Ranting On...Martin Scorsese & Rotten Tomatoes

Martin Scorsese

I will see virtually any movie at least once if given the opportunity.  I don't see every movie ever made because A) money, B) time, and C) that's really it because, as I said, I would see virtually any movie at least once if given the opportunity.  Movies are my life-blood, and I see maybe 100+ in a given year if we count theatrically-released and home-watching (especially duplicate viewings), and yet I can't see them all.  It's impossible-the numbers are just too great.  I still need to make decisions based on reviews, interest, the artists involved, and ease of access.  Which is why something like Rotten Tomatoes, or film critics in general, has always been a tool that I've been reliant upon for catching films.  I have very few people in my life whose opinion on cinema I genuinely trust, mostly because I have a pretty wide tolerance for experimental or non-linear film, and only a handful of film critics whose opinion I take with a solid amount of weight.  Collective film critics like Rotten Tomatoes and CinemaScore, though, have been a guiding point for me.  I am only able to see three films in the next week in theaters (max), and because Racer and the Jailbird got panned, it's probably never going to be caught by me, and certainly won't factor into my year-end lists later in 2018 (which in my world, and in my scholarship for recording the past year, is a big deal).  Unless you are a professional critic (which I'm not, despite having 1000 or so reviews on this site), you have to make decisions based on what you want to see, and I'll admit that RT is one of the ways I cull my list of movies.


Which made me stand at attention when Martin Scorsese recently lamented that Rotten Tomatoes and CinemaScore are both ruining cinema.  Scorsese is one of my all-time favorite directors, and someone whose opinion on film I genuinely value, so I wanted to see if he was lumping me in with the huddled mindless masses on this one.  Some of the quotes Scorsese used regarding Rotten Tomatoes and Cinema Score were "The horrible idea they reinforce [is] that every picture, every image is there to be instantly judged and dismissed without giving audiences time to see it.  Time to see it, maybe ruminate and maybe make a decision for themselves. So the great 20th-century art form, the American art form, is reduced to content."

In a lot of ways he's right, and he highlights one of the main reasons I don't always use RT (and in some ways have shied away from it in an era of MoviePass, where money is less of an issue)-it's hard to understand where a movie will breath, and where it will head.  I have a similar issue with the culture of binge-watching a television series, particularly your first viewing.  This doesn't mean I don't do it, but it's hard to understand the value of the writing, the pacing of the story, if you aren't watching it in a similar cadence to how it was intended.  It's the same thing for when people change the visual effects in a movie or move it to color instead of black-and-white or even when you have the choice between seeing a film in a movie theater or on a computer screen...this isn't how the artist initially intended you to consume their work, and as a result you're not getting the proper experience.
I do, however, think that there is some inherent value in Rotten Tomatoes, even if I see Scorsese's point.  The reality is that in a world without print journalism or a regular column that you can rely upon, it's difficult to get a consistent take from one critic of whether you should see a movie or not.  We don't live in a world of iconic film critics whose decades of opinion you can rely upon to guide your ticket purchase.  Judith Crist, Roger Ebert, Pauline Kael, Gene Siskel...there are certainly famous critics, but I would argue that it's harder to engage with a critic in quite the same way because fewer sites or services devote the same allegiance to a critics' opinions, and quite frankly, critical consensus is so easily formed it's frequently hard to tell them apart.  I'll be honest-it bothers me when I see film critics who are chumming around with celebrities like fan boys (the BFCA comes to mind), making it seem like film criticism is bordering on access journalism.  Who wants to be the person who lambasts the new Avengers picture when it will give you enormous amounts of ire from social media & cause you to get skipped at the next film screening?  It's hard to take someone seriously when they're singing the praise of the new Star Wars when they have a selfie of themselves with Mark Hamill at a press junket.  Rotten Tomatoes at least admits that there's this clumping of popular thought through its site, and it's difficult to tell if it's feeding it or just taking advantage, but it's not worthless.

Scorsese has a point, and we do need time to ruminate on a specific picture, which is one of the main reasons that I say "Snap Judgment Ranking" in front of every review I write if it's the first time I've seen the film, because movies have lives of their own, and age in different ways if they're powerful enough.  I maintain, for example, that Scorsese's Silence is the best film he's done in 25 years, but I think that took months for me to fully get to that decision.  Movies like Silence or Touch of Evil or Vertigo or 2001: A Space Odyssey, they sneak up on you.  They're considered masterpieces now (well the latter three, at least), but weren't always in that same camp, and had to be rescued decades later in some cases.  Scorsese is right, but I don't think he takes in the full picture of limited time & money for filmgoers that Rotten Tomatoes provides better than anyone else, even if they aren't where we need to be to help guide those who want to be patrons of the arts, but can't be everywhere at once.