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Spreading itself thin across a sprawling narrative without a unifying focus, 360 just keeps running in circles. Read critic reviews

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360 photos.

A man (Anthony Hopkins) searches for his missing daughter in one of several vignettes dealing with issues of love, loss and betrayal.

Rating: R (Nudity|Language|Sexuality)

Genre: Drama

Original Language: English

Director: Fernando Meirelles

Producer: Andrew Eaton , David Linde , Emanuel Michael , Danny Krausz , Chris Hanley , Olivier Delbosc , Marc Missonnier

Writer: Peter Morgan

Release Date (Theaters): Aug 3, 2012 limited

Release Date (Streaming): Aug 10, 2016

Box Office (Gross USA): $97.8K

Runtime: 1h 53m

Distributor: Magnolia Pictures

Production Co: Muse Productions, Wild Bunch, BBC Films, Unison Films, UK Film Council, O2 Filmes

Cast & Crew

Anthony Hopkins

Dinara Drukarova

Gabriela Marcinkova

Jamel Debbouze

Algerian Man

Johannes Krisch

Michael Daly

Juliano Cazarré

Lucia Siposová

Marianne Jean-Baptiste

Mark Ivanir

Moritz Bleibtreu

Rachel Weisz

Vladimir Vdovichenkov

Fernando Meirelles

Peter Morgan

Screenwriter

Andrew Eaton

David Linde

Emanuel Michael

Danny Krausz

Chris Hanley

Olivier Delbosc

Marc Missonnier

Christine Langan

Executive Producer

Klaus Lintschinger

Jordan Gertner

David Faigenblum

Graham Bradstreet

Michael Winterbottom

Steven M. Gagnon

News & Interviews for 360

Critics Consensus: Total Recall Isn’t An Affair To Remember

Critic Reviews for 360

Audience reviews for 360.

"360" starts with Mirka(Lucia Siposova) taking her top off for a photographer(Johannes Krisch) as her disapproving sister Anna(Gabriela Marcinkova) looks on in Vienna. To Mirka, it is all in her plan to make lots of money as an escort. Her first date turns out to be with Michael Daly(Jude Law), a visiting businessman. Or it would have if not for a fellow businessman(Moritz Bleibtreu) who accidentally comes between them before turning it all to his advantage. "360" begins promisingly enough with Mirka's tale before moving on to others. But it soon becomes clear that she is about the only character in this depressing melange whose fate the viewer can really care about. The fact that her story is eventually resolved in the most improbable way possible is only one of the movie's problems. The tone throughout is dreary, with a group of characters who only have guilt in common between them. These sinners include would-be-adulterers, adulterers, stalkers, an alcoholic looking for his missing daughter and, to top it all off as broadly as possible, a sex offender just released from prison into the purgatory of Denver International Airport. Along with three characters, the movie gets stuck there instead of making a few more quick stops on its world tour to add a little diversity and pick up the pace a little. In the end, I'm not sure what the filmmakers were aiming at here but they definitely need to lighten the hell up.

Everything comes full circle. Good movie!!! 360 is a beautifully made film that oozes class and tells us something about where we are at as human beings in the 21st century. The film makers and actors should be applauded for this huge achievement. The Cast are made up of fine actors from around the world and headed by sympathetic and unshowy performances from Anthony Hopkins, Rachel Weisz and Jude Law. Ensemble films like this don't always work, but in the hands of a master director such as Meirelles, Peter Morgan's script comes to life in a vivid and evocative way. I love the way the story progresses from one pair of characters to the next and the cinematography is superb. Verticals and horizontals are crisply defined and move into split-screen that unites the stories. 360 is a film with real heart and real purpose made by real talent. Screenwriter Peter Morgan and director Fernando Meirelles' 360 combines a modern and dynamic roundelay of stories into one, linking characters from different cities and countries in a vivid, suspenseful and deeply moving tale of love in the 21st century. Starting in Vienna, the film beautifully weaves through Paris, London, Bratislava, Rio, Denver and Phoenix into a single, mesmerizing narrative.

The central premise of "360" is an intriguing one, essentially "Love Actually" from a more realistic, and some might say cynical, perspective. Here, as in real life, not everyone follows their heart, for varying reasons. The story begins in Vienna with a novice Slovakian hooker (Siposova) and her wiser, younger sister (Marcinkova), spreads to London where Weisz and Law are a couple holding secrets from each other and Flor is leaving her cheating boyfriend to return to her native Brazil. On the flight she encounters Hopkins who is travelling to the U.S to identify a corpse which may be his daughter. They become stuck in Denver airport where Flor meets Foster, a sex offender just released from prison. In Paris, Debbouze is a dentist in love with his assistant but unable to act due to his religion. It all ends back in Vienna where Vdovichenkov, the bodyguard of a Russian mobster, makes a connection with Marcinkova which causes him to re-evaluate his life. Screenwriter Peter Morgan ("The Damned United", "Frost/Nixon") seems more concerned with tying his stories together than creating believable characters. The women in this film are particularly poorly written and make some really stupid decisions. Foster's character is markedly mis-handled as he plays it in an overly creepy manner yet somehow Flor finds him attractive enough to take back to a hotel room. The scenes between them are laughable and resemble those moments from horror movies where a female victim mistakes the monster for her boyfriend despite the giant hairy hands massaging her shoulders. Foster is such an over the top caricature of a sex offender it's hard to believe he would be let back into society let alone end up in a hotel room with a cute and eager girl. Marcinkova is equally flippant, going for a drive with the most cliched depiction of a Russian gangster you could imagine. The acting in this film however is every bit as good as the writing is bad. Hopkins steals the show, reminding us just what a magnificent actor he can be on the rare occasions he opts for a subtle approach. His monologue in an AA meeting is a masterclass in acting. I presume the scene was improvised as the dialogue is far more believable than the rest of the script and Hopkins is a former alcoholic himself. Overall the movie isn't worthy of recommendation but Hopkins gives us one of the best individual movie moments of the year.

To review this movie all I really need to do is quote my beautiful wife. This is word for word exactly what she said when the movie finished "That was stupid! A waste of my time". We usually disagree on movies, as she thinks everything I was is weird and dumb. But here, we agree completely. The concept of this movie has been done many times before, and so much better. Which makes it so disappointing that this just fails to be the good movie it could have been. It's a series of different stories spanning the globe and how they weave together and come to a full 360. Stars Anthony Hopkins, Ben Foster, Rachel Weisz, and Jude Law. Foster is the best and most interesting character in the movie, but he is only on screen for like 10 minutes, which is a shame. The biggest problem for me with the movie is a lack of conclusion. None of the stories have a real finish to them. Open endings are usually fine with me, but wrap something up, don't just cut everything off and give no answers to anything. It really is a waste of time, and a movie that you would better be served to just skip over all together.

