie wasn't awesome there was no word of mouth (good or bad).
That's how I got fooled into seeing Project X, a decent drama about military animal testing. What it wasn't was the hilarious comedy with the star of Ferris Bueller in it that it was marketed as.
When you see movie industry types bitching about reviews these days, they're not complaining about the substance of the reviews, but their ability to stop you from being fooled into going to a movie you wouldn't go to if you were adequately informed.
Two words: Fuck them.
You simply need to know the schedule of movie releases in the USA
Used to be in June but now the summer movie season starts around late April or May, usually after the state testing season is over in schools. Big loud and dumb movies kids like. Kind of like The Transformers mixed in with fun stuff like Guardians of the Galaxy.
Late summer is the summer bombs like Dark Tower. The studios know when they have a bomb on their hands and time the release to match. And a mix of kids movies in August that will never make the kind of money as they big stuff like Transformers or Avengers. Sausage Party was excellent though, just not a fit for the summer blockbusters.
September and October is intelligent sci-fi season. The Martian, Interstellar and Blade Runner
Christmas is Oscar and kids movies to get the winter vacation money. Good quality stuff.
V-day is date movies and the lower end comic book movies like Hell Boy
Post New Year Winter is home to the crappy horror movies and the rest of the year is crap for tax losses. The studios know its crap, but some revenue is better than none.
If you know this schedule, you don't need a critic to tell you what kind of movie you're going to get
If it gets high critic score and a lower audience score, I know it's more of a cerebral film.
If it gets high critic score and high audience score, I know it's going to be a really good film.
If it gets low critic score and a high audience score, I know it's going to be a popcorn flick: entertainment
If it gets low critic score and low audience score, I know I can safely pass and not think too much about it; maybe catch it on prime.
This is not 100% all the time, but it seems to hold the great majority of the time.
Scorsese is generally wrong. People go to movies to see something entertaining, not (for the most part) study how well it was constructed. Nearly no one cares about the 'art of film" or whatever other pompous nonsense they talk to each other about. Critics who base their reviews and evaluation on what grade someone might get at film school are completely missing the boat. That's why no one pays any attention to them.
Scorsese has made plenty of movies people wanted to see, but you have to wonder if that was accidental, given his thought process. Or maybe he has lost sight of the end goal, 2 hours of entertainment (as opposed to an exercise of technical prowess).
If he wants to make movies for other film school grad or NY critics, then fine, but don't whine about the fact that most people don't care about it. From a artistic standpoint, "Star Wars" is a piece of crap, with terrible acting, cliche' plot that would have fit about as well in a B Western, and an entirely predictable ending. Oh, and it was not too far from a scene-by-scene remake of "The Hidden Fortress", so also not original. But people liked it because it has cool (astonishing for the time) effects and a lot of spaceships blowing each other up. People go to watch "Weekend at Bernie's" because its stupid but funny. No one cares it he shot a scene day-for-night or uses the same framing techniques as Kurosawa in Yojimbo.
If someone want to go to study the artistic value of a movie, fine, no on is stopping them. And no one (except the people who want to make money by providing entertainment for entertainments sake) is preventing anyone from making those movies. But it is foolish to expect that such self-indulgence made for other film buffs is going to get a high rating or make money from the general public. Rotten Tomatoes is telling you what people actually want to see, crappy or not from perspective of the overblown craft of moviemaking.
I'm not sure what a "real moviegoer" is, but I don't care about what ratings RT gives to movies when I'm trying to decide if one is worth my time or not. The ratings are useless.
The reason is because it's 100% a subjective call. The only people whose opinions are important are those people whose tastes resemble mine.
Everyone need to study the entire history of film to understand why "The Emoji Movie" was a pile of crap because clearly we aren't competent to judge things on our own without that knowledge.
I agree with this movie critic for sure. I used to be an avid Rotten Tomatoes review scourer and I stopped doing it, but not for a lot of the reasons that critic outlined, except for the general term of: the internet.
Rotten Tomatoes, to me, turned into yet another platform for everyone to try and stand on to write the best blog-vlog-journalistic-thesaurus-oozing cute-and-clever one-liner with a very binary representation: to tell me how amazing and awesome an average movie really was or to shit on it on in epic proportions to get some head turning attention. That's it.
