Some in Hollywood think Rotten Tomatoes is too influential (NY Times)

Discussion in 'Visual Arts' started by JozefK, Sep 7, 2017.

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  1. Gordon Crisp

    Gordon Crisp Forum Resident

    Location:
    Portland, Oregon
    We have to be expecting an Inch High Private Eye reboot to be announced any day now.
     
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  2. Monosterio

    Monosterio Forum Resident

    Location:
    South Florida
    It's because of Rotten Tomatoes that I saw more movies than usual this summer -- many highly touted movies there the last few months.
     
  3. Luke The Drifter

    Luke The Drifter Forum Resident

    Location:
    United States
    Occasionally I'll disagree with critical consensus, but generally RT is about right:

    The Godfather - 99%
    The Godfather II - 97%
    The Godfather III - 67%

    Star Wars - 93%
    Empire Strikes Back - 94%
    Return of the Jedi - 80%

    I would personally rank Empire higher, and Jedi would also be higher for me. But the general idea on these films is there.
     
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  4. Dillydipper

    Dillydipper Space-Age luddite

    Location:
    Central PA
    I would imagine Hollywood's real problem with Rotten Tomatoes, is that they don't own Rotten Tomatoes. And no way to tweak the results.
     
  5. Chris DeVoe

    Chris DeVoe RIP Vickie Mapes Williams (aka Equipoise)

    Exactly! If you use it to find films that you'd otherwise skip, you can see some amazing films.

    Hollywood screwed it's self by being so greedy. As they get the lion's share of the gate in the first week, they've concentrated all the advertising efforts on the opening weekend, and have, for the same stupid reason, convinced potential moviegoers to pay attention to what film is doing best at the box office. By that standard, McDonald's is the best restaurant in the world. So the theater chains get cheated out of potential revenue of smaller films being able to hang out and be discovered by their audience, the same dozen films are on 80% of all screens (statistics pulled out of my butt) and when the big, heavily advertised "tentpoles" fail, they are left wondering what happened.

    My wife has seen, to date, 325 films in the theater so far this year. Some are tiny art house films, but a huge percentage are films that played for one week in the chain theaters and never stood a chance of finding an audience. She could recommend a dozen films in the theater right now that you should see, but unless you go to see them in the next couple of days, they'll be gone before you get there. She's not a film snob - she saw almost all of the Marvel films that played a week ago, she just has incredibly broad tastes.

    If you think there is nothing good in the theaters, you have obviously NOT looked.
     
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  6. Metralla

    Metralla Joined Jan 13, 2002

    Location:
    San Jose, CA
    I am gobsmacked by that count. Incredible.
     
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  7. Chris DeVoe

    Chris DeVoe RIP Vickie Mapes Williams (aka Equipoise)

    OK, she is in Chicago, so there are a lot of theaters she can go to, but basically she goes to a film in the theater every night, and multiple films on weekends.

    Here's her Twitter. WretchAwry (@happyrhodesfan) | Twitter

    Most of her films are due to MoviePass - which she indicates with an asterisk on her Tweets.

    MoviePass costs her $10 a month. We don't have cable, we don't have NetFlix, HBO-Go, Amazon Prime or any of the one to two hundred dollars a month of media costs most people spend to watch all the excellent TV programming I'm assured is out there. Instead, she watches first run films on a huge screen, with a great sound system for less than the monthly cost of any single one of those services.
     
    Last edited: Sep 7, 2017
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  8. Carl Swanson

    Carl Swanson Senior Member

    Guilty. At a theater, I'm likely to be deafened by either the soundtrack or the clueless idiots in the audience yelling throughout. Not worth the trouble.
     
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  9. Chris DeVoe

    Chris DeVoe RIP Vickie Mapes Williams (aka Equipoise)

    I see this claim all the time, and I call BS. I don't see anywhere near as many films as my wife, but I see at least a hundred films in the theater each year. Over the last ten years, I have had a total of TWO unpleasant experiences in the theater. That's TWO out of a THOUSAND. My wife sees a film in the theater every single night. Look through her Twitter. The only complaint she has logged recently was Facets turning on the lights with the credits were rolling.

    OK, you're in Southern California. Maybe people are more rude there, but we're in Chicago, a city world famous for it's quiet nature and shyness.
     
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  10. Carl Swanson

    Carl Swanson Senior Member

    I'm not paying $20.
     
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  11. Chris DeVoe

    Chris DeVoe RIP Vickie Mapes Williams (aka Equipoise)

    Again, she sees a new film in the theater every single night for $9.95 a MONTH.
     
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  12. Deesky

    Deesky Forum Resident

    I'm surprised they didn't blame their lack of excessive profits on pirates (this time)!

    Yes, the claim is total BS, used as a cover to shield the producers from their own lack of imagination and general incompetency.