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By Manohla Dargis

Aug. 2, 2012

A butterfly flapping its wings in Chile is a familiar culprit for all kinds of global havoc, like tornadoes in Texas. In the film “360,” though, it’s a woman taking her top off in Vienna who sets off a British man’s crisis of conscience, instigates a conjugal dispute in Paris, and obliquely stirs up funny business in Denver and some murderous business elsewhere. Here the world isn’t just small, it’s also a 360-degree metaphor that begins with a woman’s breasts, leads to the boulevard circling Vienna’s center and ends with the “O” of your slack-jawed incredulity.

If this kind of multistrand narrative sounds familiar, it’s because you’ve seen iterations of it in movies like “Babel” (in which a gun connects strangers) and “Crash” (in which unnatural Los Angeles disasters do). In “360” the topless Cassandra, a Slovak named Mirka (Lucia Siposova), poses for a Viennese pimp, Rocco (Johannes Krisch), who arranges a liaison between her and a British businessman, Michael (Jude Law). Back home in London, Michael has a wife, Rose (Rachel Weisz), who has a lover, a Brazilian photographer, Rui (Juliano Cazarré), who’s involved with Laura (Maria Flor). Laura wises up and ends up on a plane where, en route to Miami and Rio de Janeiro, she meets a fatherly gent, John (a sympathetic Anthony Hopkins), who’s on his way to Phoenix to identify a body.

That body is one of several uninteresting doubles in a story littered with mirrored situations and forced coincidences. Laura somehow ends up in Denver, an unlikely layover for a plane trip that begins in London and ends in Rio. That’s distracting, but less so than her decision at the airport to pick up a shifty-eyed American, Tyler (Ben Foster), who, as rotten luck and screenwriter determinism would have it, is a sex offender. (Cringingly, Tyler enters the story soon after a scene of Michael and Rose with their young daughter.) In the movie’s cause-and-effect logic Laura faces danger in Denver because a Slovakian whipped off her bra because the Soviet Union fell apart ... and in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.

As suggested by the film’s title and its early emphasis on Vienna and restless lovers — the businessman, his wife, her lover and so on — the screenwriter Peter Morgan was clearly attempting to bend the Austrian playwright Arthur Schnitzler ’s late 19th-century play “La Ronde” into a gloss on globalization. In Schnitzler’s influential roundelay a character in a sexual twosome turns up in the next scene with someone else, a pattern that keeps repeating to create a daisy chain of desire. But in “360,” somewhere between Vienna and Paris, and the multilanguage songs and gentle guitar strumming that bridge too many sequences, Mr. Morgan and the director Fernando Meirelles break away from this sexual patterning and begin jumping among the characters with less and less evident narrative rhyme and reason.

Mr. Morgan has written some good movies, notably “The Queen,” and Mr. Meirelles has won fans for neo-exploitation titles like “City of God.” There’s no way to know what went wrong with “360” and whether it was this uninvolving and shallow from the start. It can be tricky to bring viewers into movies that follow multiple characters who may not know one another yet are somehow connected, though filmmakers do manage it, at best by going deep and not just wide. There are moments in “360” that show what the movie might have been, as in a scene of John at a recovery group that reminds you of what Mr. Hopkins can do. But the overshooting and overediting here suggest Mr. Meirelles, or maybe the producers, were trying to work around this story, instead of with it.

“360” is rated R (Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian). Adults in bed and in trouble.

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Common sense media reviewers.

Globe-trotting drama explores sex, grief, betrayal.

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this movie.

360 posits that we're all connected in some wa

Michael doesn't have an affair that he had pla

A climactic double murder takes place off camera,

Sexuality is a major theme of the film. The movie

Half a dozen "f--k"s, plus "s--t,&q

The only discernible product placement is a chauff

A lot of cigarette smoking, and, in a couple of sc

Positive Messages

360 posits that we're all connected in some way to each other and that our relationships and choices can have far-reaching effects.

Positive Role Models

Michael doesn't have an affair that he had planned on and later reconciles with his wife. The older man shows a generous spirit as he looks after his airplane seatmate, shares his story, and tries to keep her safe. A recently released criminal Tyler overcomes his urges and does the right thing.

Violence & Scariness

A climactic double murder takes place off camera, but audiences see the aftermath: dead men lying in their own blood. A released sex offender rejects a woman's overt sexual advances and then hides in a bathroom -- making it clear that he's capable of violence but is trying to keep her safe.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Sex, Romance & Nudity

Sexuality is a major theme of the film. The movie opens with a young woman "auditioning" to be an escort. She poses topless, and then it's implied that she must have sex with the boss to prove she's ready to be marketed. A few scenes show a woman topless or a couple having sex. One character is a call girl and is shown having sex with her client (during the act, she tells him it will cost more to continue). It's pretty graphic and shows a few different positions with the man being particularly forceful. Bare buttocks and passionate kissing and fondling are shown in another scene. One character is a sex offender, so when a woman comes on to him half naked, he pushes her away and flees -- not wanting to do anything to her. A married couple kisses and embraces. Two men discuss the services of a prostitute.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

Half a dozen "f--k"s, plus "s--t," "a--hole," and milder insults ("dirty bugger," "stupid," etc.).

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Products & Purchases

The only discernible product placement is a chauffeured Mercedes.

Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

A lot of cigarette smoking, and, in a couple of scenes, marijuana smoke as well. Adults drink at restaurants and bars. A woman is shown hung over, and one scene follows a group of people attending an AA meeting.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that 360 , which is loosely based on the 1900 play La Ronde , follows different pairs of characters, usually before, during, or after a sexual encounter. With sexuality the unifying theme in the international drama, the movie definitely isn't meant for anyone but adults and the most mature older teens. The sexual content includes nudity, fairly graphic displays of prostitution, adultery, and even the emotional turmoil of a sexual offender trying to control his urges. Language is strong -- "f--k," "a--hole," "s--t" and more -- and violence includes aggressive sex and a bloody double murder. To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

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What's the Story?

Brazilian director Fernando Meirelles adapts the themes from playwright Arthur Schnitzler's fin de siecle play La Ronde , in which 10 pairs of characters meet before and after sexual encounters. Like a Viennese waltz, the story shifts from pairing to pairing but always connects with a previously met duo. The story begins and ends with Mirka (Lucia Siposova), a beautiful Eastern European woman auditioning to become a high-end call girl in Vienna. Her first client, English businessman Michael ( Jude Law ), chickens out before they can meet -- while, unbeknownst to him, his wife, Rose ( Rachel Weisz ), is having an affair back in London with Brazilian photographer Rui (Juliano Cazarre). Other pairings include Rui's jilted ex, Laura (Maria Flor), who connects with an older man ( Anthony Hopkins ) on a plane trip and comes on to a mysterious guy ( Ben Foster ) who's actually a reformed sex offender trying to change his life. The action moves from the Old World to the New and back again before following Mirka's exploits one final time.