It just started to be less of a trusted second opinion and more of a flap-jack race for people to get a word out on a platform. Not using or reading RT has turned my life back into my younger adult years of the 90's: I watched or caught a trailer, and next and only decision was: is this prime-time evening price worth or matinee? After that, if it sucked, then it sucked. If it was average, it was average. If it exceeded my expectations, I bought the VHS/DVD/Blu-ray or streaming copy (now).
See also https://entertainment.slashdot.org/story/17/09/12/0459238/rotten-tomatoes-scores-dont-correlate-to-box-office-success-or-woes-research-shows
They very much in fact, do care.
The question remains, will the remaining die-hard movie fans who don't care about endless sequels and superhero flicks be enough to keep Hollywood and the US box office afloat?
I doubt it and Hollywood will continue to pander to China making their US existence far more irrelevant.
Martin Scorsese inveighs against two conjoined trends -- the widespread reporting of box-office results and the grading of movies by consumers on CinemaScore and by critics on Rotten Tomatoes -- and blames it for "a tone that is hostile to serious filmmakers." In particular, he contends that this hostile environment is worsening "as film criticism written by passionately engaged people with actual knowledge of film history has gradually faded from the scene.
Translation: "Serious film makers shouldn't have to care about whether or not their film appeals to anyone or makes money and anyone who isn't a film history major shouldn't be allowed to criticize my work because they are unworthy."
"Hostile to serious filmmakers"? What a joke. Just because you can't make money on a shit film anymore isn't our problem. Just because nobody wants to fund your risky art house film isn't our problem. Knowledge of film history is utterly irrelevant in determining whether or not a film is worth seeing. Popularity does not necessarily equal quality but it cannot be denied that there is a strong correlation. Rotten Tomatoes isn't the end-all-be-all of movie evaluation but it is useful information. If a movie gets a 13% on Rotten Tomatoes I'm probably going to skip seeing it in a theater. If a narcissistic director cannot handle that business reality then that isn't my problem.
Much like a lot of professionals there is a disconnect between them and the average guy.
Critics watch movies all the time, and are use to digging them apart and the begin to realize what they like and dislike, and as time goes on they get more picky.
Just like a Wine Connoisseur. As the average guy knows if he liked or disliked a wine, but wouldn't be able to tell them apart. the Wine Connoisseur has learned to tell the differences, so a wine they may had liked decades back is now poor to him, because of that one undertone that they have caught on to.
The same with movies, a plot hole, or a poorly made character would have gone unnoticed to the average movie goer because they got distracted by the shiny thing going on, or just comprehending a major plot and not realizing the sub plot.
There are some movies that I rather enjoyed because of the problems a critic had pointed out. Often because they were expecting more depth in the movie, while I just wanted a way to have a rompin good time for the next 2 hours.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
I use Rotten Tomatoes as a general barometer of "How much more should I investigate such-and-such film?" If the rating is high, I will devote more attention to reading reviews, looking at plot, getting a better idea of whether or not I should spend money on a ticket. If the rating is low, I will devote resources accordingly. Sometimes, I have missed a few good movies this way, but overall, by using Rotten Tomatoes in this way, I haven't really had a huge dud at the movies in over five years.
I don't think you can use Rotten Tomatoes as a straight X/10 rating, it's simply a barometer of "How many people who like film and make money doing so liked this film?"
For reference, my favorite movie of all time has a 58% on Rotten Tomatoes. It's barely "Not Fresh", but that doesn't change how accidentally brilliant the film is or how much I like it and its resonance with me personally.
Other movies I've rated a 10/10 have the following ratings on Rotten Tomatoes: 97%, 94%, 94%, 60%, 98%, 78%, 68%, 94%, 91%, 97%.
As you can see, basically everything I considered "Perfect" is "Fresh" except for my favorite film.
One last note on Rotten Tomatoes: Because it aggregates critic reviews based on theatrical releases, it can't account for movies like Kingdom of Heaven (39% Rotten Tomatoes score) that drastically improved when the Director's Cut was released on home video.
Mostly to decide if something is worth downloading to watch at home.
Most of the trailers lately seem to want to give away everything about a movie. If it's a new movie, I tend to ignore the trailers.
Critics, as a rule, don't like movies. Stop paying attention to their score on Rotten Tomatoes. Simple.
The other score, the popcorn score, is for us general plebs. You know, the score for people that like movies.
