Movie Reviews - Can you really trust them?

Talking about Movie Reviews on a Blog that has become mostly a review portal is kind of ridiculous, especially considering my take on a movie may not be the same as the rest of the planet. But what the heck, let's give this a shot.

There was also the time when I used to purposely stay away from reviews of movies I wanted to watch, for fear that it would sway my opinion one way or the other. What did that do? Make me waste a lot of time at movies that were painful to get through.

Up until a year ago, I used to go completely by the reviews of a certain few movie critics & Rotten tomatoes. But as I've started to watch more movies, my tastes seem to have evolved & I find myself unable to trust any of the reviews, Good or Bad.

I'll agree that more often than not when a  movie is really bad, the tomato-meter is not way off. And for that matter when a movie is actually really good, like "The King's Speech" or "Inception" there are very few people who get it wrong. But it's the movies that fall between the 3.5 to 4.5 star categories that are the problem.

So here I am, disappointed with the reviews that I've trusted off late, too-good to be true, or really off the mark on a fantastic movie.

When I decide to watch a Hollywood movie, I don't shop around for reviews, I go straight to Rotten Tomatoes. Why? Well, it's the way they get their ratings. It's a average of what all the critics think of a movie. When you put a whole bunch of opinions into a hat you should get a reasonable estimation of the movie right? Wrong!

When I realized that  the best example of this I guess is the last 2 movies I saw, Source Code and Thor had really good ratings on RT. 86% and 78% at the time when I saw the movie. Those are really good ratings for movies. You would go in expecting the movie to expecting something really cool. Both the movies were average at best (keep in mind movies like The King's Speech, The Fighter & Inception have ratings in the 90 to 95% range).

And then there's the other side of the story, going by the review of one single person. At one point in time, I liked Rajeev Masand's reviews they seemed to match mine and I skipped a lot of bad movies thanks to him. But then over time I guess tastes changed & I find that his reviews don't really match mine in any way (of course other than the really bad ones). This situation is way worse than RT. Going by one person's opinion of a movie (esp. when you are not sure if your taste in movies is the same) is not the best way to do it.

Did I just say that? You can't trust one person's opinion of a movie? Damn, am alienating my target audience.
Oh Well, not like I had a huge target audience anyway. If you do decide to come back & you find that you can trust my reviews, there are new movies coming out every week. You should see something or the other new on this blog.

In the meantime, I continue to look for a Movie Critic with my tastes. One that can give me a "Useful" opinion on new movies.

Rahul.