Is It Any Good?

Meirelles is a specialist in stylized, well-acted dramas like The Constant Gardener and City of God , and 360 continues in that vein but isn't quite as compelling a story as his previous work. It's not all the globe-trotting that makes the story feel disconnected -- the director has a gift for showing the intimacy of moments that take place in crowded cities or airports -- but the fact that some storylines are riveting and tender while others are confusing and left dangling.

It's also disturbing that sexuality is explored more for its power to alienate and injure than to unite and empower. Although Rose and Michael reconnect, nearly everyone else has a tragic ending. The saddest subplot, by far, is the Paris vignette: A widowed Algerian dentist falls for his Russian hygienist, a lonely woman completely unappreciated by her husband, who's low-level henchman of sorts. After his imam implores him to do the right thing, the dentist unexpectedly fires her, despite their obvious chemistry and camaraderie. This is an ensemble worth watching, but it's not a fully satisfying film.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about what they think the filmmaker is trying to say about the global reach of our actions. Is sexuality the driving medium of communication between people? How can parents and teens communicate better about sex and relationships ?

Which vignette impacted you the most? Why do some stories seem to connect more than others? Did the fact that 360 took place in various cities around the world make it more difficult to understand?

Movie Details

In theaters : August 3, 2012
On DVD or streaming : November 6, 2012
Cast : Anthony Hopkins , Jude Law , Rachel Weisz
Director : Fernando Meirelles
Inclusion Information : Latino directors, Female actors
Studio : Magnolia Pictures
Genre : Thriller
Run time : 110 minutes
MPAA rating : R
MPAA explanation : sexuality, nudity and language
Last updated : June 20, 2023

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360 – review

S creenwriter Peter Morgan and director Fernando Meirelles have proven themselves mighty talents in the past, but they've come a catastrophic cropper with this bizarre film, an all-star multinational US-Europudding, lurching along in a wince-making series of tonal misjudgments and false notes. 360 is a portmanteau film, a daisy chain of interrelated lives; the title promises a panoptic view. It's perhaps inspired by the multi-stranded movies of Alejandro González Iñárittu, and the cyclical structure is taken loosely from Arthur Schnitzler's stage-play Le Ronde but with a hopelessly shallow pseudo-sophistication that made me think it had in fact been written and directed by Alan Partridge. Anthony Hopkins is a troubled soul in Colorado, searching for the truth about his vanished daughter; Jude Law is a businessman in Berlin, whose marriage is stagnant; Rachel Weisz is his unhappy wife in London; Jamel Debbouze is a romantic dentist in Paris – there are many more. The film is so wildly unconvincing at all levels that it is simply weird: two different attractive, sensitive young women suddenly make massively unlikely overtures to scary, strange men they have never met. Huh? If someone suggests seeing this, do a 180 – and run.

Drama films
Fernando Meirelles
Anthony Hopkins
Rachel Weisz

Comments (…)

Review by Brian Eggert July 22, 2012

Arthur Schnitzler’s 1897 play La Ronde finds a modern counterpart courtesy of director Fernando Meirelles in 360 . The play follows a series of characters from all walks of life having various sexual encounters; after two passionate lovers fall into bed, one of them might go off to meet their dull husband or wife, and so on. Each story leads to the next, each pointing toward a grander implication that love is transcendent and blind to notions of class. French master Max Ophüls made a wonderful adaptation in 1950, starring Anton Walbrook, Simone Signoret, and Danielle Darrieux, the material was a perfect showcase for Ophüls’ signature tracking shots and flowing camerawork, while his various stories were connected through a consistent carousel motif. Meirelles, whose City of God and The Constant Gardener and Blindness all explore the themes of human interconnectivity and coincidence, stretches his canvas far beyond Vienna, where Schnitzler’s play takes place.

Broadened into a globe-trotting series of destinations, visually connected through mass transit metaphors, cut with intentional abruptness and multiple split-screens, the film’s very large and very impressive cast barely has more than two or three scenes each with which to make their characters memorable. Appropriately, the film opens in Vienna, where a Slovakian woman (Lucia Siposova) wants to break into the high-end escort biz with the help of a sleazy webmaster-pimp (Johannes Krisch) who oversees a prostitution website. Her first client is shy British businessman Michael (Jude Law), who calls home to his wife Rose (Rachel Weisz) when his illicit rendezvous falls through. Distant, Rose is having an affair with Brazilian photographer Rui (Juliano Cazarre), whose girlfriend Laura (Maria Flor) learns about the affair and decides to hop a plane back to Rio, on which she meets an older Brit (Anthony Hopkins) who struggles to move on from the disappearance of his daughter. Laura’s flight is grounded at the Denver airport, where she meets Ben Fosters’ convicted sex offender, whose waiting for a plane that will take him to a halfway house.

And the stories keep going around and around until they find their way back to the Vienna prostitute, whose sister (Gabriela Marcinkova) falls for a criminal’s bodyguard (Vladimir Vdovichenkov). Far removed from the kind of genius mosaic film that Robert Altman popularized in Nashville and Short Cuts , some of the stories lead into one another, while others make superficial leaps to establish a connection. A Paris-based story about an Algerian man (Jamel Debbouze) with a crush on his Russian co-worker (Dinara Drukarova), has no lead-in at all. Few of the characters make surprising decisions or go anywhere meaningful. But the actors—a familiar-looking ensemble for audiences versed in international cinema—have time to shine in some scenes, especially Foster as a tightly wound criminal who’s stricken with temptation. Hopkins is given a long monologue in an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting; it’s powerful acting, but the scene has little to do with the overall theme of interconnectivity. The majority of the stories leave the audience wanting more, although the film has enough sense to finish the picture with a somewhat happy ending, creating the false impression that all of the stories have concluded, although really it’s just one or two.

The screenplay is by Peter Morgan, who also wrote Hereafter and Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy , two superior films, both about an international cast of characters intersecting in fateful ways. The difference between those projects and 360 is that Morgan doesn’t find any overall significance in journeying from one place to the next. Random circumstances and the filmmakers’ loose visual associations seem to link the characters together. Oh, sure, there’s some bookend narration about people who come to metaphoric forks in the road, and in turn, they must (sometimes tragically) choose the direction that suits them best, but it doesn’t amount to any overarching purpose. In Hereafter , Morgan brought three people from separate countries together in a profoundly significant way, as they were all touched by psychic phenomenon by hook or by crook. Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy used an international backdrop and ensemble cast to let a dense spy yarn play itself out. Both films came to satisfying conclusions.