I use Rotten Tomatoes, but look at both the Critic and the User scores. For example, the new movie The Foreigner... when I saw the trailer, hands-down I was going to see this at the theater. Right now RT shows 53% (rotten) on Critics score but 79% (fresh) on User score. Movie goers seems to like it but it's not a critics dream. These usually appeal to me (action,etc.) more than the high critic scores. When the User score is rotten and the critic is fresh, it's probably some artsy bullshit that may not be worth the time. Anyway, RT is just another set of data to consider in making a decision if you haven't already made up your mind.
I will watch movies with low scores if I want to see them, because I sometimes like what others don't, and hate what others love.
As you said though, I will find new things to watch by sorting them by high ratings, and reading some of the reviews. That doesn't guarantee I will watch it though, it only gives me a starting point. But, I may be unique in that I don't go to the theater**. I look for movies to add to my Netflix DVD queue. So by the time I am looking, there are plenty of reviews on the movie.
** in the last 4 years the only movie I have seen in the theater was Logan, but only because I took a day off work and my wife and I went to see it. I just don't like the normal movie theater experience, and don't understand that need to see a movie as soon as it comes out.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
I honestly can't think of a single movie I've seen in the theater in the last 5 years that I thought was worth going to the theater for. That's why I rarely go to the theater anymore.
Not being disrespectful but I think that says more about you than it does about the movies. I totally get that movies in general might not be your particular brand of vodka and that's fine. But there are good movies out there (yes within the last 5 years) which are fun for many of us to see in a theater. Maybe you feel the same way about movies that I do about live music concerts. Even live music that I acknowledge is very well done rarely holds my interest for long and so it's not really worth the effort to me. It's not that it is objectively bad or that I don't appreciate it on some level but it just isn't a form of entertainment that interests me greatly. Just my personal taste. I suspect you feel the same way about movies and there isn't anything wrong with that unless you extrapolate that to how you think other people should feel about them.
I looked at the Bladerunner 2048 Reviews on Saturday after the premiere, looks like a TON of canned 5-star reviews, overly verbose not really saying anything about watching the movie, but just how great the movie is, or the importance of the movie. Then there were the opposite one and no pointers, who wrote not again about the movie but how bad the movie was. In there if you read a bit you could find snippets of actual reviews where people mention the plot development form the original, characters, scenes etc.
"Enjoy what you're doing! If it becomes drudgery, you're doing it wrong!" - Jim Butterfield
Just like a Wine Connoisseur. As the average guy knows if he liked or disliked a wine, but wouldn't be able to tell them apart. the Wine Connoisseur has learned to tell the differences, so a wine they may had liked decades back is now poor to him, because of that one undertone that they have caught on to.
You might have chosen a different example because wine tasting is complete BS and has been repeatedly shown to be so in all sorts of studies. So called wine experts are routinely anything but experts and are easily revealed as such. They often cannot tell the difference between "good" and "bad" wines under any sort of rigorous scrutiny. Very similar to audiophiles who like to pretend they can hear things the rest of us cannot.
One thing I wish RT would do is make it easier to see "top movies" by audience score. Maybe have the rotten/fresh icon for critics and a separate "thumbs up / thumbs down" icon for audience score. Then again, it's much easier for the mob to "game" audience scores, so I understand why they're reluctant.
Except maybe the extras.
As corporations and republicans squeeze the middle class out of existence, Hollywood is going to find that 2% of the population can't see as many movies as 50% of the population.
$15 movies are ridiculous. $7 perhaps.
