Um, do any CAF members particularly trust Rotten Tomatoes?

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I can’t say that Rotten Tomatoes is particularly reliable when it comes to movies of the '70s and '80s. Michael Moore basically criticized Rotten Tomatoes in a 2013 interview where he brought up Roger Ebert’s then-recent passing.
 
I don’t know about the movie reviews for movies in the '70s and '80s, but I use it as a general gauge of the popularity of a given movie. Some films that were given a high percent turned out to be rather boring in my eyes. Another thing that I found out about the reviews when I read them is reviews that aren’t overtly positive, say if the writer of the review gave a letter grade it would be a C or a C+, it would be given a tomato which would increase the percent. Middling reviews are seen as positive. In my mind those shouldn’t count.
 
Maxirad said:
I can’t say that Rotten Tomatoes is particularly reliable when it comes to movies of the '70s and '80s. Michael Moore basically criticized Rotten Tomatoes in a 2013 interview where he brought up Roger Ebert’s then-recent passing.
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I find it to be very accurate. It helps filter out outlier reviews by averaging them to give you a better picture of how good a film really is.
 
I will check current movies to see what the audience rating is, but I think it gave the
movie Arrival 99% or 100% and I would have rated it at 10%. The movie was awful.
I usually don’t bother reading the reviews.
 
Aside from not liking the name, I no longer care about what they think.

Ed
 
I like to read reviews on imdb that are around 5 or 6 out of 10 as they usually tell you what was good and bad about the film as opposed to those that loved every second or hated every second.
 
Maxirad said:
I can’t say that Rotten Tomatoes is particularly reliable when it comes to movies of the '70s and '80s. Michael Moore basically criticized Rotten Tomatoes in a 2013 interview where he brought up Roger Ebert’s then-recent passing.
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If it’s the same Michael Moore that is so famous, then I’d assume whatever he doesn’t like, I will probably like. However being born in the 80’s I have to say I have no idea what you are talking about.
 
For newer films, they aren’t so bad. They have a decent aggregate of reviewers. For older films, there’s a lot of selection bias. The only reviewers who are writing reviews for them are reviewers who chose to see the film in the first place, indicating that they at least had an interest in the film. I think that’s why the reviews for older films tend to skew higher than they sometimes deserve.
 
Well, they are an average. The site is probably fine, but when they weigh averages of movie critics who attack a movie for its political leanings is where you have to be careful.
 
They are an opinion based forum. They are as good as their opinions; some good, some terrible. Believe them at your own risk.

Shalom
 
No matter what critics say…everyone feels differently about what is being shown in a movie. They may like it but you may hate it.
 
I go to wikipedia first, and the “critical response” section in its coverage of a movie to decide if I want to see it. After this if I want to see more I do a google search employing the word “review” to find out about the movie, and I find Rotten Tomatoes is sometimes quite useful when it turns up on this google search. However, when I see the movie, I find 10% or 20% of the time that the review sources were generally misleading. This is particularly annoying when the movie really wasn’t very worthwhile as entertainment and these review sources gave it a good rating. I suspect that reviewers sometimes don’t ask themselves the fundamental question–is the movie enjoyable?
 
SuperLuigi said:
Well, they are an average. The site is probably fine, but when they weigh averages of movie critics who attack a movie for its political leanings is where you have to be careful.
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If a movie isn’t screened for critics – the “Atlas Shrugged” movies, for example, weren’t screened for critics, and very few “faith-based” films are, then it won’t show up in the Rotten Tomatoes average score. As point of comparison, “Forrest Gump” (nearly universally regarded as a “conservative” movie) ranks 72% on RT – the overtly Christian “Hacksaw Ridge” (which Mel Gibson directed), 82% - not a typo - that’s 82% RT for a pro-Christian movie.
 
randomuser said:
If a movie isn’t screened for critics – the “Atlas Shrugged” movies, for example, weren’t screened for critics, and very few “faith-based” films are, then it won’t show up in the Rotten Tomatoes average score. As point of comparison, “Forrest Gump” (nearly universally regarded as a “conservative” movie) ranks 72% on RT – the overtly Christian “Hacksaw Ridge” (which Mel Gibson directed), 82% - not a typo - that’s 82% RT for a pro-Christian movie.
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It’s glaringly obvious the critics railed against Atlas Shrugged for political reasons. No one is going buy any other lame excuse.

Which is unfortunate, because I saw all three movies, and while the fundamental story Rand writes is unbelievably good, the movie had room for improvement as many conservative or libertarian films do. The fact that there was an affair going was even deemed too “1950s” for the neo-left. :rolleyes:

But it’s clear that something like Atlas Shrugged which demeans the core values 99% of critics have or pretend to have to keep their jobs, will get more of a reaction than a movie about a generic Christian who opposes going to war which was I guess a left-wing value at the time.
 
mdgspencer said:
I go to wikipedia first, and the “critical response” section in its coverage of a movie to decide if I want to see it. After this if I want to see more I do a google search employing the word “review” to find out about the movie, and I find Rotten Tomatoes is sometimes quite useful when it turns up on this google search. However, when I see the movie, I find 10% or 20% of the time that the review sources were generally misleading. This is particularly annoying when the movie really wasn’t very worthwhile as entertainment and these review sources gave it a good rating. I suspect that reviewers sometimes don’t ask themselves the fundamental question–is the movie enjoyable?
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Not really. Some movies reviews are politicized just like the movies themselves are.
 
I never used Rotten Tomatoes. ImdB is helpful though. It comes from the people. And I’m all about the people.
 
Rotten Tomatoes is just a review aggregator. It averages out what many reviewers are giving movies.

I find RedLetterMedia gives me more reliable reviews, but I have similar artistic inclinations as they do. Warning: RLM is not safe for children or work.
 
ConfirmedSeb said:
I never used Rotten Tomatoes. ImdB is helpful though. It comes from the people. And I’m all about the people.
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IMDB is useless without their now-defunct message board. I was watching both “Elle” (the controversial Paul Verhoeven one) and comedy of manners “Beatriz at Dinner” over the weekend and I still wanted to check with IMDB message board, which alas, still isn’t there.

IMDB is still a sore point for those of us who like indie and art-house movies.
 
I would say that I “somewhat” trust Rotten Tomatoes. I actually do make something of a living off writing film reviews. Finding a film critic online who you find favorability with helps a good deal. Personally, I was an avid reader of Roger Ebert and found his taste to be almost spot on with mine. After his passing, I admittedly have difficulty finding another critic who I match up with.

Back to the OP, there are some films that I just can’t deal with. For example, the horror film, The Babadook, has a 98%. Upon screening, I absolutely detested it. I would rate it at a mere 10% or one star out of a classic four star scale. It’s just awful.
 
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