Meirelles and Morgan leave far too many of their characters twisting in the wind by the end credits. We’re reminded of smaller characters because Meirelles uses split screens to show us how they’re floating through life at this moment. Only one of the stories seems to reach any finality, and that’s the one involving the prostitute and her sister. How the film comes “full circle” is an illusion, however, constructed via cinematic techniques of deception, rather than coincidences in the characters’ lives. The aforementioned “forks in the road” are never quite real, as certain characters (usually the ones we want to thrive most) are never given the opportunity. It would have been far more interesting to see more of the characters come this close to happiness, only to make the wrong choice. And though this happens on occasion, far too many of the stories lead to dead ends, and even fewer still feel wrapped up dramatically. What the film amounts to, then, is an actor’s showcase, but a very limited, not very compelling, or satisfying one.

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Facts and Figures

Year : 2011

Run time : 110 mins

In Theaters : Wednesday 25th July 2012

Box Office USA : $99.6k

Box Office Worldwide : $99.6 thousand

Distributed by : Magnolia Pictures

Production compaines : BBC Films

Contactmusic.com : 3 / 5

Rotten Tomatoes : 21% Fresh: 15 Rotten: 58

IMDB : 6.2 / 10

Cast & Crew

Director : Fernando Meirelles

Producer : Andrew Eaton , Chris Hanley , Danny Krausz , David Linde , Emanuel Michael

Screenwriter : Peter Morgan

Starring : Rachel Weisz as Rose, Jude Law as Michael Daly, Ben Foster as Tyler, Anthony Hopkins as Older Man, Moritz Bleibtreu as Salesman, Jamel Debbouze as Algerian Man, Mark Ivanir as The Boss, Katrina Vasilieva as Alyssa, Peter Morgan as Salesman, Tereza Srbova as European Girl, Kelvin Wise as Airport passenger, Gabriela Marcinkova as Anna, Vladimir Vdovichenkov as Sergei, Riann Steele as Waitress, Sydney Wade as Ellie, Johannes Krisch as Rocco, Lucia Siposová as Mirkha, Sean Power as AA Secretary, Maria Flor as Laura, Shaun Lucas as Passenger / restaurant customer, Russell Balogh as Diner, Dinara Drukarova as Valentina, Gerard Monaco as Airport Official, Alex Sanders as Leonardo

Also starring : Andrew Eaton , Chris Hanley , Danny Krausz , David Linde

360 Movie Site
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A modern and stylish kaleidoscope of interconnected love and relationships linking characters from different cities and countries in a vivid, suspenseful and deeply moving tale of romantic life in the 21st century.
Screenwriter Peter Morgan and Director Fernando Meirelles' film combines a modern and dynamic roundelay of stories into one, linking characters from different cities and countries in a vivid, suspenseful, and deeply moving tale of love in the 21st century. Starting in Vienna, this movie beautifully weaves through Paris, London, Bratislava, Rio de Janeiro, Denver, and Phoenix into a single, mesmerizing narrative. — 360 Films Ltd
Inspired by Arthur Schnitzler's classic La Ronde, screenwriter Peter Morgan and director Fernando Meirelles' 360 combines a modern and dynamic roundelay of stories into one, linking characters from different cities and countries in a vivid, suspenseful, and deeply moving tale of love in the 21st century. Starting in Vienna, the film beautifully weaves through Paris, London, Bratislava, Rio, Denver, and Phoenix into a single, mesmerizing narrative. — yusufpiskin

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Rotten Tomatoes, explained

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

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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.

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.”

A screenshot of the Rotten Tomatoes page for Wonder Woman

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.

A screenshot of the Rotten Tomatoes score for Fight Club.

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:

Oh boy, critics had their venom & knives ready . Fans LOVE the movie. Huge positive scores. Big disconnect w/ critics & people. #Baywatch https://t.co/K0AQPf6F0S — Dwayne Johnson (@TheRock) May 26, 2017

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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Rotten Tomatoes can make or break a film's success — is that a problem?

Scott Detrow

Marc Rivers

Rotten Tomatoes has been a go-to source for movie reviews for years - and its ratings can make or break a film's success. But some say the site has major flaws in its ratings system.

SCOTT DETROW, HOST:

Right now, members of the actors' and screenwriters' unions are still on strike, walking picket lines in Hollywood. But that hasn't stopped movie studios from pushing the content they already have out to the public. And that's how you get ads like these.

(SOUNDBITE OF MONTAGE)

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: "Oppenheimer" is magnificent. The New York Times calls it staggering.

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: Critics and audiences agree "Bottoms" is a hit. It's the best-reviewed comedy of the year.

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #3: It's pretty insane.

DETROW: And if you're trying to decide what movie to see - and sometimes that's a hard choice because ticket prices can be $20 or more - a film's biggest selling point might be this.

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #4: Audiences and critics cannot believe what they're seeing - with a 96% on Rotten Tomatoes.

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #5: "The Phantom Of The Open" is the crowd-pleasing, feel-good film that will leave you cheering. And it's certified fresh from Rotten Tomatoes.

DETROW: Since its launch 25 years ago, the review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes has become the be-all, end-all for many people deciding whether or not to see a movie. If you told a friend they had to see "Oppenheimer," to help convince them, maybe you mentioned it had a 93% on Rotten Tomatoes. It was fresh. Other movies, like "The Nun II," lurking at just 47%? Maybe not so much.

ERIC DEGGANS, BYLINE: Like any form of traditional media, I think the role of the critic has changed as the power of the critic has changed.

DETROW: Eric Deggans is NPR's TV critic. He got into the profession during the days when one critic could sway public opinion, and he says those days are gone.

DEGGANS: You know, at least when you're talking about sort of marquee-name critics - the Roger Eberts, the Gene Siskels, you know, the folks who could determine the fate of a movie with a single review or at least a clutch of reviews - that isn't the case anymore.

DETROW: People use Rotten Tomatoes to get a consensus on whether or not to watch a movie or TV show, but there are flaws in the system. By combining and averaging reviews, it may be devaluing the voices it brings together. If you're over a certain age and you love movies, then there was definitely a point when you cared a lot about Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

GENE SISKEL: Now, what do these three very different films have in common? Each has played a key role in the development of two film critics. Their names - Siskel and Ebert. I'm Gene Siskel of The Chicago Tribune.

ROGER EBERT: And I'm Roger Ebert of The Chicago Sun-Times.

DETROW: They both started out doing movie reviews for newspapers, but it was their TV shows, "Sneak Previews" and "At The Movies," where the two Chicago critics developed the style of smart-yet-accessible discussions about film that became their trademark.