Time for hollywood to be reduced to subnormal salaries like the rest of middle america.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
I don't concern myself with movie reviews. Why would I? Someone else likes it or doesn't like it - what do I care? Most people like shit that I would never even consider watching. Besides which - a movie goes basically $10/ticket (or so). I'm not going to do a whole lot of research or have much nervousness about whether or not to spend a lousy $10. If a movie "seems interesting" enough to overcome the reasons NOT to go to the movies, then I will go see it. What kills your movie is the movie theater experience. The worst part of the whole thing is the TOTALLY INCONSIDERATE AUDIENCE that I have to watch the movie with, if I go see it in a theater. Honestly, that is the biggest barrier. Second, the sound is always TOO FUCKING LOUD. But hey, I guess with all the motherfuckers talking through the whole movie, it needs to be. Anyway, until those two things are fixed (and they never will be), it will be rare for a movie to be attractive enough for me to go see it in a theater, at any price. Reviewing my Fandago purchases, here is my recent movie-going history, along with my simple review: July 2017: Planet of the Apes. Best sci-fi movie I have seen in a long time. Jan 2017: Rouge I. Good movie, 2nd best in the entire franchise. Dec 2016: Dr. Strange. OK. Pretty much as per expectation. June 2016: X-Men. Sucked. Pretty much as per expectation. May 2016: Captain America. OK. Pretty much as per expectation. Dec 2015: Force Awakens. Sucked. Badly. Refund, please? Nov 2015: Hunger Games: OK. Pretty much as per expectation. Nov 2015: James Bond. Sucked. Badly. Refund, please? As for Scorsese....I like his movies. Virtually all of them. Among the best things out there to watch - absolutely. However, there is no reason to see them in a movie theater. Absolutely NONE. He makes serious movies. You can't watch those with a movie theater audience and expect to enjoy them. I will, however, gladly watch them at home.
Scorsese has a lot in common with Weinstein, they both can't handle the new way of doing business and have long since lost touch with their fan base. Fans and women have more of a voice in popular culture than before and all of a sudden both our heros of old can't keep peddling the same crap with impunity anymore. This is just black lash from the old guard losing their place in modern Hollywood.
...only *I* am right. I can't tell you the number of times when either the critics or audiences (or both) loved something and I hated it. Chief among this is The Force Awakens, which is a prequel-tier piece of trash. The same goes for most superhero films.
Rotten Tomatoes shares the same office in Beverly Hills with Fandango, who is owned by NBC/Universal, who is owned by Comcast. Rotten Tomatoes is a shit subsidiary not worth the cubes they occuy. They are conscious of the fact they are not relevant.
an offspring of B5 Whitestar and SG Ori Ship.
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
Online movie reviews have saved many people from the awful disappointment of a bad movie.
There are some movies that are only worth seeing on DVD or cable/streaming, if at all.
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
With ticket prices being what they are, I use RT to get an idea of the value of actually going to the theater, not whether I will see a movie at all. There are plenty of low scoring movies that I've enjoyed at home, but would probably have a lower opinion of if the wife and I had forked over $40 or $50 and spent an evening out of it.
Between "professional" reviewers that don't dare to pan an atrocious movie because they fear the social shitstorm, astroturfing studios and people who don't give a shit about the movie being good or bad because it doesn't fit into their world view and that's why it's horrible (or because it caters to it and that's why it has to be stellar), all of them trying to out-do each other with "it's the greatest movie of all times" or "it's the worst trash since the invention of cinema" on a movie that is essentially "meh".
I guess everyone knows by now what I'm talking about, so I'll just close here. tl;dr version: It might work for simple Michael Bay movies that have no "message" but as soon as there is one, just ignore RT and find out for yourself.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
In the past, reviews by film critics held undue influence over ticket sales because regular people couldn't write reviews. They had to rely on reviews in newspapers and magazines to decide which films to see. Only occasionally getting word of mouth at the water cooler. In other words, regular people were tricked into seeing movies which critics liked, but which general audiences might not like.
With the advent of unlimited phone plans, then cell phones, and now the Internet, word of mouth among regular people can now compete with the widespread distribution of publications by critics. And people's decision for what to see has been corrected to weigh the opinion of critics (who are a tiny, tiny subset of the population) in proportion to their representation of the population. Meaning not very much. Most people see the movies their friends and like-minded individuals say they liked, not what the critics liked. In other words, it's not that critics are losing influence per se, it's that they're losing influence they never should've had in the first place (for the purposes of selling movies to the mass market).
This is really the same thing that's been happening to almost everything. Unix/Linux gurus like certain functionality, configurability, and usability from an OS. But the mass market prefers something much more simplified without so many options (or in Apple's case, almost no options). Gearheads like to tweak their car's engine components and ECM to get more or different performance out of it. But the mass market prefers something that reliably turns on every morning and gets them to work and back every day. Professional and semi-pro photographers collect thousands of dollars worth of camera equipment so they can take specific types of photos under nearly every possible circumstance. But the mass market prefers something small and cheap that they can use to take selfies.
