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This Twisty Thriller Delivers a Time-Bending Mystery Worthy of Your Attention

10 film noir movies that were almost perfect, jeff bridges and jane fonda's chemistry elevates this forgotten psychological thriller.

With the sheer amount of content permeating every facet of media, from streaming to physical media, it’s hard wading through everything to find the best of the best. Thankfully the folks at Rotten Tomatoes have created a handy list of the top-rated features on their site to give audiences a starting point for finding the enduring classics that might connect with them.

But the list is just a starting point. A bird's eye view. So we wanted to look closer at the list itself and the movies on it. What is it about them that has allowed them to rise to the top and become the highest-rated movies on Rotten Tomatoes?

It's important to note that the ranking of the list—as crafted by Rotten Tomatoes itself—was created using a movie's "Adjusted Score." RT officially explains the score as follows:

Each critic from our discrete list gets one vote, weighted equally. A movie must have 40 or more rated reviews to be considered. The Adjusted Score comes from a weighted formula (Bayesian) that we use that accounts for variation in the number of reviews per movie.

This adjustment is made to account for the volume of reviews a movie receives. So if a movie only has four reviews, but all are positive, it technically has a 100% on Rotten Tomatoes. But if a movie has 483 reviews and a 96% score, that average is technically harder to achieve given the sheer number of reviews that exist.

So without further ado, let's dig into the top 20 highest-rated movies on Rotten Tomatoes.

20. All About Eve (1950)

RT Score:  100%

One of the quintessential features about show business, All About Eve is the Single White Female of the 1950s. Legendary actress Bette Davis plays legendary actress Margo Channing who takes a shine to a sycophantic fan named Eve ( Anne Baxter ). But as Margo and her friends soon realize, Eve has more than just friendship on her mind; she actually wants to steal Margo’s career from her, and everything that comes with it.

Directed and written by Joseph Mankiewicz , All About Eve was a critical darling upon release in 1950. Critics praised the acid-tongued dialogue and the acting of all involved. It would eventually win six Academy Awards, including Best Picture. Since its release it’s often called one of the smartest films to exist with its insider-view of the theater world that many believe is synonymous with filmmaking. It holds a perfect 100% on Rotten Tomatoes, and Roger Ebert cited it as Bette Davis’ finest work. It’s a crackling story that reminds everyone to watch out because your friends and enemies might just be one and the same.

19. Dunkirk (2017)

RT Score:  92%

It might surprise many to realize this is the only feature directed by Christopher Nolan to enter this list. Nolan’s tenth feature film follows the various men from Belgium, Great Britain, and France who fought and died during the battle of Dunkirk in WWII. The film was a long-time passion project for Nolan who initially conceived of it in the early 1990s. The film’s visceral imagery was often compared to Steven Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan , and Nolan crafted the entire narrative as something of a time puzzle. The all-star cast often takes a backseat to the sheer power of the cinematography and technical prowess.

Dunkirk went on to win three Academy Awards for sound and editing and made over $500 million worldwide. Though it holds a 92% on RT, critics at the time cited its script, direction, cinematography, and score as worthy of praise, with many considering it Nolan’s best as well as one of the foremost features on WWII.

18. E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982)

RT Score: 98%

One of the most iconic images of cinema is little Elliott ( Henry Thomas ) and his friends traveling across the moon to help their alien buddy E.T. “phone home.” The Steven Spielberg -directed feature is a heartfelt, funny, and compassionate story of friendship wrapped up in a coping with divorce narrative (heavy stuff for a kid’s film). On a scant budget of just $10 million, E..T the Extra-Terrestrial has netted nearly $800 million since its release in 1982 (it was re-released in 1985 and 2002) and surpassed Star Wars as the highest-grossing film of all time. It also won four Oscars, mainly in effects and sound as well as the John Williams -created score that’s endured alongside the movie.

It’s a film that connected with audiences so much it was screened at the White House for then-President Ronald Reagan, made Princess Diana cry, and was showcased at the United Nations. Interestingly, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial won universal acclaim upon release but boasts a 98% on RT with one negative review.

17. Coco (2017)

RT Score:  97%

The first of three Disney films on this list (excluding the Fox merger), Coco tells the story of a little boy named Miguel who wants to be a musician. Unfortunately his family, for reasons unknown to him, has placed a ban on music. So when Miguel steals the guitar of a long-dead and famous Mexican musician he is accidentally sent to the Land of the Dead where he must reunite with his ancestors and learn about his family’s past.

Coco marked the first motion picture to boast an all-Latino cast and have a nine-figure budget. It was also Pixar’s first film with a Latino lead character. Like all Pixar features Coco is a blend of humor and heart, with a final scene that is an emotional gutpunch. The songs, penned by Frozen lyricists Kristen Anderson-Lopez and Robert Lopez , are spunky and infectious with the track “Remember Me” going on to win Best Original Song at the 2018 Academy Awards; the film also won Best Animated Feature.

Coco boasts a 97% on Rotten Tomatoes receiving praise for its rich characters and colorful animation.

16. Modern Times (1936)

Whether you’ve seen one of his films or not, nearly everyone can identify Charlie Chaplin’s “the Tramp” character. The kind-hearted vagrant with a mustache and bowler hat had been Chaplin’s bread and butter since the mid-1900s. Interested in the nature of machinery, especially in the midst of the Great Depression’s unemployment, Chaplin assembled a movie wherein his Tramp character plays a factory worker struggling to deal with modern technology and the aftermath of losing his job. Chaplin hoped Modern Times would be his first “talkie,” but decided to abandon the idea and keep the Tramp silent for as long as he could. (The character’s first sound film would be four years later in The Great Dictator .)

Though it won no awards in 1936, Modern Times is considered Chaplin’s best feature and is his most popular, boasting a perfect 100% on RT. Reviews at the time were positive, though not overly effusive and it was not commercially successful in the United States with its political views on labor being cited as controversial. Modern Times is often championed for prophesying our increased dependence on machinery and automation, all seen through the eyes of one little Tramp.

15. The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920)

Another 100% feature on the list, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari is a silent German Expressionist film about a somnambulist (or sleepwalker) played by Conrad Veidt , who commits murders at the behest of the evil Dr. Caligari ( Werner Krauss ).

A landmark in horror history, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari is usually taught in film schools as the best example of German expressionism. The movement is commonly identified for its reliance on dark and twisted imagery, sharp and oblique angles, and shadows painted directly on the sets themselves. The film is perceived to be a war allegory, with Veidt’s Cesare the German soldiers fighting in WWI and Dr. Caligari the government sending them off to their deaths. Today the feature is a creepy tale of control with a dreamlike atmosphere and stark cinematography. It’s a highly memorable silent film.

Surprisingly, the film was marketed as a standard horror film, free of artistic pretensions and captured an audience upon release in 1920. It was distributed in the U.S. the next year but was pulled from theaters after protests regarding the presentation of German features during wartime. It’s unclear how the movie was received in 1920. Some film theorists have said it was a commercial and critical success while others maintain it was a critical failure that was “too high-brow to become popular in Germany,” this per Siegfried Kracauer. Regardless, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari has become a foundational film and a must-see for any fans of horror.

14. Casablanca (1942)

RT Score:  98%

When asked to say the first classic era film you've seen, the usual answer is this 1942 war drama directed by Michael Curtiz . Humphrey Bogart plays Rick Blaine, an apathetic bar owner in the Vichy-controlled city of Casablanca. When he’s reunited with Ilsa ( Ingrid Bergman ), the woman who got away, Rick is forced to reconcile with his past and his own response to the events going on in the city.

Casablanca remains a perfect example of why studio-era cinema has endured. Its stars are A-list and utterly flawless, the directing isn’t technologically focused but geared towards the performances, and it has serious stakes. However, while filming it was assumed that Casablanca would just be another war drama in a decade dominated by them. You might say the studio didn’t think it’d amount to a hill of beans.

Reviews in 1942 were pleasant with resident critic Bosley Crowther applauding its sentiment. Other papers, like The New Yorker , simply called the film “pretty tolerable.” With a budget of a little over $1 million the grosses were good but not spectacular. It wasn’t until the late-’50s that audiences started to appreciate the movie for the classic it is. Here’s looking at you, kid!

13. It Happened One Night (1934)

One of the funniest screwball comedies out there, there’s nothing better than It Happened One Night . Claudette Colbert plays heiress Ellen Andrews who runs away from home because she can’t marry who she wants. She meets up with reporter Peter Warne ( Clark Gable ) and the two strike a deal: if she gives him an exclusive he won’t rat her out to her dad. Thus the two end up on a cross-country adventure with Ellen realizing her privilege and the two falling in love.

Screwball comedy was popular during the Depression as it positioned the wealthy in positions of goofiness (how times have changed). Colbert’s Ellen is relatable, a princess running away from the strictures of her rigid life. Gable’s Peter is scrappy, a man’s man. The two’s chemistry is fantastic and makes for some unforgettable comedy.

Interestingly, Colbert thought the movie was “the worst picture in the world and home studio Columbia didn’t think much of it either. Reviews were pleasant, with Variety saying there wasn’t a “particularly strong plot.” Word-of-mouth and the Depression creating a need for heartwarming stories helped the film do brisk business, eventually turning it into a hit. It won five Oscars, including both Best Actor and Actress for its leads, as well as Best Picture and is labeled as one of the best comedies ever made.

12. Eighth Grade (2018)

RT Score: 99%

Director Bo Burnham blew audiences away in 2018 with his feature directorial debut, Eighth Grade . The film follows Kayla ( Elsie Fisher ), who is about to finish her last week of middle school. As the tween prepares to transition to a new school, she's forced to confront all her social awkwardness and the problems she doesn’t want to follow her to high school.

