rotten tomatoes

In case you didn't realize it already, I actually have pretty good taste when it comes to movies. I like cinematography, I like witty but realistic conversations, I even seek out indie films sometimes. Though there are a lot of silly movies that I enjoy, generally a movie has to blow me away for me to consider it good...and then I will happily rewatch it several times. You could say I'm a film snob - and I'm sure a lot of my friends will agree with this. There are a lot of movies I have refused to pay money to see even though my friends were going to see them:

• No Strings Attached
• Black Swan (this wasn't about the quality of the movie but about my complete lack of interest)
• Killers
• Love Happens
• All About Steve
• The Covenant
• I Am Legend
• Tropic Thunder (saw it on dvd, thought it was okay)
• Charlie Bartlett
• Eclipse (I admit that I saw the others at my sister's request)

I can't just trust one critic to tell me whether a movie is good or not - I want all of them; I want a consensus; I want Rotten Tomatoes. I can generally tell when a movie is going to be good or not, but there are some movies that I really can't judge from their previews. I could say with 100% conviction that Avatar: The Last Airbender was going to be bad last summer, but I still wanted to see it because I really like Shaymalan movies that other people don't like and because it was midnight and because there's really not much else to do in Williamsburg. I didn't need RT to tell me it was bad - I ignored their words of warning. Ironically I found the opposite true of the consensus on Avatar, the blue-person movie - though it received an 83%, I found the movie incredibly boring, exceedingly long and astoundingly overpraised. In general, though, I take Rotten Tomatoes as a definitive authority on the quality of a movie.

But this maybe isn't the most logical approach. The percentage that RT gives is of the critics who saw the movie who thought it was, in a choice between acceptable and unacceptable, passingly fair. You have to read the reviews to know if they thought it was actually good. PSA: Rotten Tomatoes does not highlight the average rating of a movie, though it does provide this information; it merely highlights the percent of critics who gave it a positive review. And that's the problem - the movies with high percentages appeal to the widest range of critics, so it's kind of like an estimated likelihood that you will find the movie decent. That is simply not good enough for me. I don't want to spend $11 and two hours on something that I have a 30% chance of deeming a total waste. Let's look at what I mean.

So, really, this is saying that 97% of critics liked the movie but that its actual grade is 84%. Similarly, 92% of regular people liked it but its grade from audiences is 88%. (There is also the question of response bias here, in that only people with strong opinions took the time to rate the movie at all...but my feeling here is that you shouldn't go see this movie unless you already like Harry Potter and also won't be surprised if they completely mangle the plot, so really the RT score doesn't matter.)

That said, RT is a tool that you can use, and it's a very useful one given that it has so many critics' input, but you still have to use your own judgment when deciding what category a movie belongs in: opening night must-see, acceptable diversion of time and money if the opportunity arises, worth the wait for dvd, maybe okay if it's on tv in three years or avoid like the plague. If I want to see a movie based on its previews, it still has to get at least a 75% approval rating before I'll go, with few exceptions. Sometimes RT is most helpful in deciding between similar movies - like Green Lantern vs. Captain America. Obviously if both got great reviews I would have seen them both...and I probably would have seen Captain America anyway given my interest in The Avengers...but I saved myself from disappointment by not seeing Green Lantern, which I had high hopes for before the reviews started coming out.

I've found that it's good to find one or two critics who have a similar sensibility toward movies as yourself and follow their advice, since every person has a different definition of "good movie." I trust Roger Ebert's opinion like no other - I have disagreed with probably three of his reviews ever, though I clearly don't have the time to see all of the movies that he likes. But I respect his opinion a lot and have been glad to see that he takes movies for what they are and judges them based on criteria within their genres: he notes, for example, that a movie targeted toward young adults does a good job of relating to that generation.

Also, sometimes I have found myself forced into seeing a movie with friends. I always stand against what I consider to be a bad movie - but there is also a point where you should just give in and suspend your inner, raging critic for the sake of maintaining a social life and not being a total elitist. And sometimes it's fun to go and see a movie that you haven't read anything about, even though I am usually a fan of reading spoilers and speculations (perhaps why I loved Lost, Harry Potter, etc. as the stories were unfolding. Also, I would really like to know who wins The Glee Project and not have to wait two weeks).

Fun facts to leave you with: instead of going to senior homecoming, I saw Eagle Eye...and instead of going to senior prom I saw Star Trek in IMAX. I maintain that these were much more enjoyable experiences than my alternatives and that I totally optimized my utility. No regrets.