BRIAN RAFTERY: I think the thing that set Siskel and Ebert apart was that they were - from the minute you saw them on TV and from the minute you heard them arguing one another, they either reminded you of yourself, or they reminded you of someone you knew. I mean, they - sometimes, I watch them, and it's kind of like watching two versions of my dad argue with one another about movies.

SISKEL: Roger, my rebuttal of this film is you're wrapping yourself in the flag of children, and I'm saying, go see "The Black Stallion" instead. There's a film with little dialogue that's so...

EBERT: Hold on...

SISKEL: ...Much better.

EBERT: ...I'm not wrapping myself in the flag of children. You're wrapping yourself in the flag of the sophisticated film critic who's seen it all.

SISKEL: No, boredom. No, boredom - boredom...

DETROW: Brian Raftery is a journalist and podcaster based in Los Angeles. His podcast "Gene And Roger" examined their legacy, how they changed film criticism and how thumbs-up or thumbs-down became a part of the culture.

RAFTERY: I do think that Siskel and Ebert, by being so kind of accessible in their own ways, made you feel like you were maybe a little bit smarter about movies than you gave yourself credit for. And also, they covered everything. They were very egalitarian. They did not just cover sort of highbrow cinema. They covered junk, and sometimes they really championed junk.

DETROW: Raftery has thought a lot about what Siskel and Ebert would make of Rotten Tomatoes.

RAFTERY: I think the actual mechanics of Rotten Tomatoes in assigning a movie a number would probably drive Siskel and/or Ebert kind of crazy. But I do think that even they would appreciate the idea that a lot of different people are getting to chime in now about movies from different regions, from different vantage points, from different cultural backgrounds that only, you know, I'm all for. I'm all for as many movie conversations as, you know, the world and the internet can hold at one point.

DETROW: To dig deeper into how Rotten Tomatoes has affected film criticism, studios and audiences, I spoke to Lane Brown, who kicked off another one of those conversations on the internet with a recent article for Vulture entitled "The Decomposition Of Rotten Tomatoes." I also talked to Jamie Broadnax, the editor-in-chief of the culture site Black Girl Nerds. I started the conversation with both of them by asking Brown what he thinks is wrong in the way Rotten Tomatoes makes decisions about what's good or bad and how it presents that information.

LANE BROWN: There are two main problems, in my mind, for - with the way the site works. And so the first one is to calculate a movie's score, it uses a really simple, really reductive formula. Every review for a movie is classified as either rotten or fresh - or positive or negative - and then to get a movie's overall score, the site just divides the number of positive reviews by the number of reviews. And so there's no attempt at all to distinguish between slightly positive and very positive reviews, and so a movie can get 100% based on just OK reviews. And so a mediocre movie can do really well on Rotten Tomatoes, and a movie that is great but a little challenging might lose points because it's not a total across-the-board crowd-pleaser. And so you'll find, you know, movies like "Paddington 2" will have a, you know, a 99% Rotten Tomatoes, which is, you know, 6 points higher than "Raging Bull," which seems slightly incorrect, I would say. So that's the first problem.

Another big problem with the site is that movies get a score after only a handful of reviews have been published, sometimes as few as five. And a movie's first score usually seems to set the tone for the way that movie is received. And so studios have figured out how to game this. And to get a high initial score, they'll just make sure that the critics who see their movies first are the ones most likely to give positive reviews. And so for a superhero movie, there's a whole universe of websites that, you know, now only write about superhero movies and tend to be kinder to them than, say, you know, the snobs that write for other outlets.

DETROW: Yeah.

BROWN: And so you'll often see a movie debut with a really high score because the studios have corked the bat. And then that score will fall by a lot once more critics have weighed in.

DETROW: So selectively having certain people review and publish those reviews at certain times. I'm specifically remembering this one - I forget who did it - his review of "The Flash" - this is the greatest superhero movie of all time. That gets out there way before I saw it. I can assure you it was not.

JAMIE BROADNAX: (Laughter) Facts.

DETROW: Jamie, there's a bunch of things I want to ask you about as a critic with this. Have you found yourself trying to navigate, as a critic, the world that Lane writes about of the ways that this site has swayed studio behavior of when and how they're trying to introduce certain critics to movies and get reviews published at certain times?

BROADNAX: How can I answer this without getting in trouble with the studios?

BROADNAX: Rotten Tomatoes is - become bigger than what it initially - the site was built upon. It was mostly just about film nerds giving their opinions about films and whether it was, you know, hot or not. Like, it kind of was a riff off of what Siskel and Ebert did with thumbs up, thumbs down. And now it has become this huge sort of marketing tool for a lot of studios. So, you know, I understand the importance for them to want to get the reviews on the site. But that being said, I just want to make sure that, you know, what we put on for Black Girl Nerds - our reviews - are always filled with integrity, are always true to what the critic actually, you know, is seeing and wants to put out there into the world about how they feel about the film regardless of our relationship with a studio. You know, whether they like it or not, that's going to be our review, period. And that's something that I educate to all of my writers is even if it's a superhero film or whatever genre it is, if you don't like it, you don't like it, and it's going to go up on Rotten Tomatoes regardless.

DETROW: Lane, I want to get back to something you mentioned and was a big part of your piece, and that's the ways that studios are now trying to time premieres to try and, you know, game the system here. And one example that you had of this actually working out really poorly was the decision of Disney to premiere the latest "Indiana Jones" sequel at Cannes, which you could see the big fancy reception, and you can - you could see why they did that on one hand. But then you have a whole bunch of highbrow critics come out and say, yeah, this movie stunk. And those early reviews were very bad, and they seemed to hurt the movie's opening first few weeks.

BROWN: Yeah, it was funny. It's a - they had this big spectacle at the Cannes Film Festival. It gets a five-minute standing ovation. Harrison Ford is weeping as they present him with this, you know, honorary Palme d'Or for, you know, lifetime achievement. And, you know, in the olden days, that kind of spectacle might have actually sort of translated into sort of warm early buzz - but not in 2023. And so now the only thing that really matters to come out of a film festival like this is that Rotten Tomatoes score. And so, yeah, you show it to a bunch of snobby critics at Cannes. And, you know, it translates to a 33% Rotten Tomatoes score which sort of instantly sets the tone for that movie's reception. And they just had this low Rotten Tomatoes score sitting out there for a month before the movie arrives in theaters. And so a lot of people just didn't turn out in theaters, and so you have this movie that cost $300 million just because it had a, you know, bad word-of-mouth, you know, via that early Rotten Tomatoes score.

DETROW: Jamie, I wanted to broaden this out to you. I think one reason why this - Lane's article jumped out to me is that - 'cause this is a trend in the world of criticism, but it's a trend in so many other things right now - news, politics, many other things. And that's, like, the broader democratization of the world of movie critics, right? This is not an elite handful of people swaying opinion across America anymore. It's so much more of a broad pool. When you think about that trend, do you think there's more good there or more bad there? Like, what do you make of where we are compared to 10 or 20 or 30 years ago when it comes to the world of movie criticism?