Burnham was inspired to make Eighth Grade by his own adolescent anxieties. He translated that into a feature examining the generation of children who came of age with social media. Newcomer Elsie Fisher, who’d previously been known for voicing one of the little girls in Despicable Me , became an instant star after the film’s release for her performance as Kayla, garnering a Golden Globe nomination in the process (the film would receive no Oscar nominations). Eighth Grade holds a 99% Fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes with reviews praising its “supreme awkwardness” and “achingly honest” script.

11. Inside Out (2015)

In 2015, Disney and Pixar got psychological with Inside Out , the colorful tale about the anthropomorphic feelings that control the minds of every being on this planet. In this case, the audience meets the emotions of a girl named Riley. Joy (voiced by Amy Poehler ) wants Riley, who is moving from her hometown of Minnesota to San Francisco, to have the perfect transition. But when Sadness (voiced by Phyllis Smith ) messes things up it’s up to Joy to get the little girl’s mind back in order.

With the success of the 2009 film Up director Pete Doctor was able to pitch this movie, inspired by his daughter Elie personality change as she became a teenager. The film was a bit of a game-changer for the studio, the first to not be intensely overseen by Pixar’s former chief creative officer John Lasseter and the first to have half the story crew be comprised of women.

Inside Out premiered out of competition at the Cannes Film Festival in 2015 and grossed over $850 million worldwide with the biggest opening gross for a Pixar movie at the time. It holds a 98% Fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes with the critical consensus being that it’s “another outstanding addition to the Pixar library of modern animated classics.”

10. Wonder Woman (2017)

RT Score: 93%

After several decades in development, Warner Bros. announced in 2010 plans to adapt Wonder Woman for the screen. With an at-the-time untested director in Patty Jenkins and a leading lady who wasn’t a household name in Gal Gadot , Wonder Woman was considered a gamble that paid off big time.

Gadot plays Diana of Themyscira, a princess living on an island of Amazonian women warriors. When a WWI spy (played by Chris Pine ) crash-lands on Themyscira it kicks off a series of events that sees Diana leave home to travel to England. Diana hopes to find a “Godkiller” weapon to stop the evil god Ares from destroying humanity.

Wonder Woman connected with audiences everywhere but none more so than women, who found the movie’s predominantly female cast and lack of male gaze to be refreshing. In a time where politics were making women fear everything, Diana and the women of Themyscira gave them hope. The film was a success financially and garnered incredibly positive reviews despite the online discourse that dominated social media. It was considered DC’s best feature at the time and kick-started a wave of discussion on the roles of women, both in front of and behind the camera.

9. Moonlight (2016)

RT Score:  99%

The Oscars mistake heard round the world is usually cited as overshadowing the sheer power of Barry Jenkins’ powerful tale of love between two African-American men. Everything in Moonlight , from the performances to Nicholas Britell’s score, to the luminous cinematography, is astounding.

Director Barry Jenkins was reluctant to tackle a second film after his 2008 feature, Medicine for Melancholy , debuted. After that he wasn’t able to get a script into production. Urged on by his producer, Jenkins took a shot at adapting Tarell Alvin McCaraney’s play In Moonlight Black Boys Look Blue . The finished product pointedly discussed black masculinity, particularly where it regards homosexuality, poverty and struggle, and the relationships between families.

On a budget of just $4 million, Moonlight grossed $65.3 million worldwide in 2016. It holds a nearly perfect 99% on Rotten Tomatoes with several reviews praising the film’s authentic and personal story. It would win three Oscars, including Best Picture where it infamously was thought to have lost to La La Land . A presenter snafu led to the most controversial Oscars ceremony in years.

8. The Third Man (1949)

Directed by the acclaimed British auteur Carol Reed with a script by Grahame Green , The Third Man is a landmark in British film noir. The Third Man follows Holly Martins ( Joseph Cotten ), a man sent to Vienna on the behest of his friend Harry Lime ( Orson Welles ). But when Holly discovers Lime’s been murdered it kickstarts a twisted and wholly unpredictable mystery.

With its stark black-and-white cinematography and heavy use of Dutch angles, The Third Man is considered one of the most expressive and cynical features to come out of post-WWII Britain. The feature is not only regarded for its look, but its acting, and a third-act twist that is still a highlight for fans today.

The Third Man became the most popular film in Britain in 1949, though the reviews were tepid elsewhere. Critics in the U.S. praised it, even if a few thought the cinematography was overwhelming. Surprisingly, the film was nominated and won just one Oscar for Robert Kasker’s “deliriously tilted” cinematography. Since its release the film is considered a masterpiece and a must-watch for film aficionados.

7. Mad Max: Fury Road (2015)

In 1979 Australian director George Miller debuted Mad Max about a post-apocalyptic world. The film had two sequels, 1983’s Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior and 1985’s Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome . The films made Miller a cult favorite who would go on to direct The Witches of Eastwick (1987) and Happy Feet (2006). Miller also was offered a chance to make a big-scale Justice League movie that legendarily crashed and burned . But in that time Miller was always working on a fourth Mad Max film. After obtaining the rights in 1995 he spent the next 20 years attempting to get the film made.

It wasn’t until 2009 that Warner Bros. offered to help Miller with the film and in 2011 Mad Max: Fury Road entered production. The film followed a new incarnation of Max (this time played by Tom Hardy ) and a woman named Furiosa ( Charlize Theron ) attempting to liberate a group of female prisoners. The intense action and physical effects remain remarkably revolutionary in an age of CGI, and numerous essays have been written on the film’s feminism.

With a $200 million dollar budget it would have been difficult for the feature to turn a significant profit and only grossed $378 million worldwide. It was cited by Forbes as “too expensive, but not really a flop.” Reviews were strong with several critics championing Fury Road as the greatest action feature ever made. The film won six Academy Awards in the tech field, including Best Costumes and Production Design and, more importantly, has introduced Max and his gang to a whole new generation. The movie has a 97% on RT.

6. Get Out (2017)

Before he was an Oscar-nominated director,  Jordan Peele was best known as one half of the comic duo  Key and Peele . After his comedy show went off the air in 2015, Peele transitioned to directing and burst out the gate with a movie that challenged audiences’ thoughts on race, history, and the nature of the horror movie. In  Get Out , Daniel Kaluuya plays Chris, a black man invited to meet the parents of his white girlfriend. But what starts out as an awkwardly weird weekend turns into a terrifying tale of cultural appropriation.

Get Out flew under the radar right up until the moment of release, premiering at the Sundance Film Festival a month before hitting theaters nationwide. Upon release in 2017, reviews were extremely enthusiastic. Writers were praising the film from every angle, from its presentation of the white savior trope to how it looks at black culture butting up against white society. Get Out was a box office success, a critical darling and, more importantly, made Jordan Peele the fifth Black man nominated for Best Director. He won the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay, and the film currently stands at 98% on RT.

5. BlacKkKlansman (2018)

RT Score:  96%

Spike Lee has been challenging audiences’ thoughts on race since the 1980s, but it wasn’t until he adapted the story of Colorado Springs police officer Ron Stallworth that he nabbed his first Best Director nomination.

In the 1970s, Stallworth (played by John David Washington ) was the first Black man hired to the Colorado Springs police department. When he stumbles upon an ad for the Ku Klux Klan, Stallworth decided to infiltrate the organization with the help of a white fellow officer ( Adam Driver ). BlacKkKlansman is at times both painfully humorous and utterly terrifying. Lee and screenwriters Charlie Wachtel and David Rabinowitz create something that feels timely and, unfortunately, timeless.

A box office success upon release, BlacKkKlansman drew as much criticism as it did praise. Lee’s provocative story drew rave reviews from critics, while director Boots Riley took to social media to decry the director’s use of inaccurate facts for narrative entertainment. Regardless, the film holds a 96% on Rotten Tomatoes and was nominated for six Academy Awards. Lee didn’t win for Best Director but did get a chance to make a speech at the awards ceremony when the film won for Best Adapted Screenplay.

4. Citizen Kane (1941)

RT Score: 100%

If you’ve studied film in any capacity you’ve seen and/or heard “Rosebud,” the plaintive cry that anchors Orson Welles ’ filmic monument, Citizen Kane . Welles was just 25 when he wrote, directed, starred and produced Citizen Kane . Inspired by the life of newspaper tycoon William Randolph Hearst , Welles created newspaper tycoon Charles Foster Kane, an ambitious man who reaches the heights of professional glory at the expense of personal relationships.

Citizen Kane is a marvel of filmmaking from its directing to its cinematography, with director of photography Gregg Toland creating several new techniques that have become de rigueur in cinema today. The film’s release history already has several books written on it, but the movie irked Hearst immensely. He attempted to have the film stopped and when that didn’t work he banned all advertising, reviews, or mentions in any of the newspapers he owned. Several major theaters refused to screen it for fear of running afoul of Hearst and his lead gossip columnist, Louella Parsons .

When Citizen Kane finally did open it was a box office disappointment, playing to near empty houses in rural areas and major cities. Despite several good reviews at the time the film was the first (though far from the last) time Welles would be in the red. It was nominated for nine Oscars regardless of Hearst’s campaign, though it only won one for Best Original Screenplay. Now Citizen Kane is regarded as a masterpiece, the film by which all other films are judged, and Welles’ name is positioned firmly as one of the greatest directors of our time.