The same thing is now happening with movies. The only difference was that due to an unusual and temporary confluence of publicity by the mass media (newspapers and magazines), the movie aficionado and director used to be able to sell their expensive wares to a much wider audience that would be possible if said audience (the mass market) were properly informed of what the rest of the audience really liked. This is now correcting itself. Directors and critics can still make and review finely crafted films for each other, just like gearheads hold events, Linux gurus have open source projects, and photographers have their own exhibitions and specialty websites. But they're not going to get the ticket sales they got in the past. If they want ticket sales, they're going to have to make movies which appeal to the mass market, not to the specialist expert in their field like themselves.
If movies go the way photography has gone, studio-produced films are going to become just a trickle, a tiny segment of the market. Amateur productions, including films and shorts made for YouTube, which appeal to highly specialized segments of the market are going to come to dominate. One of my friends is a YouTube millionaire. She stumbled (literally) upon the market for parents wanting entertaining but educational videos for their young kids to watch. She uploaded her first video in the hopes a PBS station exec would see it and hire her to make the series. But it turned out to be so popular with parents that she was able to take the ad revenue from that first video and produce the entire series herself. And now her small-time studio with a few dozen employees produces these videos for "release" on YouTube, and being paid with ad revenue. That's the future of film-making. Very diversified and specialized, with less room for the big studios churning out blockbusters.
I think that film criticism is, over all, better than ever, because, with its new Internet-centrism, it's more democratic than ever
Being democratic doesn't make something good or correct. In fact, it often has the opposite effect. The vast majority of people are not experts in every field. In fact, the majority of people have less than average aptitude in any specific field. Making film criticism, or anything else that benefits from specific knowledge or experience, more "democratic" makes it objectively worse.
I'm no fan of Scorsese. Honestly, the best thing he's ever done is Bad (MJ's music video). http://www.imdb.com/name/nm000...
That said, Scorsese is correct. But he's only speaking out because the internet has allowed people who don't suck the anuses of Hollywood elites to voice their opinion. People and the internet absolutely should be hostile and critical of Hollywood and its products. Everything is fucking shit and has been for a while, yet they want to charge more, cater films to Chinese audiences, squeeze out the theaters showing their films, sue everyone for piracy of works that should be in the public domain or that they already own but can't use on a certain device, etc..
Note: I wrote this without having noticed that Richard Brody was mentioned in the story submission.
Here's my personal calibration of Tomatoes:
_5 95-100___superb
_4 90-95____great
_3 85-90____good
_2 80-85____weak
_1 60-80____meh
_0 30-60____double meh
-1 _0-30____barrel bottom
If I had to engage in a Netflix-style 1-5 rating system (triple meh), then these would be my assigned numerical scores.
Since I agree with Tomatoes about half the time, I would lump 50% of all movies with a score less than 80 on Tomatoes into my "1" bucket , which would encompass everything from beyond terrible to pleasant (but shallow) time wasters.
I have a list of 600 movies I've previously seen, and close to another 400 on deck. Around 75% of my combined lists would score 3 or better on the system above.
I know there are plenty of worthwhile movies (to my own taste) scored by Tomatoes between 40 and 70 percent. The problem is that the filtering gets way harder, and I've got no shortage of options on deck less shrouded in doubt.
Here's a piece of criticism I read recently which I thought was first rate:
The Astonishing Power of "The Master" by Richard Brody
And here's Brody elevating himself to such a high register, I can barely follow his argument:
"Frances Ha" and the Pursuit of Happiness
These are both movies I've watched recently, movies that don't settle into the mind easily, which is more likely to send me scurrying back to Tomatoes to plum various reviews than when I picked the movie in the first place.
Last night we finished The Reader, yet another movie packed with WFT? moments, though in The Reader these "moments" sometimes stretched into dreary 15-minute long siestas. I can usually tell what I really think by whether I read all the green splats or all the red tomatoes first (confirmation bias as dowsing rod FTW). For The Reader I read the splats first. Case closed.
Here's the very last review I read before landing upon this thread:
Roger Ebert on The Fountain
So, the gutted carcass of what might have been a challenging, engrossing film, which—for someone who is not a professional critic—probably requires one pass for all the complex parsing, and then another pass to imagine the movie it was really trying to be. That's a big investment. A
At least Rotten Tomatoes still has user discussions, unlike IMDB, which trashed them for no better reason than California's "no age disclosure" nonsense.
