Would you trust Rotten Tomatoes to tell you what the best movie of all time is? Yeah, once we saw what their pick was and exactly how it ended up in the #1 slot, we decided that we're pretty much done looking to them for this sort of recommendation.
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00:00Would you trust Rotten Tomatoes to tell you what the best movie of all time is?
00:05Yeah, once we saw what their pick was and exactly how it ended up in the number one
00:08slot, we decided that we're pretty much done looking to them for this sort of recommendation.
00:13So what is it?
00:14Is it the most predictable, tired choice ever that always ends up at the top of these lists,
00:19like Casablanca or Citizen Kane?
00:21That's a mistake that will be corrected one of these days.
00:25Is it an obscure hipster choice that pretty much no one even likes that much, besides
00:29that one annoying guy you used to work with at the local coffee shop?
00:33You wanna fight?
00:35Nope, wrong again.
00:36Honestly, you'll probably never guess.
00:38We sure didn't.
00:40According to Rotten Tomatoes, 1997's L.A. Confidential is the best movie of all time.
00:45What, what, what, what?
00:48Yeah, we had pretty much the same reaction.
00:50Before we get into why we aren't on board with this choice, let us just say something.
00:54L.A. Confidential is a great movie.
00:57We're not denying that whatsoever.
00:59It's a tightly plotted film, and its phenomenal cast brings this intensely corrupt era of
01:03Los Angeles to life in a myriad of compelling ways.
01:07Dudley killed Jack.
01:10He wants you to kill me.
01:12Still though, it's not as if it's so good that it stands above so many other well-known
01:16movies that could arguably deserve the number one slots, like No Country for Old Men or
01:20Pulp Fiction or Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, or any number of others that end up
01:25in the countless top ten lists out there.
01:28So what's the deal?
01:29How did Rotten Tomatoes land on this 90s gem above everything else?
01:33The answer is simple and honestly kind of sad.
01:35They use a recommendation formula, which considers a movie's Tomatometer rating and its audience
01:40score.
01:41We have several problems with this.
01:43First off, the audience score is useless.
01:46Even though Rotten Tomatoes altered the requirements of the popcorn meter two years after A Legion
01:50of Angry Fans tanked the rating of Star Wars Episode VIII, The Last Jedi, the list is still
01:54heavily driven by anyone with an active account, which means a person who's seen a total of
01:5920 movies gets a say in a poll that includes hundreds of reviews from critics.
02:03To be fair, the top 300 could be a lot more cringeworthy and laden with undeserving superhero
02:07flicks.
02:08One of the only truly good ones that deserves to be on a list such as this, Christopher
02:12Nolan's The Dark Knight, doesn't turn up until slot 51.
02:16Let's put a smile on that face."
02:20There's also the fact that a large swath of international cinema is completely ignored.
02:25African and Asian filmmakers are particularly underserved, besides a few top spots going
02:29to Bong Joon-ho and Akira Kurosawa.
02:32People had this issue with the sight and sound list, which desperately needs to prune its
02:35voting ranks, so it's not surprising Rotten Tomatoes would fall horribly short in this
02:40department.
02:41But what's the purpose of compiling a list like this if you're going to exclude the people
02:44who know the most about the subject and instead let the uninitiated masses have the final
02:49say?
02:50Never forget that Rotten Tomatoes is an aggregation site, and their best-of list is possibly the
02:55most sobering reminder of that fact.