3. The Wizard of Oz (1939)

It’s hard to believe but The Wizard of Oz only has a 98% on Rotten Tomatoes! Who could possibly dislike the most charming, fun, sweet movie to ever exist? One that’s made a legion of children smile and has inspired nearly every movie to follow? It’s just baffling. The story of Dorothy ( Judy Garland ) and her trip over the rainbow to the land of Oz has countless books written on its production, which involved numerous directors, costume changes, and actor swaps, but the finished product remains just as dazzling today as it did in 1939.

The Wizard of Oz came out in one of the best years for cinema and, interestingly enough, is the only feature from the Golden Year to make this list. This was home studio MGM’s pony (alongside Gone With the Wind ). The movie was a massive undertaking with numerous worlds created on a studio backlot (and a revolving door of directors). Judy Garland was just 16 when she got the role of a lifetime as Dorothy Gale, taking on a role that initially was offered to Shirley Temple .

It isn’t surprising that the movie received huge praise in 1939; not from The New Yorker though who called it a “stinkeroo.” Because of its large budget it took several years for the movie to reach a profit, aided by subsequent re-releases throughout the ‘40s. It did only win two Oscars (out of a low six nominations) for Best Song and Score. But no matter because the movie now is cited as one of the best films ever made with nearly all of its cast becoming legends.

2. Lady Bird (2017)

For a generation of women in 2017, watching director Greta Gerwig’s feature Lady Bird was like being sent right back to their high school. The story of a confident young woman named Lady Bird ( Saorise Ronan ) and her desire to leave her Sacramento hometown was relatable, funny, cringe-worthy at times but always delightful. Gerwig, the star of films like Frances Ha and Mistress America , had been working on the script for years and was determined to make it her first solo directorial effort.

Lady Bird grossed nearly $80 million worldwide and was nominated for five Academy Awards including Best Picture. Greta Gerwig became just the fifth woman nominated for Best Director, the first since Kathryn Bigelow became the first woman Best Director winner for The Hurt Locker in 2009.

1. Black Panther (2018)

RT Score: 96%

By the time Black Panther was released the Marvel Cinematic Universe had been a presence for ten years. And yet, in all that time, audiences were still asking for a superhero lead of color.

All that changed with the release of Ryan Coogler ’s Black Panther , an exuberant, rich, and highly entertaining story about the citizens of the fictional country of Wakanda. Led by T’Challa ( Chadwick Boseman ) as the eponymous Black Panther, the nation of Wakanda must band together to stop the evil Killmonger ( Michael B. Jordan ).

In development since 1992 - Wesley Snipes wanted the role badly - Black Panther went through its fair share of development hell . With Snipes leaving the project in the early 2000s, Marvel finally greenlit it as part of their phase two slate in 2014 with Boseman, who had previously played Jackie Robinson and James Brown , as King T’Challa.

Black Panther grossed over $1 billion dollars in 2018, becoming the highest-grossing solo superhero film and the highest-grossing film by a black director. More iconic was its winning of three Academy Awards, including Ruth Carter ’s fantastic costume design. It also marked the first time a Marvel feature was nominated for Best Picture.

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Caroline is currently a writer and contributor for Hollywood Insider. She believes in constant critical thinking and applied analysis when it comes to media consumption. Her goal aligns with Hollywood Insider’s mission statement, and she strives to educate readers on the nuances of the entertainment industry and to hopefully encourage them to form their own opinions on the media they consume daily.

Mar 10, 2021

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In 2020 alone, there were more than 320 films released in the United States and Canada. That was with the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent movie theater closures. The year before, there were over 800 films released. With the ever-growing number of films to watch both in theaters and on streaming platforms , it’s becoming a harder decision for viewers to pick what they want to watch. The overwhelming nature of choice has dominated the movie market for years now, but the aim of critical review aggregator, Rotten Tomatoes , is to help make that choice a little easier. 

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Rotten Tomatoes was launched in August 1998 with the goal of merging critical reviews into an easily-readable and understandable score that viewers could use to determine whether a movie was worth their time or not. It is important to note that, in 2016, Fandango , a movie ticketing company, acquired Rotten Tomatoes and now displays their scores next to films when you’re deciding on which tickets to purchase, so to say that Rotten Tomatoes scores are incredibly influential would be an understatement. They, in front of IMDB , are one of the most trusted sources for accurate, critical ratings on all your favorite movies. But where exactly do all the critical scores come from? And what do they mean? Let’s break it down.

What Are Critical Scores? How Are They Calculated?

When you click on a movie on Rotten Tomatoes, the first thing you see are two independent scores. One signifies an aggregation of critical ratings of a film (the “Tomatometer” ) and the other, denoted by a popcorn bucket, displays audience consensus on a film. In regards to critical reviews, there are three categories that a film can fall under: rotten, fresh, and certified fresh. To put it simply, if a film is marked as “rotten”, it means that under 60% of the total reviewers left a positive review. A positive review is usually marked by a score of 6 or more out of 10, but there is also room for interpretation as to what a positive score can be due to the wide variety of rating systems that critics use.

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Some critics use a letter grade such as “A”, “B”, “C”, or “D” to judge films and others use a rating system out of 4 instead of 10. Ultimately, it falls to the curators of Rotten Tomatoes to clarify whether a review is positive or negative, and categorize it as such. As a side note, the overall percentage that you see at the top of the screen is the total amount of reviewers that scored the film positively. For example, ‘Coming 2 America’ currently holds a critical rating of 52% on Rotten Tomatoes, meaning that of the 182 reviews, only 52% of them ranked the film positively. Got it? Great, let’s move on. If a film qualifies as “fresh”, that means that more than 60% of reviewers ranked the film positively.

That number increases to 75% or more if a film is “certified fresh”, however, that title is also accompanied by a different set of qualifying rules. For example, the film in question must have been reviewed 80 times or more, as well as have reviews by five of the “top critics” to qualify as certified fresh. But let’s back up even further to examine who these critics are and what qualifying categories they have to meet in order to be accepted into the Rotten Tomatoes club.

Who Are the Critics?

Rotten Tomatoes deems that all critics meet a set of eligibility guidelines that are meant to exemplify that this person or publication is influential (and experienced) enough to write well-articulated reviews. They do this through an application-based system with some of the requirements being: you must have been writing reviews for at least two years that are being published through a non-self-published source, whether that be online or print. For social media influencers, these qualifications are different in that you must have a subscriber count of at least 30,000 to be considered “widespread” enough in your audience scope. To put it simply, most Rotten Tomatoes reviewers are qualified to review films and have already been doing so, consistently, on a different platform. 

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Once a critic has been approved to write for Rotten Tomatoes, they either self-submit reviews to the website or continue to publish reviews via the medium they were previously published through. In the case of the latter, Rotten Tomatoes has a team of expert curators determine whether or not the review is “fresh” or “rotten”. This team of curators poses a morally gray area as they introduce a middleman who opens the reviews to the possibility of misinterpretation. Mostly, however, Rotten Tomatoes critics submit scores themselves in order to rule out any areas of miscommunication. 

Audience Scores Versus Critical Scores: Different Guidelines

Let’s switch gears a bit to talk about what an audience score is and what it means. Similarly to critical scores, the percentage at the top of the page (next to the popcorn bucket) represents the overall number of audience members who gave a film a positive review. However, it’s important to note that audience reviews have a different rating system than those described for critics, one that is universal and easier to aggregate. All audience reviews must score the film in question out of 5 stars. This shifts the rating system to a 3.5 out of 5 counting as a positive review while anything below that counts as a negative review. In this instance, and throughout this article, I’ve been using “positive” and “fresh” interchangeably as well as “negative” and “rotten” interchangeably too. Just a side note for anyone who feels confused! Luckily, the rest of the audience rating system is easier to digest. There’s a full popcorn bucket for any film that receives 60% or higher positive reviews from audience members while a spilled popcorn bucket denotes a film where less than 60% of reviewers scored the film positively.

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How You Can Use Rotten Tomatoes in Your Everyday Life

Okay, so now that I just rattled off a bunch of confusing numbers and percentages to you, let’s talk about why you should care. The main takeaway I hope you have from this article is that Rotten Tomatoes, at its core, is a review aggregator, which means that ultimately those percentages you see at the top of the screen are general estimates meant to give you an overall idea of what critics think about this film. Obviously, films with higher scores that are certified fresh, and films that fall to the other extreme of the rotten scale, are easier to judge because critical consensus is more unanimous. However, all these gray areas and film critics opinions shouldn’t matter to you unless you know for certain that you like their opinions. If you are a more traditional cinephile, aka a fan of the Criterion collection or HBOMax’s lineup, then you will probably benefit from looking at solely critical scores on Rotten Tomatoes.

For example, ‘L’Avventura’ directed by Michaelangelo Antonini in 1960, has a critical score of 94%, but an audience score of 88%. In a more abstract sense, if you prefer fun, entertaining blockbusters like the majority of the general public, you may not like this film as much as the professional critics who rated it very highly. At the end of the day, Rotten Tomatoes is in no way, shape, or form a Bible that determines a film’s quality. It is best used in a subjective way that accounts for nuances and personal taste. However, in this time of ever-growing film releases via all sorts of platforms, it can be helpful to look at a number and use it to make a quick judgment of a film before you dedicate an hour or more of your life to it. 

By  Caroline Adamec

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Caroline is currently a writer and contributor for Hollywood Insider. She believes in constant critical thinking and applied analysis when it comes to media consumption. Her goal aligns with Hollywood Insider's mission statement, and she strives to educate readers on the nuances of the entertainment industry and to hopefully encourage them to form their own opinions on the media they consume daily.

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Rotten Tomatoes Changed The Role Of Film Critics. But Is That A Good Thing?

