Don’t Blame the Critics: More Attacks on Rotten Tomatoes
Posted on August 5, 2017 at 8:00 am
Rotten Tomatoes is named after one of the earliest forms of criticism. Audiences who did not like what they were watching on stage would hurl rotten tomatoes at the actors. The most popular aggregator of movie reviews is successful because moviegoers enjoy the opportunity to look at the thoughts of a range of critics. Movie studios are delighted with Rotten Tomatoes when they can brag about a 90% “fresh” rating, but when the rating is not good and the movie does not do well, they accuse the site of being superficial or without nuance or trying to tell people what to think.
Of course, even a terrible rating won’t keep people from buying tickets if they do not care about a movie’s quality. So films based on video games (which often are not even shown to critics in time for reviews) will make a profit. And a film like “The Emoji Movie,” one of the worst-reviewed of the summer, did very well at the box office, at least in its first week of release. When that happens, we get the “Does Rotten Tomatoes matter” stories. We’re with longtime box office analyst, ComScore’s Paul Dergarabedian: “The best way for studios to combat the ‘Rotten Tomatoes Effect’ is to make better movies, plain and simple.”
Instead of a MOTW (Movie of The Week) for the end of July, the Alliance of Women Film Journalists has put together their list of their favorite women-created or women-centered films of 2017 so far. Be sure to take a look and catch up on anything you’ve missed.
Angelica Jade Bastién is one of my favorite writers on film. Anything she writes reflects a deep understanding of film and culture. I especially love this tribute to Michelle Pfeiffer, an actress who does not get enough credit for her extraordinary range and technique.
Yes, she may lack the classic Hollywood pedigree of Anjelica Huston or the supreme training of Meryl Streep, but of her generation, she’s the actress with the most fascinating thematic through line. Pfeiffer won early acclaim when her career first hit its stride in the ’80s, followed by a string of hits in the ’90s and early ’00s. Though she hasn’t been much of a presence in recent years, that’s thankfully set to change with a trio of releases: Darren Aronofsky’s Mother!, a new adaptation of Murder on the Orient Express, and the HBO film Wizard of Lies, in which she plays Ruth Madoff opposite Robert De Niro.
I’m especially glad that she mentions Pfeiffer’s role in “Stardust.”
And I love her in “Frankie and Johnny,” in part because it is so much fun to see her with her “Scarface” co-star Al Pacino in completely different roles.
In its brief, 80-minute running time, “Look & See: A Portrait of Wendell Berry” encompasses two different films, and neither one of them is, in fact, a portrait of the poet/novelist/farmer/activist Wendell Berry. Neither one of them, despite sincere intentions, is very good.
The best way to see Sofia Coppola’s “Beguiled” is to pair it with the original version, starring Clint Eastwood and directed by Don Siegel. Her film is really in conversation with the 1971 version. Both are the story of a wounded Union soldier who disrupts the lives of the women at a sheltered Southern boarding school in the midst of the Civil War. Each reflects its time as well as its director. Don Siegel directed such testosteronic classics as “Dirty Harry” and “The Killers.” In his version, the schoolmistress played by Geraldine Page is a bit unhinged (she had an incestuous relationship with her brother). The sudden arrival of a man (a literal enemy) is profoundly unsettling to all of the women but the implication is that the absence of men put them on the brink. Copyright 2017 Parmount
One reason Sofia Coppola decided to do a remake for the first time was to tell the story from the perspective of the women, and that has provoked some especially thoughtful commentary. In her version, the women are generally stronger and more resilient. Coppola’s decision to omit a slave character has drawn some criticism, but she said that she could not do justice to the character and that she wanted the girls and their teachers to feel abandoned and to be forced to learn to take care of themselves.
Ms. Coppola said that she did not give any thought to a female gaze, but that she did see differences in how she and Siegel handled the same material. “Siegel told his film from a male perspective of a guy surrounded by crazy women. I tell mine through the filter of women’s frustrated desires,” she said in a phone interview this month. She recalled that when Anne Ross, her frequent production designer, suggested that she watch the 1971 film, at the end the director thought, Let’s tell the women’s side of this. In Siegel’s version, the women are cast to type as slut, spinster, servant and so on, as if they represented the spectrum of female humanity. Ms. Coppola, who unlike Siegel is not judgmental about female sexuality, has more developed characters for the women.
I gave a pass to the Sunday-best sort of clothes that his keepers wear to impress McBurney, which are somehow crisp and wrinkle-free in such humidity. But then Coppola has the seven females don satin ball gowns with perfectly braided hair and fancy ribbons while serving a sumptuous Michelin-star worthy feast to the soldier on fancy china and crystal. Weirdly, we get to witness one of the younger students don a corset Scarlett O’Hara-style when she clearly doesn’t need one. Perhaps, by this time, the director can get away with such a fantasy sequence that feels like a War Between the States-themed prom.
