THB #393: Rotten

So… Vulture’s Lane Brown decided to take a deep dive into Rotten Tomatoes and what it means in the industry. In doing so, he made some good points… and some not-so-good points.

I was an early contributor to Rotten Tomatoes. Back in the late 90s, I was one of the early online voices writing about film and I was making appearances with Roger Ebert on his show, after Gene Siskel’s passing. Back then, I was a “Top Critic.” I still have 5 different outlet designations on the site, starting with TNT’s roughcut and now back to Hot Button, which I think I first added in 2001 before this newsletter took the name up again in 2021.

The great value of RT was - and still is - as a place to find the work of film critics. But as suggested in the Vulture piece, the world of film criticism has changed and the authoritative voice has been decimated.

For me, there are a handful of Variety, Hollywood Reporter, and Deadline film critics worth engaging. But mostly, it has become a bunch of random names who freelance for those trades. Doesn’t make them lesser. Doesn’t assure that they are great. Those outlets used to have an in-house voice, even with freelancers, that was mostly dependable. No longer. How much more irony can one take than knowing that one of the all-time quote whores - a very nice guy - has been given the status as Lead Critic for a trade?

I had a lot of issues, back in the day, with Todd McCarthy’s reviews of new movies at film festivals - Cannes most of all - which I often felt were too conservative and dismissive. There were some really good movies that were marginalized commercially as a result of only those trade reviews. But damn it, I knew Todd as a critic and I could manage expectations - good and bad - based on a long history of his work.

Alternatively, I understood the insights and kindness of a long-standing critic like Joe Morgenstern and adjusted to that too. Today, what the Wall St Journal thinks of a movie is utterly meaningless for me, as Kyle Smith also has a history… a history of mean-spirited, narrow-minded absurdity about movies. But at least I know that.

Even the best of us - Manohla Dargis is that for me - is barely working compared to the old days of Roger Ebert, who quite literally disallowed anyone else from reviewing any movie for the Chicago Sun-Times for decades. And all the appropriate movies got reviewed, 4 or more a week, every week. This was a bit insane… but it allowed readers (including the ones seeing him on TV and in syndication across the globe) to keep his opinions in perspective. You knew how you felt about Roger’s takes. Manohla, who is back at work after a book sabbatical, now without co-lead critic A.O. Scott, who stopped reviewing in March, pushed out 9 reviews in June, 7 reviews in July, and none in August. This is not a criticism of her work ethic, but the nature of The Best of Us these days.

Rotten Tomatoes didn’t kill the authoritative voice. The destruction of local and national newspapers in America did. At MCN, we used to run a weekly scoreboard of the number of full-time film criticism jobs there were in America. We stopped because it was too damned depressing, as it fell under 100.