    I use Rotten quite a bit to determine whether or not a movie I generally have not heard of before is something that might be worth my time. There are many factors I take into account before making that decision, and fresh vs rotten isn't one of them. Well, I do look at the critics' score (not the audience score) as an initial shorthand, but then I look at the blurb about the story being told, the actors (some I'll watch in anything) and then I read a handful or more of the actual reviews in full, to triangulate the strengths and weakness of the movie and wether they matter to me.

    This may sound like some kind of hard work, but in reality it just takes a few minutes and I have been pretty satisfied over the years with this culling process.
     
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  13. chili555

    chili555 Forum Resident

    It is always easier to blame others that it is to accept responsibility for your own shortcomings.
     
  14. Hollywood has produced a large amount of crappy movies this year. That's not Rotten Tomatos fault.
     
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  15. Chris DeVoe

    Chris DeVoe RIP Vickie Mapes Williams (aka Equipoise)

    They produce a lot of crappy films every year, and a lot of wonderful films every year. But this summer, they seemed to be pushing the crappy ones harder. They want films that can be described in fewer than ten words, all of which are in the vocabulary of the average five year old. Which means the wonderful films don't get a push because they can't fit that criteria.
     
  16. Balthazar

    Balthazar Forum Resident

    Don't know if it'll be as worthwhile in my area, but MoviePass seems like something worth looking into. Thanks.

    As far as Hollywood whinging about RT, their tears are delicious.

    [​IMG]
     
  17. audiomixer

    audiomixer As Bald As The Beatles

    To me there is much more to see and do in life than sit inside a movie theater every day and night. And I love movies, however...
    It sounds more like an obsession.
     
  18. Chris DeVoe

    Chris DeVoe RIP Vickie Mapes Williams (aka Equipoise)

    If you are not spending $8-$15 for every film, you can experiment a lot more. I spend most of my time in Kansas City, and don't own a car, so I can only get to the theaters accessible by public transit.

    It
    Home Again
    True To The Game
    Yuddham Sharanam
    The Hitman's Bodyguard
    Wind River
    Annabelle: Creation
    Spider-Man: Homecoming
    Dunkirk
    Birth of the Dragon
    Patti Cake$
    Cars 3
    Logan Lucky
    Ingrid Goes West
    Nut Job 2: Nutty By Nature
    Girls Trip
    The Only Living Boy in New York
    Kidnap
    The Dark Tower
    Wonder Woman
    The Trip to Spain
    Menashe
    Neither Wolf Nor Dog
    Leap!

    That's at 4 theaters I can get to via bus. Are they all good? Probably not, but I know several of them are excellent. And I can find out which ones are good.
     
  19. Chris DeVoe

    Chris DeVoe RIP Vickie Mapes Williams (aka Equipoise)

    You're welcome to your opinion, but the alternative to seeing a new film in the theater every night is being like every other lumpen-prole watching crappy network television, or paying out the nose for quality TV programming. In my opinion, she's found an amazing deal - and considered it an amazing deal when it was $50 a month. Should be be watching reruns of Two Broke Girls instead of seeing a Bollywood film about love and toilets? Or seeing a Mario Bava retrospective at the Gene Siskel Film Center? Or a pair of George Nierenberg documentaries about tap dancing?

    Hell, you're pretending that broad ranging tastes and intellectual curiosity are something to be ashamed of!
     
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  20. audiomixer

    audiomixer As Bald As The Beatles

    No. I'm saying that there are also live music venues, plays, museums, symphony orchestras, etc. But you and I will never agree on this subject..
     
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  21. There also seemed to be less original films than previous years and some of the sequels, remakes or retreads were worse than usual.

    The only studio that seems to know how to make effective sequels is Marvel.
     
  22. I've also seen films that are pretty well rated that were awful "It Comes At Night" which had promise but really was a shaggy dog story of sorts. It's certainly not flawless but it isn't a perfect system either.
     
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  23. Chris DeVoe

    Chris DeVoe RIP Vickie Mapes Williams (aka Equipoise)

    We moved to Chicago for music, and she assists me shooting my concert videos.

    Here's the thing, you know virtually nothing about either of us, and you've built a view of us based only on this and other posts I've made.

    The graceful thing to do would be to credit us as being a lot more complex people than you imagine.
     
  24. Chris DeVoe

    Chris DeVoe RIP Vickie Mapes Williams (aka Equipoise)

    Sure, but by seeing so many films, we have a pretty good idea what to skip. I haven't seen a "The Fast and the Furious" film since the first one, although I am open to the possibility that one of them may be good.

    True.
     
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  25. audiomixer

    audiomixer As Bald As The Beatles

    You're right. I know nothing about either of you. That said, I can't credit you for "being more complex people than you can imagine" only because I know nothing about either of you. I'll leave it at that...
     
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