Marquee announcing the opening of "Barbie" movie is pictured in Los Angeles California, on July 20, 2023. (Photo by VALERIE MACON / AFP) (Photo by VALERIE MACON/AFP via Getty Images) VALERIE MACON/AFP via Getty Images hide caption

Marquee announcing the opening of "Barbie" movie is pictured in Los Angeles California, on July 20, 2023. (Photo by VALERIE MACON / AFP) (Photo by VALERIE MACON/AFP via Getty Images)

If you're of a certain age, and you love movies, when you think "movie critic", you probably picture Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert and their popular TV shows. Their iconic "thumbs up" or "thumbs down" made it clear what each of them thought about a film. In some ways, the movie review website Rotten Tomatoes is the opposite of Siskel and Ebert. Their viewers depended on the insights of two individuals that they trusted, and felt they knew. Rotten Tomatoes aggregates and averages reviews from lots of critics to assign a movie a number ranking, and declare it "fresh" or "rotten". Since its launch 25 years ago, it's become the the go to site for lots of potential movie goers, offering everything they need to decide whether or not a movie is worth seeing. But for a while now, there have been complaints about the way the site ranks films. And concerns that those rankings unfairly influence whether a movie succeeds or bombs. Host Scott Detrow talks to Lane Brown, who took the site to task in a recent article on Vulture, and film critic Jamie Broadnax, editor-in-chief of the culture site, Black Girl Nerds.

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Rotten Tomatoes, explained

Does a movie’s Rotten Tomatoes score affect its box office returns? And six other questions, answered.

by Alissa Wilkinson

In February 2016, Rotten Tomatoes — the site that aggregates movie and TV critics’ opinions and tabulates a score that’s “fresh” or “rotten” — took on an elevated level of importance. That’s when Rotten Tomatoes (along with its parent company Flixster) was acquired by Fandango , the website that sells advance movie tickets for many major cinema chains.

People had been using Rotten Tomatoes to find movie reviews since it launched in 2000, but after Fandango acquired the site, it began posting “Tomatometer” scores next to movie ticket listings. Since then, studio execs have started to feel as if Rotten Tomatoes matters more than it used to — and in some cases, they’ve rejiggered their marketing strategies accordingly.

It’s easy to see why anyone might assume that Rotten Tomatoes scores became more tightly linked to ticket sales, with potential audiences more likely to buy tickets for a movie with a higher score, and by extension, giving critics more power over the purchase of a ticket.

But that’s not the whole story. And as most movie critics (including myself) will tell you, the correlation between Rotten Tomatoes scores, critical opinion, marketing tactics, and actual box office returns is complicated. It’s not a simple cause-and-effect situation.

My own work is included in both Rotten Tomatoes’ score and that of its more exclusive cousin, Metacritic . So I, along with many other critics , think often of the upsides and pitfalls of aggregating critical opinion and its effect on which movies people see. But for the casual moviegoer, how review aggregators work, what they measure, and how they affect ticket sales can be mysterious.

So when I got curious about how people perceive Rotten Tomatoes and its effect on ticket sales, I did what any self-respecting film critic does: I informally polled my Twitter followers to see what they wanted to know.

Here are seven questions that many people have about Rotten Tomatoes, and review aggregation more generally — and some facts to clear up the confusion.

How is a Rotten Tomatoes score calculated?

The score that Rotten Tomatoes assigns to a film corresponds to the percentage of critics who’ve judged the film to be “fresh,” meaning their opinion of it is more positive than negative. The idea is to quickly offer moviegoers a sense of critical consensus.

“Our goal is to serve fans by giving them useful tools and one-stop access to critic reviews, user ratings, and entertainment news to help with their entertainment viewing decisions,” Jeff Voris, a vice president at Rotten Tomatoes, told me in an email.

The opinions of about 3,000 critics — a.k.a. the “Approved Tomatometer Critics” who have met a series of criteria set by Rotten Tomatoes — are included in the site’s scores, though not every critic reviews every film, so any given score is more typically derived from a few hundred critics, or even less. The scores don’t include just anyone who calls themselves a critic or has a movie blog; Rotten Tomatoes only aggregates critics who have been regularly publishing movie reviews with a reasonably widely read outlet for at least two years, and those critics must be “active,” meaning they’ve published at least one review in the last year. The site also deems a subset of critics to be “top critics” and calculates a separate score that only includes them.

Some critics (or staffers at their publications) upload their own reviews, choose their own pull quotes, and designate their review as “fresh” or “rotten.” Other critics (including myself) have their reviews uploaded, pull-quoted, and tagged as fresh or rotten by the Rotten Tomatoes staff. In the second case, if the staff isn’t sure whether to tag a review as fresh or rotten, they reach out to the critic for clarification. And critics who don’t agree with the site’s designation can request that it be changed.

As the reviews of a given film accumulate, the Rotten Tomatoes score measures the percentage that are more positive than negative, and assigns an overall fresh or rotten rating to the movie. Scores of over 60 percent are considered fresh, and scores of 59 percent and under are rotten. To earn the coveted “designated fresh” seal, a film needs at least 40 reviews, 75 percent of which are fresh, and five of which are from “top” critics.

What does a Rotten Tomatoes score really mean ?

A Rotten Tomatoes score represents the percentage of critics who felt mildly to wildly positively about a given film.

If I give a film a mixed review that’s generally positive (which, in Vox’s rating system, could range from a positive-skewing 3 to the rare totally enamored 5), that review receives the same weight as an all-out rave from another critic. (When I give a movie a 2.5, I consider that to be a neutral score; by Rotten Tomatoes’ reckoning, it’s rotten.) Theoretically, a 100 percent Rotten Tomatoes rating could be made up entirely of middling-to-positive reviews. And if half of the critics the site aggregates only sort of like a movie, and the other half sort of dislike it, the film will hover around 50 percent (which is considered “rotten” by the site).

Contrary to some people’s perceptions, Rotten Tomatoes itself maintains no opinion about a film. What Rotten Tomatoes tries to gauge is critical consensus.

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Critics’ opinions do tend to cluster on most films. But there are always outliers, whether from contrarians (who sometimes seem to figure out what people will say and then take the opposite opinion), or from those who seem to love every film. And critics, like everyone, have various life experiences, aesthetic preferences, and points of view that lead them to have differing opinions on movies.

So in many (if not most) cases, a film’s Rotten Tomatoes score may not correspond to any one critic’s view. It’s more like an imprecise estimate of what would happen if you mashed together every Tomatometer critic and had the resulting super-critic flash a thumbs-up or thumbs-down.

Rotten Tomatoes also lets audiences rate movies, and the score is often out of step with the critical score. Sometimes, the difference is extremely significant, a fact that’s noticeable because the site lists the two scores side by side.

There’s a straightforward reason the two rarely match, though: The critical score is more controlled and methodical.

Why? Most professional critics have to see and review many films, whether or not they’re inclined to like the movie. (Also, most critics don’t pay to see films, because studios hold special early screenings for them ahead of the release date, which removes the decision of whether they’re interested enough in a film to spend their hard-earned money on seeing it.)

But with Rotten Tomatoes’ audience score, the situation is different. Anyone on the internet can contribute — not just those who actually saw the film. As a result, a film’s Rotten Tomatoes score can be gamed by internet trolls seeking to sink it simply because they find its concept offensive. A concerted effort can drive down the film’s audience score before it even comes out, as was the case with the all-female reboot of Ghostbusters .

Even if Rotten Tomatoes required people to pass a quiz on the movie before they rated it, the score would still be somewhat unreliable. Why? Because ordinary audiences are more inclined to buy tickets to movies they’re predisposed to like — who wants to spend $12 to $20 on a film they’re pretty sure they’ll hate?

So audience scores at Rotten Tomatoes (and other audience-driven scores, like the ones at IMDb) naturally skew very positive, or sometimes very negative if there’s any sort of smear campaign in play. There’s nothing inherently wrong with that. But audience scores tend to not account for those who would never buy a ticket to the movie in the first place.

In contrast, since critics see lots of movies — some of which they would have gone to see anyhow, and some of which they would’ve never chosen to see if their editors didn’t make the assignment — their opinion distribution should theoretically be more even, and thus the critical Rotten Tomatoes score more “accurate.”

Or at least that’s what Rotten Tomatoes thinks. The site displays a movie’s critics’ scores — the official Tomatometer — at Fandango and in a more prominent spot on the movie’s Rotten Tomatoes landing page. The audience score is also displayed on the Rotten Tomatoes page, but it’s not factored into the film’s fresh or rotten rating, and doesn’t contribute to a film being labeled as “certified fresh.”

Why do critics often get frustrated by the Tomatometer?

The biggest reason many critics find Rotten Tomatoes frustrating is that most people’s opinions about movies can’t be boiled down to a simple thumbs up or down. And most critics feel that Rotten Tomatoes, in particular, oversimplifies criticism, to the detriment of critics, the audience, and the movies themselves.

In some cases, a film really is almost universally considered to be excellent, or to be a complete catastrophe. But critics usually come away from a movie with a mixed view. Some things work, and others don’t. The actors are great, but the screenplay is lacking. The filmmaking is subpar, but the story is imaginative. Some critics use a four- or five-star rating, sometimes with half-stars included, to help quantify mixed opinions as mostly negative or mostly positive.

The important point here is that no critic who takes their job seriously is going to have a simple yes-or-no system for most movies. Critics watch a film, think about it, and write a review that doesn’t just judge the movie but analyzes, contextualizes, and ruminates over it. The fear among many critics (including myself) is that people who rely largely on Rotten Tomatoes aren’t interested in the nuances of a film, and aren’t particularly interested in reading criticism, either.

