Reviews and Ratings Discussion

Amen to this. I can't remember the last time I consulted the Tomatometer. Pretty sure I don't even have RT bookmarked anymore.

Looked up a movie recently on Letterboxd and found an average score of 2 stars, then scrolled down to my "ratings by friends" section and found all 5 star ratings. Those few 5-stars tell me more about what I'm in for than the thousands of unknown users who didn't like it.
(Granted the film was Things, so maybe the lesson I should be taking from this is "get new friends", but I think you get my point)

I gave it a 4.5, as in "tread with caution."

Coward.

Just trying to be objective.

What kept that.5 away?

I actually love many LGBT films and think Call Me By Your Name is one of the most erotic and gorgeous films I have ever seen. Also really liked Brokeback Mountain.

But I think there’s an unfairness to rating something higher just because it offers previously underrepresented characters (or actors, or creators) a platform. I honestly think 66% for A Danish Girl is... incredibly generous.

In terms of where I feel films are overrated, sure, listed below. I do appreciate this can easily descend into a discussion of why I don’t find them worthy of such ratings, but I’ll just go out there and say I don’t think any of these films belong in the high or even mid-90s, as they lack nuance and depth and if they didn’t have LGBT characters, they’d hardly exist as there’s just too many films like that.

Booksmart (the LGBT element felt shoehorned in and unnecessary)
Carol (an okay film but no different from anything else made about this period - but lo and behold, feminism, bashing Blanchett’s husband + LGBTQ equals high 90s)
Disobedience
Love, Simon
Moonlight (a good film, but I didn’t feel it deserved the Academy Award as quite a few others, though not La La Land, were better in my view)
Blue is the Warmest Colour (the sheer length! It’s really quite an undercooked thing, but still, 89%)
Fruitvale Station (this one is good but it’s not spectacular, still, 94% and not a single negative review)
The Help (Sex and the City meets Devil Wears Prada, but look at the acolytes! This one is not in the 90s but 70s, but still, it’s such a basic film, really?)
Straight Outta Compton
The Hate You Give
Captain Marvel (I mean, come on!)

That sums up my general feeling on the subject. And look, I used to be a review junkie when I was younger, okay? At one time I almost wouldn’t watch anything below 70 (that didn’t last long).

It’s not that I dislike any other those and quite a few of them are good. But I feel high 90s should be reserved for something exceptional. It’s almost like the high school exam system where once everyone starts getting As, the very idea of an A being something exceptional is becoming diluted.

Amber Lynn was reading off cue cards. Really took me out of the movie.

I mean, I really liked Carol and thought that the performances and look of the film alone earn it a recommendation. And when you're talking about RT specifically, you need to remember that Rotten Tomatoes is not a report card. The percentage is just the number of critics that give a film a passing grade, even if their opinion is kind of tepid. So Carol didn't get "an A", it just had many critics that would give it a recommendation. In other words, RT is a pass/fail system, and the percentage is how many critics agree it should pass.

For Captain Marvel, consider this quote from a reviewer: "
"Captain Marvel" has things going for it that elevate it a bit above the pack and provide more cultural oomph and import, but despite that, this is also a Marvel movie that feels like another Marvel movie." The person overall recommended the film, but it is clear they aren't lavishing praise on it.

I think that the conversation about sites like Rotten Tomatoes or IMDb has to be a different one. Because at that point you are talking about aggregates and averages, which is really different than individual reviews and ratings.

Why is it unfair to rate something higher for telling a story that hasn't been told before? Should critics not be allowed to use innovation and daring as an element of how they score a film? Because then we go back full circle to the idea that there are "objective truths" about film/art, and I personally don't think that is the case.

Have it been pointed out that the tomatometer doesn’t measure perceived goodness but perceived popularity?

A high score doesn’t mean it’s necessarily thought of as a great film, just one a lot of people liked. They could have all thought it was decent but as long as no one disliked it, it scores highly.

Cuz the discourse in here sounds like people are having trouble discerning the difference between those two concepts.

It makes more sense when you realize the character was kidnapped and being forced to act out a newsroom fantasy.

Anyone else notice how far down the toilet the AV Club has fallen lately?

Well, define ‘popularity’. It counts the percentage of critics among all the critics it considers ‘respectable’ that thought something was ‘good’, i.e. gave it a positive rating. The percentage of these ‘good’ reviews is the rating, over 70% is ‘fresh’, surely that’s more or less it?

I’m obviously referring to critics’ score, not audience score.

Sorry dude, but I already said I don't respect fan theories.

Defining popularity by the amount of people liking it, not how much they liked it. Look at the average rating rather than the tomatometer itself for a better metric of how much they LIKED it.

70% means that 70% of critics gave it a score between “passable” to “amazing.” That 70% may actually LOVE the movie far more than anyone LOVES a 90% film, which could be entirely composed of everything thinking it was “not too bad.”

I’m no fan. *removes MKS mask revealing I was Barry J. Gillis the WHOLE TIME*

No, I don't want to sit through a whole movie. B&B don't subject us to the whole video, unless it kicks ass.



I know my post might seem a bit too dismissive of how to properly critique and rate a movie, but I know how movie nerds are because I know how music nerds are. Ask some musician who knows everything there is to know about music, and if you take their advice, you'll be stuck at a jazz concert listening to boring slow modern jazz, or maybe even a Frank Zappa cover band, with about a hundred bored people in attendance. Personally, I'd rather help my wife shop for a handbag.



I think the common guy knows what most people like, and that's what it takes to be a good movie critic.

I really just want you all angry and confused the whole time.

You’re absolutely right re: RT, I just always find it disturbing how influential it is. In terms of your last point, I don’t know - I would say that it’s appropriate, as I established above in convo with OP, in my view, a critic shouldn’t give bonus points for progressiveness because that penalises traditional narratives.

Hence I don’t see how any clarification about RT devalues the argument at all. To me, the fact that a generic majority think these films are okay more often than they think films like Joker are okay still mostly serves to support the argument that this is due to political correctness.