BROADNAX: I mean, I think it's a good thing. I - you know, I want to be careful where, you know, we criticize or we're diminishing the work of, like, small online creators, people that don't have large platforms or work for trade publications - that somehow they're not seen as worthy of being a film critic as someone who works for The New York Times or writes for The Guardian because we, as smaller bloggers and journalists, really love and appreciate film just the same. And we're a part of accredited film organizations and guilds that - we work hard to be a part of those and watch tons and tons of films throughout the year and vote on those films respectively. So we we have a lot of subject matter expertise in this line of work. So just because our audience isn't at the same capacity as those bigger publications doesn't necessarily mean that our work is, you know, not as valuable. So I say all of that to say that it's important that the pool is wider.

However, I do have concerns, and I think Lane's article touched on that, that there are critics out there that are willing to accept payment for having their articles put on Rotten Tomatoes. So I think it's probably the onus is on the platform to really vet harder who they're bringing in to their pool of critics and making sure that these are people that are in it for film criticism, that these are people that are in it because they're passionate about films, because they love film. I mean, a lot of us do this for a living. I do it for a living. But also, you know, you do it because you love the work as well. But yeah, to kind of answer your question - I know I'm taking the scenic route - but I think it is important to widen that pool because there was a very, you know, there was a time that wasn't so long ago where it was only, you know, a few group of people that were allowed to criticize films, and those people did not look like me.

BROWN: To Jamie's point, I think it is important that Rotten Tomatoes vets a little bit more carefully than they have been. And I will tell you, one person who absolutely should not be a Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer-approved critic is me, and yet, somehow - I never asked for this and didn't even realize that I was a Tomatometer-approved critic until about three days after I published my piece - but apparently, I am. They added me to the site. They turned a whole bunch of blog posts that I wrote 15 years ago into reviews. They weren't actual reviews.

I'm not a critic, never claimed to be a critic, don't want to be a critic. The world is a worse place for having my stupid opinions in it. And yet, somehow, my vote is - you know, on Rotten Tomatoes - is the - exactly the same. I've just as much voting power as Jamie or any of the other critics on there, and that just seems ridiculous to me.

I - so I think that, you know - they - it's certainly better that the pool is wider. There is more great criticism happening now than there has ever been. It's coming from all different places. But I do think Rotten Tomatoes, you know, the platform - the onus is on them, as Jamie said, to vet and make sure that everybody who's on there should be on there.

DETROW: That was Lane Brown, a feature writer for New York Magazine and Vulture, and Jamie Broadnax, film critic and editor-in-chief at arts and culture site Black Girl Nerds.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.

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7 new to Max movies with 90% or higher on Rotten Tomatoes

Oops! Something went wrong. Please try again later. More content below

The start of a new month means a fresh batch of new movies on Max , the streaming service formerly known as HBO Max. And while February may be a shorter month Max isn’t slacking off when it comes to delivering a collection of must-watch movies.

The new additions to the library include a sweeping romantic drama set across both sides of the Atlantic Ocean, a delightful animated adventure across a world constructed of plastic bricks and an unquestionable classic that is widely considered to be one of the greatest movies of all time. Max subscribers will have plenty to watch this month.

Our roundup of the best Max movies is already overflowing with cinematic gems, and thanks to these new additions, the list is only going to get even bigger. Plus, every single pick below has scored at least 90% or higher on the review aggregate site Rotten Tomatoes , so whichever you pick you’re guaranteed to watch a quality flick. Now let’s dive into the 7 best new to Max movies for February 2024…

‘Citizen Kane’ (1941)

“Citizen Kane” has left such a legendary mark on the cinema industry that it’s become a common shorthand expression for a quality movie. This 1941 drama, directed by and starring Orson Welles, is almost universally considered one of the greatest movies ever made, and there’s so much to praise here from the powerful lead performance to the innovative direction that would serve as an inspiration for generations of filmmakers.

I’ll assume you’ve at least heard of “Citizen Kane”, but if you don’t know what it’s about, the 1940s drama centers on the rise of a fictional newspaper tycoon named Charles Foster Kane (Welles). We follow Kane from his happy childhood playing in the snow through to his death bed where he utters a single final word, “Rosebud.” Shortly after his passing, a lackey journalist is tasked with exploring Kane’s life in the hopes of unlocking the secret behind his mysterious last utterance. Put short, “Citizen Kane” is a movie that every self-respecting movie fan must watch.

Genre: Drama Rotten Tomatoes score: 99% Stream it on Max

'Brooklyn' (2015)

“Brooklyn” is a drama based on the 2009 novel of the same name by Colm Tóibín, and asks a simple, but deeply difficult-to-answer, question: What do you choose when you’re torn between your heart and your home? That’s the conundrum that Irish immigrant Eilis Lacey (Saoirse Ronan) finds herself wrestling with after moving across the ocean to New York City, falling in love with a Brooklyn native, and then being offered the chance to return home to her native Ireland.

Eilis is not just torn between the U.S. and The Emerald Isle, but also two very different men, baseball-mad Tony (Emory Cohen) and soft-spoken Jim (Domhnall Gleeson). “Brooklyn” is a tear-invoking romantic drama with a winning performance from Ronan, and an excellent supporting turn from Julie Walters as Mrs. Kehoe, the matron of Eilis’ boarding house. Just make sure you’ve got the tissues close by for this one, as things get pretty emotional.

Genre: Drama Rotten Tomatoes score: 97% Stream it on Max

'The Lego Movie' (2014)

A wonderfully imaginative and seriously awesome animated adventure, “The Lego Movie” brings the popular Danish construction toy to life. Set in a world made entirely of plastic Lego blocks, Emmet (voiced by Chris Pratt) is just an average guy. But when he accidentally gets the fabled Piece of Resistance stuck to his back, he must lead a group of rebels to thwart the sinister schemes of Lord Business (Will Ferrell), who wants to glue the Lego world together.

Also featuring the voice talent of Elizabeth Banks, Morgan Freeman, Liam Neeson, Will Arnett and Nick Offerman, “The Lego Movie” is the perfect flick for master-builders young and old. It gets bonus points for being brilliantly self-aware, and regularly poking fun at itself. Plus, the movie’s unique animation style is glorious. The filmmakers managed to make the movie look like pieces of Lego come to life, and that’s arguably its biggest achievement.