But maybe the bigger reason critics are worried about the influence of review aggregators is that they seem to imply there’s a “right” way to evaluate a movie, based on most people’s opinions. We worry that audience members who have different reactions will feel as if their opinion is somehow wrong, rather than seeing the diversity of opinions as an invitation to read and understand how and why people react to art differently.

Plenty of movies — from Psycho to Fight Club to Alien — would have earned a rotten rating from Rotten Tomatoes upon their original release, only to be reconsidered and deemed classics years later as tastes, preferences, and ideas about films changed. Sometimes being an outlier can just mean you’re forward-thinking.

Voris, the Rotten Tomatoes vice president, told me that the site is always trying to grapple with this quandary. “The Rotten Tomatoes curation team is constantly adding and updating reviews for films — both past and present,” he told me. “If there’s a review available from an approved critic or outlet, it will be added.”

What critics are worried about is a tendency toward groupthink, and toward scapegoating people who deviate from the “accepted” analysis. You can easily see this in the hordes of fans that sometimes come after a critic who dares to “ruin” a film’s perfect score . But critics (at least serious ones) don’t write their reviews to fit the Tomatometer, nor are they out to “get” DC Comics movies or religious movies or political movies or any other movies. Critics love movies and want them to be good, and we try to be honest when we see one that we don’t measures up.

That doesn’t mean the audience can’t like a movie with a rotten rating, or hate a movie with a fresh rating. It’s no insult to critics when audience opinion diverges. In fact, it makes talking and thinking about movies more interesting.

If critics are ambivalent about Rotten Tomatoes scores, why do moviegoers use the scores to decide whether to see a movie?

Mainly, it’s easy. You’re buying movie tickets on Fandango, or you’re trying to figure out what to watch on Netflix, so you check the Rotten Tomatoes score to decide. It’s simple. That’s the point.

And that’s not a bad thing. It’s helpful to get a quick sense of critical consensus, even if it’s somewhat imprecise. Many people use Rotten Tomatoes to get a rough idea of whether critics generally liked a film.

The flip side, though, is that some people, whether they’re critics or audience members, will inevitably have opinions that don’t track with the Rotten Tomatoes score at all. Just because an individual’s opinion is out of step with the Tomatometer doesn’t mean the person is “wrong” — it just means they’re an outlier.

And that, frankly, is what makes art, entertainment, and the world at large interesting: Not everyone has the same opinion about everything, because people are not exact replicas of one another. Most critics love arguing about movies, because they often find that disagreeing with their colleagues is what makes their job fun. It’s fine to disagree with others about a movie, and it doesn’t mean you’re “wrong.”

(For what it’s worth, another review aggregation site, Metacritic, maintains an even smaller and more exclusive group of critics than Rotten Tomatoes — its aggregated scores cap out around 50 reviews per movie, instead of the hundreds that can make up a Tomatometer score. Metacritic’s score for a film is different from Rotten Tomatoes’ insofar as each individual review is assigned a rating on a scale of 100 and the overall Metacritic score is a weighted average, the mechanics of which Metacritic absolutely refuses to divulge . But because the site’s ratings are even more carefully controlled to include only experienced professional critics — and because the reviews it aggregates are given a higher level of granularity, and presumably weighted by the perceived influence of the critic’s publication — most critics consider Metacritic a better gauge of critical opinion.)

Does a movie’s Rotten Tomatoes score affect its box office earnings?

The short version: It can, but not necessarily in the ways you might think.

A good Rotten Tomatoes score indicates strong critical consensus, and that can be good for smaller films in particular. It’s common for distributors to roll out such films slowly, opening them in a few key cities (usually New York and Los Angeles, and maybe a few others) to generate good buzz — not just from critics, but also on social media and through word of mouth. The result, they hope, is increased interest and ticket sales when the movie opens in other cities.

Get Out , for example, certainly profited from the 99 percent “fresh” score it earned since its limited opening. And the more recent The Big Sick became one of last summer’s most beloved films, helped along by its 98 percent rating. But a bad score for a small film can help ensure that it will close quickly, or play in fewer cities overall. Its potential box office earnings, in turn, will inevitably take a hit.

Yet when it comes to blockbusters, franchises, and other big studio films (which usually open in many cities at once), it’s much less clear how much a film’s Rotten Tomatoes score affects its box office tally. A good Rotten Tomatoes score, for example, doesn’t necessarily guarantee a film will be a hit. Atomic Blonde is “guaranteed fresh,” with a 77 percent rating, but it didn‘t do very well at the box office despite being an action film starring Charlize Theron.

Still, studios certainly seem to believe the score makes a difference . Last summer, studios blamed Rotten Tomatoes scores (and by extension, critics) when poorly reviewed movies like Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales , Baywatch , and The Mummy performed below expectations at the box office. ( Pirates still went on to be the year’s 19th highest-grossing film.)

2017’s highest grossing movies in the US

But that correlation doesn’t really hold up. The Emoji Movie , for example, was critically panned, garnering an abysmal 6 percent Rotten Tomatoes score. But it still opened to $25 million in the US, which put it just behind the acclaimed Christopher Nolan film Dunkirk . And the more you think about it, the less surprising it is that plenty of people bought tickets to The Emoji Movie in spite of its bad press: It’s an animated movie aimed at children that faced virtually no theatrical competition, and it opened during the summer, when kids are out of school. Great reviews might have inflated its numbers, but almost universally negative ones didn’t seem to hurt it much.

It’s also worth noting that many films with low Rotten Tomatoes scores that also perform poorly in the US (like The Mummy or The Great Wall ) do just fine overseas, particularly in China. The Mummy gave Tom Cruise his biggest global opening ever . If there is a Rotten Tomatoes effect, it seems to only extend to the American market.

Without any consistent proof, why do people still maintain that a bad Rotten Tomatoes score actively hurts a movie at the box office?

While it’s clear that a film’s Rotten Tomatoes score and box office earnings aren’t correlated as strongly as movie studios might like you to think, blaming bad ticket sales on critics is low-hanging fruit.

Plenty of people would like you to believe that the weak link between box office earnings and critical opinion proves that critics are at fault for not liking the film, and that audiences are a better gauge of its quality. Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, co-star of Baywatch , certainly took that position when reviews of the 2017 bomb Baywatch came out:

Baywatch ended up with a very comfortably rotten 19 percent Tomatometer score , compared to a just barely fresh 62 percent audience score. But with apologies to The Rock, who I’m sure is a very nice man, critics aren’t weather forecasters or pundits, and they’re not particularly interested in predicting how audiences will respond to a movie. (We are also a rather reserved and nerdy bunch, not regularly armed with venom and knives.) Critics show up where they’re told to show up and watch a film, then go home and evaluate it to the best of their abilities.

The obvious rejoinder, at least from a critic’s point of view, is that if Baywatch was a better movie, there wouldn’t be such a disconnect. But somehow, I suspect that younger ticket buyers — an all-important demographic — lacked nostalgia for 25-year-old lifeguard TV show, and thus weren’t so sure about seeing Baywatch in the first place. Likewise, I doubt that a majority of Americans were ever going to be terribly interested in the fifth installment of the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise (which notched a 30 percent Tomatometer score and a 64 percent audience score), especially when they could just watch some other movie.

A pile-up of raves for either of these films might have resulted in stronger sales, because people could have been surprised to learn that a film they didn’t think they were interested in was actually great. But with lackluster reviews, the average moviegoer just had no reason to give them a chance.

Big studio publicists, however, are paid to convince people to see their films, not to candidly discuss the quality of the films themselves. So when a film with bad reviews flops at the box office, it’s not shocking that studios are quick to suggest that critics killed it.

How do movie studios try to blunt the perceived impact when they’re expecting a bad Rotten Tomatoes score?

Of late, some studios — prompted by the idea that critics can kill a film’s buzz before it even comes out — have taken to “ fighting back ” when they’re expecting a rotten Tomatometer score.

Their biggest strategy isn’t super obvious to the average moviegoer, but very clear to critics. When a studio suspects it has a lemon on its hands, it typically hosts the press screening only a day or two ahead of the film’s release, and then sets a review “embargo” that lifts a few hours before the film hits theaters.

Consider, for example, the case of the aforementioned Emoji Movie. I and most other critics hoped the movie would be good, as is the case with all movies see. But once the screening invitations arrived in our inboxes, we pretty much knew, with a sinking feeling, that it wouldn’t be. The tell was pretty straightforward: The film’s only critics’ screening in New York was scheduled for the day before it opened. It screened for press on Wednesday night at 5 pm, and then the review embargo lifted at 3 pm the next day — mere hours before the first public showtimes.

Late critics’ screenings for any given film mean that reviews of the film will necessarily come out very close to its release, and as a result, people purchasing advance tickets might buy them before there are any reviews or Tomatometer score to speak of. Thus, in spite of there being no strong correlation between negative reviews and a low box office, its first-weekend box returns might be less susceptible to any potential harm as a result of bad press. (Such close timing can also backfire; critics liked this summer’s Captain Underpants , for example, but the film was screened too late for the positive reviews to measurably boost its opening box office.)

That first-weekend number is important, because if a movie is the top performer at the box office (or if it simply exceeds expectations, like Dunkirk and Wonder Woman did this summer), its success can function as good advertising for the film, which means its second weekend sales may also be stronger. And that matters , particularly when it means a movie is outperforming its expectations, because it can actually shift the way industry executives think about what kinds of movies people want to watch. Studios do keep an eye on critics’ opinions, but they’re much more interested in ticket sales — which makes it easy to see why they don’t want risk having their opening weekend box office affected by bad reviews, whether there’s a proven correlation or not.

