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Stamets @lemmy.world

7d ago

Rotten Tomatoes

51 comments

Missing: The fact that Rotten Tomatoes scoring is easily gamed by the studios:
https://futurism.com/film-studios-manipulate-rotten-tomatoes
- My friend won't watch anything with a below 80% score. They have to be masterpieces.

Except, since each vote toward good/rotten is binary, it really means that a high score is not "best" but is instead "least objectionable"
- RT is a great vibe check. I don't use movie ratings directly to decide what to watch, but to gauge whether a movie that already seems interesting is likely to be worth the time.

We recently watched a movie that audience and critics adored. It was god awful. I don't trust those ratings (or any ratings) really.
- Do tell, what was the movie?
  
  https://m.imdb.com/title/tt32149847/
- The worst movie I’ve ever seen has an 89% audience score
  
  Curious... which movie?
- Best thing is to find a critic, who has kinda your taste or can express why they (dis)like a movie for you to compare to your own taste.
  I mostly watch a german critic that sometimes says stuff like "it's good for a trash night and if that is enough for you, there you go. 2.5/5 from me" and that is exactly what I want to know.

I've found them to all be pretty unreliable and don't use RT anymore. Curious if anyone has a review site they like better?
- I absolutely love using https://movielens.org/. The more I've rated, the better its predicted ratings have gotten for me. It doesn't seem to be popular enough to be as gamed as some of the others. Be honest with your ratings, and it will steer you in the right direction. Don't give Rashomon 5 stars if you didn't like it. If Wedding Crashes is your favorite movie, that's 5 stars for you.
  When I'm trying to find a movie that my mother-in-law is going to like, I start with That Thing You Do or a Knight's Tale and I check Similar Movies.
  
  Had not heard of this but it seems pretty neat. Thanks!
- In my opinion, https://themoviedb.org/ is slightly better than the alternatives.
  
  Thanks!
- I've used metacritic for years, it's much better in my opinion
- I take a look at letterboxd but it is too unreliable to big titles.

"There was a firefight!"

18% 27% Red Letter Media's content collection.

I wouldn't call myself a film buff but I've watched thousands of films and shows. My gauge is usually the metascores, with some exceptions. Knowing this, I generally watch films with a metacritic score over 55, and am usually whelmed. It's also important to understand directors and their previous works, and styles so you know what to expect. I still prefer imdb's ratings generally.
- I tend to judge more on the plot summary. If it sounds interesting I'll give it a watch. A good idea can get me imagining things even if the implementation isn't that good.

God Awful Movies covered Boondock Saints a couple years back, and one of the hosts demanded to know who replaced the movie they loved in college with some intolerable horseshit.

I'm Thinking of Ending Things is at 82/50. I think this chart nailed it.
(I love it though.)

I wouldn't consider myself a film critic but there are times when I need to side with the critic score over the audience score. Examples include: The Last Jedi, The Rise of Skywalker, Men, The Monkey, Boondock Saints, Edit: punctuation
- I had no idea that critics liked The Last Jedi. I mean, so did I. But at least nice to know I'm not fuckin' alone.
  Rise of Skywalker... These scores shock the hell out of me considering I've never heard anyone do anything other than complain about Rise of Skywalker
  
  I wouldn't go so far as saying that I liked The Last Jedi, but I do think that it's far and away the best of the sequels and a ton of the common criticisms are bullshit. I don't think I've ever had to defend a movie that I didn't really care for as much as this one.
  Now Rise of Skywalker? That one is one of the worst movies I've ever seen, and when weighted by the talent and budget that went into it I think an argument can be made for the worst of modern cinema. It's the only star wars movie I'll never watch again. I could feel the lazy pettiness from the theater chair. Like at least the other franchise-disrespecting blockbuster matrix resurrections was self aware, Rise of Skywalker was earnestly weightless and cheap
- Men?
  
  https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/men_2022
- So that Boondock Saints section has a double meaning for you

I don't believe I've ever let an RT score sway my decision to watch something. I sometimes forget RT exists until someone else brings it up.
If RT had any sway on me I wouldn't have watched and loved Arena (1989), American Ninja (1975), Screamers (1995), Chopping Mall (1986), or Dead Heat (1988) just to name a few excellent viewing experiences.
- American Ninja was 1985
  I suggest Revenge of the Ninja 1-3

LMAO (super high) “probably A24” lol yuuuuuup
- Not understanding your hate, I looked at their list of movies.
  Must have been incredibly lucky, but I've seen only a few a24 movies and liked all of them.
  Here are the movies for reference:
  under the skin (2013)
  the rover (2014)
  amy (2015)
  the hole in the ground (2019)
  midsommar (2019)
  the elephant queen (2019 apple tv release)
  Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022)
  the whale (2022)
  priscilla (2023)
  civil war (2024)
  Now I get that psychological horror is not for everyone, but I mean if something like priscilla does not get under your skin, I don't know...
  
  Who said that was hate? Fucking weird dude. Love A25 films. Wake up.

No rating sites are good. There's always people rating 10/10.
- In the big picture of things, that doesn't matter. As long as sufficient number of people are voting, they too are part of the statistic norm. Every title will have some people voting 10s and 1s. And rating scores are only meaningful as relative values. So a title with avg score of 9 is probably better than a title with avg score of 6. Instead of 9 or 6 is objectively bad or good.

It's fucked up that RT and similar sites with their ratings are so important for so many filmgoers. I would guess it's because film theatre tickets have become more expensive so people are trying to be as selective as possible with what films they spend their money on.
So people listen to the "average", go to the movies based on predigested opinions, and end up making their own filmgoing experiences, horizon and taste closer to the average as well. The risk in filmgoing is being minimised (which kind of mirrors the behaviour of the film industry so it's not without reason that the audiences behave like that, I guess; but it still sucks).
- Indeed. The RT scoring favors inoffensive, wide appeal over interesting but not-for-everyone movies.
  People act like it's some kind of dunk when a movie/show they like gets high rating, despite the often useless nature of critics and/or audiences at large to reflect individual taste.
- I've had a few times where I'll look at a random movie on some streaming service that I haven't heard of before, trailer looks great, genre is right up my alley, I'll watch it, it's not great but I hope it gets better and then by the end I realise it's bad.
  So I go see the RT score and it's low to mid rated for both critics and viewers. So after a few of those I started our checking. For ones I haven't heard of. Found it very useful so far

Missing the one that's 3% critic, 8% audience, with the caption "shit my parents like to watch"

I see how you interpreted that. That is solid.

Artsy fartsy pretentiousness is now more likely to be "main character is good at stuff but is not a white male".
- Great take, thanks.
- You the dumb dumb kind of ignorant.
  Arty farts is the regular ignorant... The Lighthouse and Parasite being hard for the average to consume for example.

51 comments