Genre: Adventure Rotten Tomatoes score: 96% Stream it on Max

'Up in the Air' (2009)

A strong awards contender back in 2009, “Up in the Air” is an easy sell just based on its cast list alone. It’s led by George Clooney, Anna Kendrick and Vera Farmiga but also includes Jason Bateman, Danny McBride, Melanie Lynskey, J.K. Simmons and Zack Galifianakis. Of course, a list of recognizable names doesn’t guarantee a movie’s quality, but fortunately “Up in the Air” has lots more to offer than just star power. It’s clever, witty and highly relevant to our modern times.

The comedy-drama sees Clooney play Ryan Bingham, a corporate downsizing specialist living out of a suitcase. He flies all over the country visiting businesses to help them complete lay-offs efficiently and compassionately. He loves his life of hotel rooms and airport lounges, but when a hotshot young colleague (Kendrick) pitches a new system that would see Ryan permanently grounded, he aims to prove the old methods are the best. And he might just find love along the way with a fellow frequent flyer (Farmiga).

Genre: Comedy Rotten Tomatoes score: 90% Stream it on Max

'Full Metal Jacket' (1987)

Stanley Kubrick’s masterful examination of the Vietnam War and the dangers of an unwavering military mindset, “Full Metal Jacket” will practically give you whiplash as it switches between laugh-out-laud comedy and harrowing drama on a dime. Under a lesser filmmaker, this could have led to a very conflicted tone, but Kubrick somehow meshed both aspects together neatly. Even in a filmography as remarkable as Kubrick’s, “Full Metal Jacket” stands out from the rest.

“Full Metal Jacket” can be neatly split into two segments, the first follows Private Joker (Matthew Modine), who is tasked with getting his struggling fellow recruit Pyle (Vincent D'Onofrio) through basic training under the cruel watch of their harsh drill sergeant (Lee Ermey). The second portion follows Joker and his friends after they are shipped off to the frontline, and must adapt to the realities of bloody conflict and the brutality of 1968’s Tet Offensive.

Genre: War Rotten Tomatoes score: 90% Stream it on Max

'A Ghost Story' (2017)

“A Ghost Story” is a tricky movie to recommend. It’s a critical darling, receiving praise for its thoughtful direction, memorable visuals and rich themes, but its minimalist approach to storytelling will alienate some viewers. It’s arguably more of an art piece than a movie, but if you watch with the correct mindset, you might find yourself bewitched by this unique indie flick.

Starring Casey Affleck and Rooney Mara, “A Ghost Story” sees an unnamed man (Affleck) return from the dead after a fatal car crash. Taking the form of a spectral spirit that cannot communicate with those still living, the ghost is stuck within the house he used to share with his wife (Mara) and can do little but observe those around him. As time passes, he eventually begins a new journey across time and space in order to move on to the afterlife.

Genre: Drama Rotten Tomatoes score: 91% Stream it on Max

'Miss Sharon Jones!' (2015)

An inspirational documentary following blues singer Sharon Jones across the most difficult year of her life, “Miss Sharon Jones!” is a testament to the power of the human spirit. The Grammy-nominated artist faces some of life’s toughest tests as she attempts to keep her soul and funk band together while also battling an aggressive form of pancreatic cancer.

Directed by Barbara Kopple, this doc is a real celebration of Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings. It also fully displays how hard the singer had to work to make her breakthrough a little later in life after decades of struggling to make it in the cutthroat music industry. Sharon Jones is easy to root for, making this documentary all the more engaging as you see her face each roadblock with dignity and grace. “Miss Sharon Jones!” offers an inspiring insight into a remarkable character.

Genre: Documentary Rotten Tomatoes score: 91% Stream it on Max

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Movie Reviews

Tv/streaming, collections, great movies, chaz's journal, contributors.

Now streaming on:

Bette Davis famously owned a pillow with the adage “old age ain’t no place for sissies” stitched across it. This truism is at the heart of writer/director Paul Weitz ’s “Moving On,” which stars Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin as Claire and Evelyn, two aging, estranged friends thrown together again after decades at the funeral of their mutual friend Joyce.

A melodrama with comedic elements, plot-wise the film is about Claire’s desire to get vengeance for a sexual assault perpetrated by Joyce’s husband Howard ( Malcolm McDowell ) nearly 50 years earlier that completely derailed her life. In the wake of the event, she pulled away from Joyce and Evelyn, left her loving husband Ralph ( Richard Roundtree , as charming and suave as ever), and has spent most of her life petrified by the trauma.

Yet, this is not a film that exists solely for its plot mechanics. It’s a clear-eyed examination of the compounding weight of growing older, of carrying your life and your hopes and your memories and your regrets with you everywhere you go. The title, “Moving On,” does not just mean to move beyond your past but also to keep moving forward in life, even if your past stays with you.

Like the characters they play, Fonda and Tomlin have spent decades building a deep friendship while appearing together in projects like “9 to 5” and “Grace and Frankie,” and their chemistry shines as bright as ever. They are not, however, just playing versions of their own personas.

Claire is a woman who never found her own power, always living for others after the assault left her “mute.” Fonda plays her with a somber rigidity, holding her body tight as if thousands of emotions are one moment away from escaping the cage she’s built around them. As she reconnects with Evelyn, Ralph, and even Howard, Claire’s long-repressed sense of humor, sensuality, and seething anger she kept hidden for so long find their way to the surface.

Tomlin plays retired musician Evelyn with her trademark deadpan sensibility, always seeming to say what she means and what feels at any given moment, unafraid to be unabashedly herself. Yet, Evelyn is a woman with secrets, wounded pride, and a passion for music – and for women – that hasn’t had an outlet in far too long. She secretly ekes out as free an existence as she can in the independent section of an assisted living facility. Joyce’s death, and Claire’s return to her life, bring out in Evelyn a bevy of complex emotions, this shift played with subtle precision by Tomlin, whose eyes belie her stoic face and monotonous voice.

While Evelyn helps Claire plot out how to get her revenge, the two discuss the immediate aftermath of the incident. Claire didn’t report it to the police because “They wouldn’t have believed me.” On one hand, the dialogue here is on the nose, yet when looking back 50 years and then forward again, and seeing that not much has changed for women in this country in terms of their bodily autonomy and the prosecution of rapists, perhaps on the nose becomes just the truth.

When Claire does finally get to say her peace to Howard, she graphically describes the assault, recalling every horrid detail as if it happened yesterday and not nearly 50 years ago because, for her, time stopped on that day. Fonda delivers this monologue with as much power and conviction as any in her career, tapping into the weight not just of Claire’s trauma but all the compound traumas that the actress has witnessed as a woman in this country for the last half-century.

For his part, McDowell plays Howard as the kind of privileged man who has done just enough work on himself to consider himself a “changed man” yet has only really achieved healing for himself and for his own sake, not for those he’s harmed. Howard is less a character than an emblem of all the powerful men who get away with it over and over and over again. This could be seen as a failure at the script level, but it also allows Howard to get his just desserts at the end without the audience feeling too bad for the family he leaves behind.