The downside of this strategy, however, is that it encourages critics to instinctively gauge a studio’s level of confidence in a film based on when the press screening takes place. 20th Century Fox, for instance, screened War for the Planet of the Apes weeks ahead of its theatrical release, and lifted the review embargo with plenty of time to spare before the movie came out. The implication was that Fox believed the movie would be a critical success, and indeed, it was — the movie has a 97 percent Tomatometer score and an 86 percent audience score.

And still, late press screenings fail to account for the fact that, while a low Rotten Tomatoes score doesn’t necessarily hurt a film’s total returns, aggregate review scores in general do have a distinct effect on second-weekend sales. In 2016, Metacritic conducted a study of the correlation between its scores and second weekend sales , and found — not surprisingly — that well-reviewed movies dip much less in the second weekend than poorly reviewed movies. This is particularly true of movies with a strong built-in fan base, like Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice , which enjoyed inflated box office returns in the first weekend because fans came out to see it, but dropped sharply in its second weekend, at least partly due to extremely negative press .

Most critics who are serious about their work make a good-faith effort to approach each film they see with as few expectations as possible. But it’s hard to have much hope about a movie when it seems obvious that a studio is trying to play keep-away with it. And the more studios try to game the system by withholding their films from critics, the less critics are inclined to enter a screening devoid of expectations, however subconscious.

If you ask critics what studios ought to do to minimize the potential impact of a low Rotten Tomatoes score, their answer is simple: Make better movies. But of course, it’s not that easy; some movies with bad scores do well, while some with good scores still flop. Hiding a film from critics might artificially inflate first-weekend box office returns, but plenty of people are going to go see a franchise film, or a superhero movie, or a family movie, no matter what critics say.

The truth is that neither Rotten Tomatoes nor the critics whose evaluations make up its scores are really at fault here, and it’s silly to act like that’s the case. The website is just one piece of the sprawling and often bewildering film landscape.

As box office analyst Scott Mendelson wrote at Forbes :

[Rotten Tomatoes] is an aggregate website, one with increased power because the media now uses the fresh ranking as a catch-all for critical consensus, with said percentage score popping up when you buy tickets from Fandango or rent the title on Google Market. But it is not magic. At worst, the increased visibility of the site is being used as an excuse by ever-pickier moviegoers to stay in with Netflix or VOD.

For audience members who want to make good moviegoing decisions, the best approach is a two-pronged one. First, check Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic to get a sense of critical consensus. But second, find a few critics — two or three will do — whose taste aligns with (or challenges) your own, and whose insights help you enjoy a movie even more. Read them and rely on them.

And know that it’s okay to form your own opinions, too. After all, in the bigger sense, everyone’s a critic.

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T he Rotten Tomatoes ratings system―good or bad? Well, I’d say it’s a bit better than the original way tomatoes were used to judge entertainment. Because even if we want to throw fruit at the screen, 21st century technology reminds us we don’t have to. Rotten Tomatoes will provide us with a fair Critic consensus before we even get to the theatre (saving us a ton of food and money).

So how does Rotten Tomatoes work, exactly? Is it a reliable judge of… characters … Okay, okay, hold your tomatoes please. Let’s get a behind the scenes look at how it all works.

What do the Rotten Tomatoes symbols mean? Read on

Rotten tomatoes ratings system.

Rotten Tomatoes started in 2000 and it quickly became moviegoers go-to for reviews. But ever since Fandango acquired the company, it’s become even more well-known adding something called a “Tomatometer” score next to every movie and ticket listing. 

Critics have suggested that there is much more nuance and complication when it comes to the correlation between a Rotten Tomatoes rating and ticket sales. And while we will not get into that in this article, I think there is something to be said psychologically about seeing a rating right before you make your choice.

But I digress. 

I know for me, the ubiquitous nature of a Rotten Tomatoes score has made me feel like they hold more weight than they once did. But do they really hold more weight? How is the score actually calculated? And how are critics curated? 

Let's break it down.

Tomatometer Breakdown

Rotten tomatoes rating system, how does the tomatometer work.

The Rotten Tomatoes rating system uses a scale better known as the “The Tomatometer.” This represents the percentage of positive reviews for a given film or show. The Tomatometer score is calculated after five reviews.

As the reviews come in, The Tomatometer measures the positive reviews against the negative ones and assigns either an overall score of fresh or rotten rating to the film or television show. 

A red tomato score indicating its fresh status, is designated when at least 60% of the reviews are positive. 

A green splat indicating rotten status, is displayed when less than 60% of the reviews are positive. 

If there is no score available, it usually just means the movie or show hasn’t been released or there aren’t enough reviews yet. So, now that we know how they’re calculated, who’s doing the reviewing? 

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How Does Rotten Tomatoes Rate Their Movies

How is rotten tomatoes rated .

Rotten Tomatoes is careful in its Critic curation. It won’t include just any critic’s review. It aggregates those who have been regularly putting out movie reviews over the last two years, and those who are considered active by Rotten Tomatoes standards. This just means they’ve published a review within the last year. While there are about 3,000 accepted reviewers (see the Tomatometer-approved critics criteria), usually only several hundred are actively reviewing for any given film. 

Many times, it’s much less. And Top Critics are counted with a separate score. So while the the Rotten Tomatoes rating system is really just general consensus, you can see some of the more renowned critics in a different space.

But it’s not just about the critics! You also get a fully rounded out review because you can also see how the audience feels. 

What is the Tomatometer?

Popcorn rating explained, rotten tomatoes audience score.

This is a great feature of the site because it provides information from everyday moviegoers but also gives you some insight to see how close this score is to the critics’ scores. It can help you gauge if it’s truly a must-see or probably-pass. And it’s calculated similarly to critic reviews.

The Audience Score is designated by a popcorn bucket.

The score is the percentage of users who have rated the movie or show positively. There is also a section for Verified Ratings which includes those that have actually bought tickets. 

To receive a full popcorn bucket , at least 60% of users give a film or show a star rating of 3.5 or higher.

A tipped over popcorn bucket indicates that less than 60% of users have given it a 3.5 or higher. 

The most interesting finds are the ones that have a green splat for critics, and a full bucket of popcorn from the audience. 

While it’s rarely ever vice-versa, it happens, and it’s then when Rotten Tomatoes ratings may seem more subjective, and we wonder if the system works. And while reviews are opinion to some extent, the site boasts something called Certified Fresh, which brings a little more objectivity to the critique. 

Audience Score Breakdown

Certified rotten tomatoes score, what is certified fresh.

What does Rotten Tomatoes mean by Certified Fresh?

If a film or television show is awarded a Certified Fresh status, it’s being acknowledged that it’s met these requirements:

• It has at least five reviews from Top Critics
• A steady Tomatometer score of at least 75%
• Limited release films must have at least 40 reviews
• Wide release films must have at least 80 reviews
• TV shows are eligible by season and must have at least 20 reviews per season

Of course these stats could fluctuate, especially within the first few days or weeks of a film’s release. If it meets these requirements, it is automatically flagged for review.

When the Rotten Tomatoes staff can determine the movie or show is unlikely to fall below these numbers, it achieves its Certified Fresh status.

Similarly, if the Tomatometer score ever falls below 70%, it will lose this status. Because the Rotten Tomatoes ratings system is so general, RT certified fresh consideration gives the site more objective credibility. 

What does Rotten Tomatoes mean for movies

Is rotten tomatoes good for movies.

So, what's the bottom line? With the movie theater business under constant assault from the rise of streaming services, audiences are less and less likely to venture out to the movies. If they do happen to make it outside the house, they'll likely be extra picky about how they spend their money.

Will they choose an "untested" wildcard movie or one that has general approval from fans and critics? The answer is self-evident. On its surface, the Rotten Tomatoes rating system and Tomatometer seem to be a legitimate resource for the discerning consumer. 

However, there is also a legitimate concern for low-budget indie movies who already have the cards stacked against them in distribution. Since they don't have the marketing budget of the Hollywood tentpoles, curious moviegoers have little else to go on besides the Tomatometer. These "little fish" movies live or die by this system, which is ultimately opinion-based and subjective.

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What is a Cliche? Learn from Examples

If you’re a filmmaker or just love the movies, using cliches are a sure fire way to get awarded a nice big green splat, or a tipped over popcorn bucket.  Next up, are some examples of these tired situations and ways to avoid them.

Up Next: Cliche explained →

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The best movies of 2022 so far, according to Rotten Tomatoes

There have been some corkers this year

Is 2022 a vintage year for movies? It certainly feels like it, especially as far as critical responses go.

There's been a lot to enjoy in 2022 thus far. So much so, in fact, that The Batman , which boasts a rather impressive Rotten Tomatoes rating of 85%, finds itself all the way down at Number 58 on Rotten Tomatoes' round-up of the best movies of 2022. Well, so far anyway.

With so many great movies to choose from, we thought we’d showcase the top 10. You can find the full list here but, in our round-up, we've chosen not to include documentaries (we’ll round them up separately at a later date). So here, without further ado, are the 10 best movies of the year so far, according to Rotten Tomatoes. 

10. Everything Everywhere All At Once 

2022 might have been the year of Marvel’s Doctor Strange heading into the Multiverse of Madness , but it’s another trip into a multiverse that has been wowing critics – and one with a much-smaller budget. 

The movie follows Michelle Yeoh's Evelyn Quan Wang, a tired and unhappy laundromat owner who somehow discovers that it is she and she alone who can save the world by exploring other universes connecting with the lives she could have led. 

