Using Rotten Tomatoes
Posted by John Campeaon 03. 03. 2008in News Chat
Here at The Movie Blog, I often refer to a movie’s rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Because I use it so much, and because a lot of the people I know use it all the time, I just assume everyone knows about it and how it works. Yet almost every time I mention the RT rating of a movie, I get emails from people asking what it means. So just for the heck of it, here’s a little video that sort of explains what Rotten Tomatoes is, and how and why we reference it here on The Movie Blog.
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Nicely done.
You should do a feature / podcast on DVD commentaries sometime. There’s so many out there that the good ones can get lost in the shuffle.
Thanks John..That helps me out a lot!!
Why isn’t TMB a Rotten Tomatoes critic?
It sounds like you were talking to stupid people.
I usually like to go to IMDB.. Rotten Tomato’s is good but confusing.
Good tutorial. I’m going to forward this to some friends of mine so they’ll stop asking me to explain how Rotten Tomatoes works.
You didn’t mention the “average rating” number in the upper right; right UNDER the “reviews counted” section. This number is a little bit more accurate in terms of film quality than just a thumbs or thumbs down average; i.e. the fresh rating.
Which is why I generally use metacritic instead of RT. The number (at least for me personally) is a bit more accurate.
Drewbacca, I disagree, the whole thing is somewhat arbitrary to begin with (opinion being subjective), I think Rotten Tomatoes has the right simple system that doesn’t overly imply anything other than critics liked or disliked, rather than some sort of more detailed ranking…
I use Rotten Tomatoes.
metacritic ftw lolz
@ Kurt,
Maybe, but just saying liked or disliked is a little too vague for me. There are films I liked and there are films I REALLY liked. The ones I REALLY liked should be weighted. Hence the numbering system. But that’s why it’s there. You can use either.
John’s example earlier in the year that Ratatouille was the most critically acclaimed movie of the year fits this discussion. By percentage numbers, yes, more critics liked it than any other film (including myself). But the rating number wasn’t as high as No Country and others. This should be taken into account I think.