Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets | July 21, 2017 | FLOP OF THE YEAR

[grey ghost]

I think it would be cool if you could select your 100 top movies and the critics who loved the most of your top 100 would be your personal top critics.

 

 

Edited July 12, 2017 by grey ghost

[Fancyarcher]

3 minutes ago, That One Guy said:

I think I remember The Thing having like a 17% top critics score.

 

The Thing's a much older film though, so it's not a great example. That film was trashed when it was first released. 

Edited July 12, 2017 by Fancyarcher

[redfirebird2008]

3 minutes ago, baumer said:

 

See Empire Strikes Back.  

 

Yeah, another good example where the critics blew it. That one is probably worse than 2001, which was so damn far ahead of its time that I'm not surprised it was off-putting to many people. It is one hell of a mindfuck movie.

 

Empire Strikes Back was still a strong popcorn entertainment film. Yeah it was darker than the first Star Wars, but that's not a good reason to trash it! Ha. The darker elements just made it a better movie and cemented the franchise as the greatest of all-time. It's pretty crazy to realize critics didn't care for it at the time. 

[The Futurist]

2001, passed the first 20 minutes and the last 15 minutes is a very tedious experience.

It s a movie to admire, not to enjoy.

[Dementeleus]

Just now, Fancyarcher said:

 

 

The Thing's a much older film though, so it's not a great example. That film was trashed when it was first released. 

 

Yeah, RT does a terrible job tracking any film, prior to, say, 1998 or so.

[Barnack]

34 minutes ago, That One Guy said:

Yeah, I don't understand the "top critics" part if I'm being honest.  It just means a certain, randomly selected group of publications (dis)liked it better than the other randomly selected group of publications.  MTV is considered a "top critic" too, for Christ's sake.

 

Perfectly normal for someone like Amy Nicholson to be considered a top critic when working on a major publication like MTV, MTV had invested a lot on their movie reviewing.

[That One Girl]

RT tends to be flawed in general.  I think there should be a middle ground rating of "meh" so as to divide the reviews a bit more clearly, rather than it being a binary system (along with decreasing the threshold for "fresh" to 50% positive with the addition of the new middle ground rating).

[Fancyarcher]

5 minutes ago, Telemachos said:

 

Yeah, RT does a terrible job tracking any film, prior to, say, 1998 or so.

 

I mean most of the reviews are from 1982, and not today or the past decade, so for all we know some of the critics may have changed their opinions on the film due to several rewatches. RT is very much flawed for older films.

Edited July 12, 2017 by Fancyarcher

[Dementeleus]

3 minutes ago, Fancyarcher said:

 

I mean most of the reviews are from 1982, and not today or the past decade, so for all we know some of the critics may have changed their opinions on the film due to several rewatches. RT is very much flawed for much older films.

 

Well, they also don't have the majority of reviews that came out at that time. The only way to track them down is to go to your library and look through the microfiche catalog (or I guess maybe PDFs now, if they scanned all the old issues?)

 

 

P.S. (Which, btw, is kinda neat to do. It's fun seeing all the old reviews in actual print).

[redfirebird2008]

6 minutes ago, That One Guy said:

RT tends to be flawed in general.  I think there should be a middle ground rating of "meh" so as to divide the reviews a bit more clearly, rather than it being a binary system (along with decreasing the threshold for "fresh" to 50% positive with the addition of the new middle ground rating).

 

Yeah, in my opinion 50% is not really rotten. It just means half the audience likes it, half the audience doesn't like it. So it's a 50/50 shot for anyone who chooses to watch a given movie with that type of split.

 

I find it amazing when you can get very strong consensus in either direction on a movie. Trying to judge art is very subjective of course. Consensus probably shouldn't exist if we believe each person has their own unique view. 

Edited July 12, 2017 by redfirebird2008

[Barnack]

11 minutes ago, The Futurist said:

2001, passed the first 20 minutes and the last 15 minutes is a very tedious experience.

It s a movie to admire, not to enjoy.

 

Give it a second try 10 year's for now, sometime it play like a thrilling very enjoyable horror-ish movie and one of the most fun movie watching experience (didn't like the first 2 time I watched it).

 

Has for the top critics, it is easy to find out :

 

https://www.rottentomatoes.com/help_desk/critics/

 

TOP CRITICS

Top Critic is a title awarded to the most significant contributors of cinematic and critical discourse. To be considered for Top Critics designation, a critic must be published at a print publication in the top 10% of circulation, employed as a film critic at a national broadcast outlet for no less than five years, or employed as a film critic for an editorial-based website with over 1.5 million monthly unique visitors for a minimum of three years. A Top Critic may also be recognized as such based on their influence, reach, reputation, and/or quality of writing, as determined by Rotten Tomatoes staff.