While the tonal shifts from melodrama to mordant comedy don’t always work, Fonda and Tomlin are as good as they have ever been and “Moving On” proves itself a powerful rumination on the strength it takes to age—mentally, physically, and economically. It takes strength to live with yourself and your traumas, to embrace your pleasures, and to be there for those you care about despite it all.

Now playing in theaters.

Marya E. Gates

Marya E. Gates is a freelance film and culture writer based in Los Angeles and Chicago. She studied Comparative Literature at U.C. Berkeley, and also has an overpriced and underused MFA in Film Production. Other bylines include Moviefone, The Playlist, Crooked Marquee, Nerdist, and Vulture.

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Film credits.

Moving On (2023)

Rated R for language.

Jane Fonda as Claire

Lily Tomlin as Evvie

Richard Roundtree

Malcolm McDowell as Howard

Catherine Dent as Molly

Cinematographer

Tobias Datum
Hilda Rasula
Paul Croteau
Amanda Delores Patricia Jones

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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.

Rotten Tomatoes Ratings - Tomatometer Graphics Simplified - StudioBinder

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.

Rotten Tomatoes Ratings - Tomatometer Score Graphic - StudioBinder

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.

Rotten Tomatoes Ratings - What is Tomatometer - StudioBinder

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.

Rotten Tomatoes Ratings - Audience Score - StudioBinder

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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IMAGES

360
360 (2011)
360
Primer trailer y un nuevo póster de '360'
360
360

COMMENTS

360
Starting in Vienna, the film beautifully weaves through Paris, London, Bratislava, Rio, Denver and Phoenix into a single, mesmerizing narrative. The central premise of "360" is an intriguing one ...
360 (film)
360 is a 2011 internationally produced drama thriller film directed by Fernando Meirelles and written by Peter Morgan as a loose adaptation of Arthur Schnitzler's 1897 play Reigen.The film stars an ensemble cast of Anthony Hopkins, Ben Foster, Rachel Weisz, Jude Law and other international actors. Following the stories of couples and their sexual encounters, 360 was selected to open the 2011 ...
'360' With Anthony Hopkins and Jude Law
360. Directed by Fernando Meirelles. Drama, Thriller. R. 1h 50m. By Manohla Dargis. Aug. 2, 2012. A butterfly flapping its wings in Chile is a familiar culprit for all kinds of global havoc, like ...
360 Movie Review
What you will—and won't—find in this movie. Positive Messages. 360 posits that we're all connected in some wa. Positive Role Models. Michael doesn't have an affair that he had pla. Violence & Scariness. A climactic double murder takes place off camera, Sex, Romance & Nudity. Sexuality is a major theme of the film.
360
A starry cast and a knowing air can't add depth to Peter Morgan's tale of blackmail, infidelity and dodgy deals, says Philip French
360 (2011)
360: Directed by Fernando Meirelles. With Lucia Siposová, Gabriela Marcinková, Johannes Krisch, Danica Jurcová. A modern and stylish kaleidoscope of interconnected love and relationships linking characters from different cities and countries in a vivid, suspenseful and deeply moving tale of romantic life in the 21st century.
360
Thu 9 Aug 2012 16.45 EDT. S creenwriter Peter Morgan and director have proven themselves mighty talents in the past, but they've come a catastrophic cropper with this bizarre film, an all-star ...
360 (2012)
Arthur Schnitzler's 1897 play La Ronde finds a modern counterpart courtesy of director Fernando Meirelles in 360. The play follows a series of characters from all walks of life having various sexual encounters; after two passionate lovers fall into bed, one of them might go off to meet their dull husband or wife, and so on.
360 (film)
360 is a 2011 internationally produced drama thriller film directed by Fernando Meirelles and written by Peter Morgan as a loose adaptation of Arthur Schnitzler's 1897 play Reigen. The film stars an ensemble cast of Anthony Hopkins, Ben Foster, Rachel Weisz, Jude Law and other international actors. Following the stories of couples and their sexual encounters, 360 was selected to open the 2011 ...
360
A sexy dramatic thriller about interconnected romantic life in the 21st century. 360 starts in Vienna, weaving stories set in Paris, London, Bratislava, Rio, Denver and Phoenix into a single, mesmerizing narrative. A businessman faced tempted to be unfaithful to his wife sets into motion a series of events which ripple around the globe with dramatic consequences, set against the backdrop of ...
360 Review 2011
Loosely based on Arthur Schnitzler's play La Ronde, this beautifully assembled film is easy to watch. But that's the problem: the subject matter should be much more difficult than this, as it's ...
360 (2011)
Screenwriter Peter Morgan and Director Fernando Meirelles' film combines a modern and dynamic roundelay of stories into one, linking characters from different cities and countries in a vivid, suspenseful, and deeply moving tale of love in the 21st century. Starting in Vienna, this movie beautifully weaves through Paris, London, Bratislava, Rio ...
5 new to Netflix movies with 90% or higher on Rotten Tomatoes
The 360 ; Life. Health. COVID-19 ; Fall allergies ... 5 new to Netflix movies with 90% or higher on Rotten Tomatoes. ... Each of the five movies on this list have scored at least 90% on the review ...
The 355 movie review & film summary (2022)
The 355. "The 355" amasses some of the most talented and electrifying actresses in the world, then squanders them in a generic and forgettable action picture. Jessica Chastain is among them, and she helped shepherd the film from the beginning as one of its producers. It's easy to see what the appeal is here: A glamorous and globe-trotting ...
Rotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes, the Tomatometer, and Audience scores are the world's most trusted recommendation resources for quality entertainment. As the leading online aggregator of movie and TV show ...
Rotten Tomatoes, explained
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 ...
Rotten Tomatoes can make or break a film's success
Download. Embed. Transcript. Rotten Tomatoes has been a go-to source for movie reviews for years - and its ratings can make or break a film's success. But some say the site has major flaws in its ...
7 new to Max movies with 90% or higher on Rotten Tomatoes
The 360 ; Life. Health. ... 7 new to Max movies with 90% or higher on Rotten Tomatoes. ... every single pick below has scored at least 90% or higher on the review aggregate site Rotten Tomatoes ...
Moving On movie review & film summary (2023)
A melodrama with comedic elements, plot-wise the film is about Claire's desire to get vengeance for a sexual assault perpetrated by Joyce's husband Howard ( Malcolm McDowell) nearly 50 years earlier that completely derailed her life. In the wake of the event, she pulled away from Joyce and Evelyn, left her loving husband Ralph ( Richard ...
Rotten Tomatoes Ratings
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 ...

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360 – review

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Review by Brian Eggert July 22, 2012

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