A sprawling mass at 140 minutes, there is so much going on here, with madcap comedy, science fiction, fantasy, martial arts and animation all hurled into the same melting pot, but it all hangs together somehow. 

9. Lingui, The Sacred Bonds

Beaten to the Palme d'Or at the 2021 Cannes Film Festival by striking horror Titane , this tough drama hails from Chad. 

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The movie is the story of Amina, a devout Muslim whose live is torn apart when Maria, her 15-year-old daughter, tells her she is pregnant and wants to abort the child. Abortion is banned in Chad and the two face a battle that may well be already lost. Critics praised its power and elegance as it told an upsetting tale with real empathy.

8. Great Freedom

This time we’re in post-World War II Europe for another hard-hitting drama and the story of Hans. 

Despite its liberation from Nazi rule, freedom does not include freedom of love in 1950s and 1960s Germany and Hans, a gay Jewish man, is sentenced to time in an Austrian prison for violating anti-homosexuality laws. Once inside, he begins a strange and unlikely friendship with Viktor, his deeply homophobic cellmate. An offbeat indie drama, but an utterly compelling one, as critics attested.

7. Top Gun: Maverick

While it’s fair to say that Tom Cruise’s long-awaited return to the cockpit was one of 2022’s most-anticipated movies, nobody saw reviews like this coming. Every poster for the film is a sea of five-star ratings, including TechRadar’s review , which gave it maximum points. 

Top Gun: Maverick sees Cruise return to play the supremely gifted, but cocky Peter "Maverick" Mitchell. We meet him 36 years after the original movie and Maverick has avoided promotion in order to keep flying. Now grounded after an outrageous display of ego, Maverick’s old rival, Iceman – now an admiral – reassigns him to TOPGUN as an instructor to train a group of elite pilots for a mission of unprecedented difficulty. Among the rookies are the son of his former friend Goose, ensuring this mission is off to a difficult start before it's even begun.

Reviewers have been knocked out by the movie’s spectacle and action-sequences, all the while stressing the need to see it on the biggest screen possible . We couldn’t agree more.

6. Hellbender

One for those among you with a taste for horror . Set in Upstate New York, the movie focuses on Izzy and her mother, who live off the grid in the mountains. 

Izzy’s mother, who is never named, has told her daughter she is ill and must not go near people or their nearby town, not even for supplies. Instead, the two spend their time studying magic and making metal music. But, after a chance encounter with another teenager causes her to uncover a connection between her family and witchcraft, Izzy begins to unpick everything.

Tense and bloody, Hellbender was praised for being ambitious and achieving things way beyond its tiny budget. 

5. The Innocents

A fine science-fiction tradition is dusted off for this Norwegian drama, which boasts a Rotten Tomatoes rating of 97% . 

In the bright light of a Norwegian summer, four children become fast friends during the holidays. Away from the prying eyes of teachers and their parents, they discover they have hidden powers. While exploring their newfound abilities, their lives change completely, and, as you expect, things get rather dark...

Critics acknowledged that this is a well-known story structure, but praised the passion and commitment of the young cast and the film’s pacing and new take on things. 

4. The Duke

Helen Mirren and Jim Broadbent lead this comedy-drama, which proved to be the final act for much-acclaimed British director Roger Michell. 

The movie retold the real-life cast of Kempton Bunton, a 60-year-old man who stole Francisco Goya's portrait of the Duke of Wellington from the National Gallery in London. After making off with the hugely valuable painting, Bunton then sent ransom notes saying that he would return the painting on condition that the government invested more in care for the elderly.

Charming and tremendously warm, Broadbent’s Bunton and Mirren, who plays his wife Dorothy, are both at the top of their game here. 

3. Jujutsu Kaisen 0: The Movie 

The year’s finest anime and a feature-length version of Gege Akutami's hugely popular manga series, this movie has a mighty 98% rating on the reviews aggregator.  

The narrative follows Yuta Okkotsu, a high school student who suddenly gains control of an extremely powerful dark spirit, something that gets enrolled in the Tokyo Prefectural Jujutsu High School, where he is overseen by Jujutsu Sorcerers to help him control his power. But, what they really want to do is keep an eye on him…

2. Happening

A searing French drama set at the start of the 1960s, this movie is an adaptation of Annie Ernaux’s much-acclaimed novel, L'événement. 

We follow Anne, a young student who is progressing well academically and planning her career. After discovering she is pregnant, Anne’s grades begin to slip and her life choices begin to shrink, forcing her to confront the shame and pain of an abortion, something that comes with the risk of a prison sentence. 

The reviews for this movie have been wall to wall high-praise, with star Anamaria Vartolomei tipped for the biggest of things off the back of it. As you might gather from the subject matter, it's a harrowing watch at times, but beautifully and gracefully put together. 

1. Playground

Movies with 100% ratings on Rotten Tomatoes do not come around all that often, but the debut from writer-director Laura Wandel is one such movie. 

The definition of an intimate drama, this Belgian outing tracks Nora, a shy seven-year-old who is struggling to fit in at a new school. As she slowly tries to make friends, she notices her brother Abel, who is a few years older than her, being horrendous bullying. He doesn’t defend himself, nor does he want her to tell their father about it. 

Coming in at only 72 minutes, the film is a difficult watch, with the camera rarely leaving Nora’s side and giving this drama a truly unique perspective. Maybe not a film for a Friday night treat, but with a 100% rating, it’s a movie everyone should seek out. 

Tom Goodwyn was formerly TechRadar's Senior Entertainment Editor. He's now a freelancer writing about TV shows, documentaries and movies across streaming services, theaters and beyond. Based in East London, he loves nothing more than spending all day in a movie theater, well, he did before he had two small children… 

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One of the best Netflix movies of the year with a perfect Rotten Tomatoes score is a bittersweet exploration of grief

His Three Daughters shows why we find comfort in stories about grief

Grief is no stranger to the movies. In the last year alone, the death of a family member has been explored in everything from Julia Louis-Dreyfus' comedy-drama Tuesday to wrestling biopic The Iron Claw . But, like falling in (and out of) love, grief is one of those things that just doesn't get old on the silver screen. Like love, death affects everyone differently, but there are universal emotional truths that we never seem to get tired of watching. 

In His Three Daughters, the latest film from writer-director Azazel Jacobs, three estranged sisters, played by Carrie Coon, Elizabeth Olsen, and Natasha Lyonne, reunite in their father's NYC apartment in the last days of his life. The trio grapples with their fractured sibling bonds as they try to organize hospice nurses, obituaries – and where it's appropriate for your sister to smoke weed is when your father is dying in the next room.

Waiting rooms

As the three women wait it out between the four walls of their father's home, we witness their journey through the unique sensation of 'pre-grief' – that period of limbo during a loved one's final days or weeks when it feels like you're mourning someone who's still alive. "It's a very specific kind of waiting," Coon tells GamesRadar+. "I think anyone who's been through it feels it in the film. And it was very important to [Jacobs] to capture that feeling of time and how it's passing – or not passing – rhythmically and how you're sort of hopeful for this thing to happen, and feeling guilty that you're hopeful. I think he really did a good job with that."

Olsen points out that the beeping of their father's medical monitor "kind of keeps a metronome." It "was important for [Jacobs] to feel like we get lost in time," she says. "You only know what time of day it is because of the meal that [they're] having and the timing of the nurses coming in and out, and those are the only guides for you to understand how to structure a day because it is this time warp."

With the film rarely leaving the confines of the apartment or the back-and-forths of the central trio, watching it feels a little like watching a play. For Jacobs, though, it was important to distinguish between the two mediums: these limitations are a feature rather than a bug. "I was trying to look at, like, how this wouldn't be a play, and how this couldn't be a play," he explains. "So part of that is the way that it's shot, and that it's isolating [the sisters] in frames, but also that the film doesn't move in real-time, which a play would. I felt like I needed time to move in these very shifting ways. I needed to isolate them as individuals in the way that only film could."

Generation game

Another isolating factor in the film is motherhood – both the absence and presence of it. The sisters have two different mothers, with their father remarrying Rachel's mother after the death of Katie and Christina's, but both of their father's wives are dead, only mentioned in passing, so their dad is all they have left. 

On the flip side, Katie and Christina have their own daughters, elusive presences scattered like breadcrumbs through the script. Christina speaks often of her young daughter Mirabella, while we catch snippets of Katie's tense phone conversations with her family back home. For Jacobs, motherhood was a way of separating the sisters twofold – not only is Rachel the only one of them who has a different mother, she's the only sister without her own kids. 

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"It felt like [the sisters] came out pretty realized as I was writing and it felt like there was already a sense that Katie could be a mother, just by the approach that she has towards life," he explains. "And then because Christina is the one that's living the furthest away, it feels like she really, truly could have a whole other life going on, and that would include having a family, and then Rachel, because she lives at home, that's the one that we can see, 'Oh, there's no kid there,' and that's one more big difference between her and her other sisters."

Adding a third generation into the mix was also vital for making the film more honest, says Coon. "I think it makes the movie relatable, because there seems to be a very large segment of the population who's dealing with the death of their parents while they're raising their children," she tells us. "Maybe it's because we're having kids later, or something. People are really being struck by the movie because of that very particular challenge when you're straddling two generations, and they both require all of your attention, and so everything's getting short shrift. I think we're all moving through the world that way."