 

Amy Nicholson on MTV (or pretty much anywhere) is an obvious top critic to me, she is a big name, university in film, anthropology,video, writing, playwriting on a really big outlet doing this for over 15 year's that wrote a book on Tom Cruise for Cahier du cinema, what more credential could be required ?

Edited July 12, 2017 by Barnack

[Fancyarcher]

Just now, Telemachos said:

 

Well, they also don't have the majority of reviews that came out at that time. The only way to track them down is to go to your library and look through the microfiche catalog (or I guess maybe PDFs now, if they scanned all the old issues?)

 

 

P.S. (Which, btw, is kinda neat to do. It's fun seeing all the old reviews in actual print).

 

Oh I know. Plenty of deceased critics from the time, don't have RT accounts after all, or some critics never simply released their reviews to the site. 

 

I've actually searched through the Dartmouth library's extensive film section and found a lot of old articles, reviews, via books, and magazines. It was fun, and I had a blast doing it to boot. 

[Barnack]

21 minutes ago, The Futurist said:

Isn't Metacritic kinda the Top Critics of RT tho ?

 

They are about 95% of the same, pretty much all metacritic are RT top critic and vice versa, with sometime 1 or 2 different name.

 

That why they make such a big deal (that people buy) in how the present the same critics with the same result (one putting the average rating in a bigger font than the other), they are almost for all movie exactly the same, average score = MC score.

[AniNate]

The most frustrating thing about RT is its lack of emphasis on the most useful aspect of its service, the average rating. It's basically the same as Metacritic but with a much bigger sample size and usually correlates more with GA feelings. And early on it's much more useful for guessing how a critical reception will play out than the Tomatometer which can fluctuate wildly as reviews pour in.

[Subzero]

11 minutes ago, redfirebird2008 said:

 

Yeah, in my opinion 50% is not really rotten. It just means half the audience likes it, half the audience doesn't like it. So it's a 50/50 shot for anyone who chooses to watch a given movie with that type of split.

 

I find it amazing when you can get very strong consensus in either direction on a movie. Trying to judge art is very subjective of course. Consensus probably shouldn't exist if we believe each person has their own unique view. 

 

Yeah not sure why they have to make above 59% to get fresh. If it's between 50-60 they should have a yellow middle ground tomato or something.

MOS had like 59% and it's marked Rotten which looks really bad for a Movie of that magnitude.

[redfirebird2008]

Just now, Subzero said:

 

Yeah not sure why they have to make above 59% to get fresh. If it's between 50-60 they should have a yellow middle ground tomato or something.

MOS had like 59% and it's marked Rotten which looks really bad for a Movie of that magnitude.

 

MetaCritic has a yellow middle ground which is probably a better way to handle it. 

[grim22]

With the microscope RT has been under this past year, I will not be surprised if major changes come to that site in the next year. The middle ground rating may be one of them for sure.

[AniNate]

3 minutes ago, redfirebird2008 said:

 

MetaCritic has a yellow middle ground which is probably a better way to handle it. 

 

Ideally we shouldn't have any sort of simplistic "color coding" and people should actually take a look at the reviews to see how critics feel about the movie.

 

 

Edited July 12, 2017 by tribefan695

[MikeQ]

26 minutes ago, grey ghost said:

I think it would be cool if you could select your 100 top movies and the critics who loved the most of your top 100 would be your personal top critics.

 

 

 

I agree. If this was a feature that you could to set up, and then access on each film's RT page to create a "personal RT score" using the critics whose tastes best align with your own taste in film or whom you most trust to critically analyze film, that would be super useful.

 

It might also help encourage people to look beyond the surface of "fresh" vs "rotten", as we all seem to complain happens, and read more into what our favourite reviewers are actually saying about a movie.

 

Personally, my favourite reviewers are those that, from my perspective, are less "this movie is good/bad because... [insert hyperbole here]" and instead are more quietly analytical and expound on what is valuable or interesting (or not) about a given film.

 

Peace,

Mike

[That One Girl]

Just now, tribefan695 said:

 

Ideally we shouldn't have any sort of "color coding" and people should actually take a look at the reviews to see how people feel about the movie.

 

Maybe there should only be one rating on RT:

 

"Read the goddamn reviews below you, you lazy fucks."