Being Slashdot, I didn't read the article. I go to the movie theater to watch movies so I assume I am a real moviegoer. But, I do care about rotten tomatoes. I see almost every movie that scores above 90 on rotten tomatoes. Any movie that scores below 90 that I'm interested in I watch on my laptop after it's released.
I don't concern myself with movie reviews. Why would I?
WHAT A JOKE!!!
Planet of the Apes. Best sci-fi movie I have seen in a long time
but of course the rest of us simply MUST consider YOUR review
I have no idea how the movie will turn out, but the book Ready Player One was a pastiche of geek culture references from the 80s and lists of geek culture references from the 80s. It also featured characters with all of the depth of a cardboard cutout -- actually, on balance I think that's insulting to cardboard cutouts. If the RPO movie is better than the Dungeons and Dragons movie, then it can only be by heroic virtue on the part of the scriptwriters; the book should be avoided at all costs.
Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
He hasnt made a decent movie since Casino
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
I generally ignore the critics score and use the audience score to see if I want to go to the theater to see a movie. But, the audience score has to be above 85 before I even think about going to see the movie in a theater. I might rent a movie with a audience score of 80. Now I am going to Bladerunner with it audience score of 82, but someone else is paying. And I want to see it. The last movie that I went to a theater and paid to watch was GotG V.2 Then I liked Winter's Bone with a higher critic score than audience and that score (75) was lower than my minimum. And there is Once with another high (97) critic score but with a audience score of 91. Guess what I am trying to say is that one has to rely multiple opinions to decide wether you are going to a theater or wait for a digital release or to even see it.
Passionately Indifferent
... and the first episode was pretty bad.
Secondly, McFarlane is a dreadful actor and his 1st officer likewise.
Thirdly, you're probably a sci-fi fan, in which case you're biased.
"... Martin Scorsese inveighs against two conjoined trends ..."
This is Slashdot. You can't go saying things like that around here; no one will have a fucking clue what you're trying to say.
I vaguely remember Rotten Tomatoes as being one of those old sites that have been around since the early days of the internet, but it's not until I've recently read about some Hollywood people complaining about it being responsible for their claimed misfortunes that I would ever have considered it having *any* impact on anyone's movie-going decisions.
If you want to entice me to go see your movie, put together a decent trailer and - most importantly - a decent movie. I don't let critics make my decisions for me as, obviously, tastes vary. It's really that simple.
I'm just not laughing. Sometimes things that are not funny feel like they should be funny. So before you speak or post, consider if you would even laugh at your own joke. People will get less tired of hearing you and your post quality will go way up!!
Keep up the good work kiddo I know you can do it!!!
Of course it is relevant. A good film critic should not only tell you whether a film is worth seeing, but can tell you why, and what other films you might enjoy if you enjoy this one (or what films succeed where this one fails).
You don't need to a deep knowledge of film history to know why a film is worth seeing any more than you need to be a professional musician to know if you like a piece of music. You merely need to be able to watch the movie and articulate your feelings about it. Being able to recommend other films is fine and all but again it's not really relevant. If I'm considering seeing a movie in a theater today, I don't really give a shit if I would be interesting in some other movie from 20 years ago. I want to know if it is worth spending the money to go to the theater TODAY. A degree in film history is completely NOT required to make that evaluation. I don't need to know where in the pantheon of film history this film resides in 99.999% of cases. I just want to know if I'll be entertained and feel like I got good value for money spent. Any additional information is bonus but unnecessary.
Haven't you ever heard about what happens to those who ignore history?
If the movie is shit then history was already ignored long before I got involved.
Scorsese is not saying only film history majors should be allowed to criticise his work, he is decrying that the movie-reviwing scene is now dominated by people with very little knowledge about movie making and cinema in general, and that good movies are being panned by those people.
That is exactly what he is saying. He is arguing that film review should be dominated by people who know a lot about film making which is a snobby and false argument. Knowledge of film history and cinema is largely irrelevant to determining whether or not someone likes a movie. The primary purpose of film review is to communicate to lay people whether or not they might enjoy a film and find it worth spending their money to see it. A deep knowledge of film history or how movies are made is not necessary to serve that role. Understanding how something was made doesn't matter at all to the vast majority of movie goers. That's just inside baseball among film buffs. Most people just want to be entertained and Scorsese seems to have forgotten that fact.
In fact, he wasn't even defending his own film, he was defending a film called "Mother!", directed by Darren Aronofsky.
It doesn't matter whose work he was defending.