As a no-frills character drama, then, His Three Daughters is a frank portrayal of a disjointed family coming to terms with the impending loss of their only unifying factor. Katie, Christina, and Rachel's isolation is only intensified by their close proximity and confinement under one roof –.as the three sisters try to relate to each other, all three of them are just trying to be seen in their own right. Grief is lonely and claustrophobic all at once, which is why stories about death never seem to get old. We may have seen the act of mourning on screen countless times before but, in recognition, we can find comfort in a familiar pain. 

His Three Daughters is out now in select theaters before arriving on Netflix on September 20. In the meantime, check out our picks of the other best Netflix movies to fill out your watchlist.

I’m an Entertainment Writer here at GamesRadar+, covering everything film and TV-related across the Total Film and SFX sections. I help bring you all the latest news and also the occasional feature too. I’ve previously written for publications like HuffPost and i-D after getting my NCTJ Diploma in Multimedia Journalism. 

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The Best Star Trek TV Series, According To Rotten Tomatoes

It's widely accepted among Trekkies that no "Star Trek" series starts with its best foot forward. Almost every single series, from the 1960s all the way up to the Paramount+ era, has a rocky first season, presenting clumsy storytelling and strange character conceits that many Trekkies look back on with a wince. Generally speaking, a Trek series doesn't hit its stride until about season three (an awkward trend that cut off titles like "Star Trek: The Animated Series" and "Star Trek: Prodigy," shows that only lasted two seasons). 

I will hasten to note that even when Trek shows are struggling through their "bad" seasons, they usually still feature strong characters and a dynamic setting, so a curious viewer will not have to endure years of bad TV before it gets good. They'll just have to endure some awkward writing until it gets excellent. If one wants to watch "Star Trek: The Next Generation," one could simply start with season 3, and then ask a Trekkie friend to recommend vital episodes from seasons one and two. 

But one notable show bucked this trend and started with all cylinders firing. It received mostly positive notices when it first started airing, and was immediately embraced by fans. It likely helped that the series had a "soft opening," as it were, using an entire season of "Star Trek: Discovery" to introduce its characters and ideas. The series is "Star Trek: Strange New Worlds," and it currently sports a 98% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes. That's the highest percentage of positive reviews of any other "Star Trek" TV show or movie. This is no small feat. 

And, yes, /Film gave the series an overwhelmingly positive review , contributing to that percentage. 

Strange New Worlds has the best reviews of any Star Trek series

"Strange New Worlds," for the unfamiliar , takes place on the same U.S.S. Enterprise that Kirk (William Shatner) captained in the original series, but follows the five-or-so-year period before Kirk took command. The captain of the Enterprise is Christopher Pike, played by Anson Mount. Pike was previously seen in the 1966 "Star Trek" pilot episode "The Cage" where he was played by Jeffrey Hunter. Pike also appeared in J.J. Abrams' rebooted "Star Trek" film series, wherein he was played by Bruce Greenwood.

Indeed, "Strange New Worlds" featured multiple characters seen on the original series or in "The Cage," all of them played by new actors. Nurse Chapel (Majel Barrett) is now played by Jess Bush, Dr. M'Benga (Booker Bradshaw) is now played by Babs Olusanmokun, Number One (Barrett) is now played by Rebecca Romijn, Uhura (Nichelle Nichols) is now played by Celia Rose Gooding, and Spock (Leonard Nimoy) is now played by Ethan Peck. Over the course of the series to date, audiences have also been introduced to James T. Kirk (Paul Wesley) and Scotty (Martin Quinn). 

And while nostalgia is one of the central currencies of "Strange New Worlds," the showrunners are careful to give these versions of the characters personalities of their own. When Jeffrey Hunter played Pike, he was stern, angry, always full of wrath. Mount's Pike is, in contrast, a lighthearted, affable, almost unprofessional figure, happy to have breakfast in his quarters with all of his officers. Indeed, "Strange New Worlds" is mostly whimsical, offering sillier episodes than most "Star Trek" shows. The series has already had its characters transform into fairy tale characters, crossed over with an animated series, and even done a full-blown musical. 

The other Trek shows

"Star Trek: Discovery" was, back in 2017, met with a great deal of suspicion. "Discovery" turned "Star Trek" from an episodic enterprise into season-long stories full of bleak violence, unending incident, and many, many deaths. It wasn't quite in the spirit of "Star Trek," and many old school Trekkies rejected it. In an attempt to get said Trekkies hooked on the show, the showrunners rushed in the familiar U.S.S. Enterprise. Many saw it as a lazy ratings-grab, but the conceit actually worked. Pike was a welcome addition, and all the kinks of a potential "Strange New Worlds" first season were handily smoothed out. By the time "Worlds" debuted (as an episodic series), audiences were ready and the showrunners knew what they had. In a way, "Strange New Worlds" bypassed the notorious first-season jitters. 

The second highest-rated "Star Trek" series on Rotten Tomatoes is, perhaps bafflingly, "Star Trek: The Animated Series" from 1973. While Filmation's animation on that series was stodgy, the writing was better than on the original "Star Trek." It also helped that the show was only 30 minutes per episode, allowing the sci-fi conceits to shine outside the pesky character work. It's a better series than it gets credit for, and critics agree. 

Third highest rated on Rotten Tomatoes is another animated "Star Trek" series, "Star Trek: Prodigy," an ambitious series about teenagers from across the galaxy who learn about Starfleet for the first time when they discover an abandoned ship called the Protostar. They get involved in a long-range chase with an evil villain, and become gentle, mature officers with the help of an instructional hologram of Captain Janeway (Kate Mulgrew). 

Fourth-highest on the list is the animate "Star Trek: Lower Decks," a comedy series set after the events of "Star Trek: Voyager," set on the U.S.S. Cerritos, a really crappy ship tasked with the Federation's most boring missions. It seems that critics love "Star Trek" when it's animated. 

Fifth on the list is "Star Trek: The Next Generation," sixth is "Deep Space Nine," seventh is the mostly-abysmal "Picard" (!), eighth is "Discovery," ninth is the original series (!!), and tenth is "Voyager." The only "Star Trek" show to get a "rotten" rating, with 56% approval, is "Star Trek: Enterprise."

NEWS... BUT NOT AS YOU KNOW IT

Beetlejuice sequel lands impressively rare Rotten Tomatoes score

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With the hotly anticipated Beetlejuice sequel finally in cinemas – 36 years after the original – fans appear to have all reached the same verdict on the new Tim Burton movie.

In Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, the wise-cracking, self-proclaimed ‘Ghost with the Most’ (Michael Keaton) is back once more after three generations of the Deetz family return to their house in Winter River after an unexpected family tragedy.

And by ‘the same’, it really couldn’t be closer after an incredible turn of events on review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes.

For fans who have flocked to see Beetlejuice 2 already have awarded it highly so far with an excellent score of 82% , at the time of publication, on the platform’s audience reaction scale now known as the Popcornmeter.

Co-incidentally, that is exactly the same score the audience gave the first Beetlejuice film on Rotten Tomatoes too – 82%.

Over 250,000 fans have so far shared their rating for the original, while on its third day of international wide release, it’s over 5,000 audience members for the sequel.

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The sequel sees Lydia Deetz’s ( Winona Ryder ) life then turned upside down when her  rebellious teenage daughter, Astrid (Jenna Ortega) , discovers the mysterious model of the town in the attic and the portal to the Afterlife is accidentally opened, releasing Betelgeuse once more.

Fans have praised the new quirky comedy horror movie, which also stars returning actress Catherine O’Hara alongside Willem Dafoe, Monica Bellucci and Justin Theroux, as ‘wacky, wild and fun’.

‘It was absolutely fantastic and hilarious,’ enthused fan Jacob S, while Andrew P praised it as ‘a nice homage to the original’ and Chrostopher C declared: ‘Great fun! Tim Burton is back.’

‘Very nostalgic and fun,’ added Tammy B – hitting on a large part of what fans wanted after so many decades between the two Beetlejuice movies.

‘Not enough stars. Very Tim Burtonesque. Honoured the original while adding in some beautiful insanity,’ wrote Robert M.

However, others were less impressed and offered only the faintest of praise in their observations.

‘I was hoping for something more, but it’s hard to catch lightning in a bottle twice,’ shared Moviefan, while an anonymous viewer called it ‘not a complete waste of time’.

Among critics there is a little more discrepancy in score, with the Tomatometer for Beetlejuice resting at 83% – so higher than fans’ ranking – from 115 reviews.

For its sequel, 248 reviews so far have places the sequel a little lower (but still certified fresh) at 76%.

In Metro.co.uk ’s four-star review of Beetlejuice Beetlejuice , the movie is praised as ‘a return to unhinged creative form’ for filmmaker Burton, while Keaton is ‘brilliant as always in a role that fits him like a glove’.

Discussing his return to form, Burton told reporters at Venice Film Festival – where the film premiered – that he had become ‘disillusioned’ with the movie industry before working on the Beetlejuice sequel and Netflix TV series Wednesday.

‘The past few years I’ve got a little bit disillusioned with the movie industry I would say,’ he told reporters, including Metro.co.uk. ‘And so I just realised, if I’m going to do anything again, I just want to do it from my heart and [make it] something that  I  want to do.’

Burton compared himself to Lydia’s character in the movie with how ‘sometimes your life takes a little bit of a turn’.

‘I lost myself a bit, so for me this movie was a re-energising. Getting back to the things I love doing, the way I love doing it and the people I love doing it with,’ he added.

‘I realised that’s the only way for me to be a success, is that I have loved doing it. I got a little bit lost along the way, but now with this one I feel it didn’t matter how it turned out, I just enjoyed and loved making it with all those people.’

Beetlejuice Beetlejuice is in cinemas now.

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