Today, huge nerd that I am, I wandered on to rottentomatoes.com and browsed their list of best reviewed sci-fi films ever. Their countdowns are unfortunately structured so that the user must go through the entire list backwards, one movie at a time. The quickest way to browse the list is to go by tens towards the front. Opposite of user-friendly.
Finally I got to the top ten. Wondering why Star Wars: A New Hope was so far down on the list (#9, behind Minority Report and Children of Men), I went to read the reviews. You have to be a pretty big cynic to give Star Wars a bad review, especially when in 1977 it was the coolest thing that had ever happened in a movie theater.
What I found was terribly disappointing. The reviews cited on Rotten Tomatoes do not include any from the original release! Instead, they are all prolific comments like "Classic!" There are bad reviews that claim triteness and shallowness... all from 1997.
I find a "Top Reviewed ________" list extremely less credible when it omits any period reviews from older movies and relies solely on jaded analysis of the DVD re-releases. Thoughts?
Thursday, October 11, 2007
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