I would like to know if there were any movies that Siskel-Ebert-Roeper thumbed downed or panned that became Acadamy Award nominees, AA winners, or runaway blockbusters?
I saw an interview with Ebert when it was noted that he thumbed down “Home Alone”. I do not know what else.
On the same subject, has anyone ever given an AA winning movie a bad review?
SP
Ever hear of this movie called Titanic?
Hell, I would think EVERY AA-winning movie has gotten a bad review.
Just looking at the Tomatometer:
2003 - Chicago - 14% bad reviews
2002 - A Beautiful Mind - 22% bad reviews
2001 - Gladiator - 23% bad reviews
2000 - American Beauty - 11% bad reviews.
1999 - Shakespeare in Love - 5% bad reviews
1998 - Titanic - 12% bad reviews
1997 - The English Patient - 11% bad reviews
1996 - Braveheart - 19% bad reviews
1995 - Forrest Gump - 25% bad reviews
1994 - Schindler’s List - 0% bad reviews
I went back and looked at some others, too, but the availabilty of reviews for Tomatometer ranking starts to drop off. “Unforgiven” gets a 100% good ranking, but it’s only 19 reviews, and it DID get negative reviews at the time, so I think the bad ones just never made the transition to Internet form.
Clearly, AA-winning movies get bad reviews. I actually don’t think any of those movies were BAD movies; the worst of the bunch was Gladiator, in my opinion, but it was at least a pretty good movie. Schindler’s List to my mind was clearly the best of the lot. In many cases better reviewed movies were beaten out; for instance, “Braveheart” beat out the 95% positively reviewed “Apollo 13” and the 91% positive “Fargo,” and frankly I thought they were better, too.
Some movies in the last 13 years that DO have perfect Tomatometer ratings:
Unforgiven
Aladdin
Bullets over Broadway
Barton Fink
The Sweet Hereafter
Toy Story
Sense and Sensibility
Groundhog Day
Schindler’s List
In The Line Of Fire
The Player
Hoop Dreams
A Midnight Clear
What’s Love Got To Do With It?
The great majority of perfectly rated films are from 1995 and before, or are less widely released films with fewer ratings, suggesting the bad reviews have just not been posted. I think we can safely assume that VERY few movies, even great ones, don’t get at least a few pans. “Toy Story” seems to be just about the only major release in the last five or six years with a perfect rating. It WAS a terrific movie.
People give Academy Award winning movies bad reviews all the time … often because they are not in fact great movies. (Take, for example, the thoroughly mediocre Gladiator.)
And blockbuster movies often get bad reviews. See the reviews of this week’s #1 movie, Bruce Almighty.
Head over to www.rottentomatoes.com and dig around the archives. You’ll find plenty of cases where the critics disagreed with the public or the Academy.
Why are you starting another thread on this topic? You did the same subject less than a month ago:
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=181703
In general I have the greatest respect for Roger Ebert but I can never forgive him for giving “Raising Arizona” and “Miller’s Crossing” thumbs down. The man just has it all wrong, so terribly wong, at least where those films are concerned.
Ebert has thumbed down a lot of great movies and thumbed up a bunch of crap. I remember an episode of the show (many years ago) in which he panned Stanley Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket, but then gave a thumbs up to Benji the Hunted. Which movie do people still remember?
He also raved about Episode I but gave a mediocre review to LOTR:FOTR.
I think over all he’s more likely to rave about some piece of shite than he is to trash a good movie.
Oh, yeah, I almost forgot. He also hated Blue Velvet. He write a sanctimonious review about how “misogynistic” it was and how David Lynch was mocking the audience. Ebert didn’t get that movie at all. Lynch is not a misogynist and he doesn’t have contempt for his audience. He’s just crazy. 