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Alien: Romulus First Reviews: The Best in the Franchise Since Aliens

Critics say fede álvarez's entry successfully taps into what made the first two so good, combining striking visuals and claustrophobic terror with gory action and a formidable lead performance from cailee spaeny..

TAGGED AS: First Reviews , Horror , movies

Following two prequel films helmed by original Alien director Ridley Scott , the franchise is moving forward again with the sequel Alien: Romulus . (Or is it better described as a “midquel,” since it takes place directly after the first?) Produced by Scott, directed by Fede Álvarez ( Don’t Breathe ), and starring Civil War’ s Cailee Spaeny , this new installment returns Alien to its horror roots while paying homage to fan-favorite moments of the past. And so far, it’s a hit with critics, as the first reviews of Alien: Romulus affirm the movie is scary and arguably the best installment since Aliens . It certainly has the Tomatometer score to make that case.

Here’s what critics are saying about Alien: Romulus :

Is it one of the better  Alien movies?

Alien: Romulus is the Alien film I have been waiting for. — Kate Sánchez, But Why Tho? A Geek Community

Romulus ends up as the franchise’s strongest entry in three decades. — Jake Cole, Slant Magazine

One of the best in the franchise in years. — Jordan Hoffman, Entertainment Weekly

Alien: Romulus is one of the best Alien sequels… It delivers the slimy creep-out goods in a way that none of the last three Alien films have. — Owen Gleiberman, Variety

There’s never been a terrible Alien movie (no, the Alien vs. Predator spin-offs don’t count), and that streak stays alive with Alien: Romulus . — Nick Schager, The Daily Beast

Alien: Romulus feels too over-designed and painfully nostalgic to qualify as one of the better movies of the franchise… in the end, Romulus is perfectly middle of the pack. — Hoai-Tran Bui, Inverse

Does it improve on the prequels?

The dedication to practical effects and capturing the banality of space portrayed in the original film is a sharp move away from the most recent franchise installments, Covenant and Prometheus . — Kate Sánchez, But Why Tho? A Geek Community

The film outdoes Scott’s more abstractly philosophical prequels in balancing Alien’ s core themes of humans’ place in the cosmos, corporate malfeasance, and the sexual and reproductive subtext intimated by H.R. Giger’s original alien designs. — Jake Cole, Slant Magazine

The most surprising thing about Alien: Romulus is that, with its climactic creature, it finds a way to subtly tip its cap to Scott’s underrated prequels Prometheus and Alien: Covenant , with which it shares an abiding fascination with androids. — Nick Schager, The Daily Beast

While it may not have the visual sweep of 2012’s Alien prequel Prometheus , it benefits from the simplicity of its storyline. — Jordan Hoffman, Entertainment Weekly

(Photo by ©20th Century Studios)

Is it a return to form?

At its best, Fede Álvarez’s Alien: Romulus is a winning attempt to get things back on the rails after the elaborate mythology introduced in Scott’s two prequel films, Prometheus and Alien: Covenant , threatened to stretch the thematic core of the series beyond its limits. — Jake Cole, Slant Magazine

Álvarez recreates the tactile and gloopy terror of the first two films to a, sometimes, alarming degree. — James Croot, Stuff.co.nz

Even if his pedal-to-the-metal style is closer to the hard-charging combat action of Aliens , the claustrophobic sense of entrapment and escalating terror gives it a definite kinship with the slow-burn scares of Alien , if not the control or complexity. — David Rooney, Hollywood Reporter

Alien: Romulus recaptures the suffocating sci-fi horror and thrill of Scott’s first voyage with the Nostromo. — Kate Sánchez, But Why Tho? A Geek Community

For as many hallmarks as this entry loves to telegraph back to its original source, the major forgotten facet is a deep care for its narrative. It’s an elusive element that stunts it from having a lasting impact. — Josh Parham, Next Best Picture

In its sweaty attempts to bring the franchise back to basics, Romulus feels less like its own movie and more like a greatest hits of the Alien series. — Hoai-Tran Bui, Inverse

Does it bring anything fresh to the franchise?

While it subtly plays the greatest hits, it also brilliantly innovates, delivering smart, savvy thrills. — Courtney Howard, Fresh Fiction

The best of Alien: Romulus reminds us that some franchises are more open to a variety of directorial approaches than others. — Michael Phillips, Chicago Tribune

Álvarez manages to find a fresh angle in his screenplay that he co-wrote alongside Rodo Sayagues, beginning with the introduction of younger characters for a change. — Casey Chong, Casey’s Movie Mania

Álvarez may approach this beloved horror series with a relative lack of new ideas, but he certainly knows how to maximize what made the original movies so compelling. — Jake Cole, Slant Magazine

While it doesn’t shake up the lore or deviate from the path, it’s such a thrilling ride you’ll be hard-pressed to care. — Meagan Navarro, Bloody Disgusting

It pushes the material into gnarly new gynecological territory. — Nick Schager, The Daily Beast

Is is scary?

It’s filled with all the jump scares, point-of-view shots, unexpected twists, and nightmare-inducing imagery any sci-fi or horror fan who was 12 in 1986 – or 2020 – could wish for. — James Croot, Stuff.co.nz

Alvarez puts the horror first here, with exquisite craftmanship that immerses you in the insanity. — Meagan Navarro, Bloody Disgusting

Alien: Romulus delivers thrills that no doubt will have squeamish folks covering their eyes at strategic moments. — David Rooney, Hollywood Reporter

Its most delightfully disgusting scene [features] a revolting, body-horror twist that feels like Álvarez’s freaky instincts overcoming any overcautious studio notes. — Hoai-Tran Bui, Inverse

The gore level may not be a shock to fans of Alvarez’s previous features, but for the casual franchise fan, well, it’s gory. — Michael Phillips, Chicago Tribune

I wish there were two or three more characters on this adventure. Maybe I sound like a sociopath, but I would have liked to see more people get chomped and bisected by the aliens. — Jordan Hoffman, Entertainment Weekly

How does it look?

The film’s CGI is excellent and so too is its set design, with every corridor drenched in shadows and mist, every lab lit by glaring fluorescent light, and every alien egg dripping with goo and opening with squishy squelches. — Nick Schager, The Daily Beast

What really impresses though is how Álvarez makes this movie look, as was his stated aim, as if it was made in 1982. — James Croot, Stuff.co.nz

The sheer scope of the practical sets look and feel like Aliens brought into the now, with each new section of the ship distinct from the last… [It] speaks to Alvarez’s keen ability to add a tactile quality to the cinematics; the swooping camerawork ensures you feel the weightlessness. — Meagan Navarro, Bloody Disgusting

From the rust-bucket transporter that gets the group to Renaissance to the labs, corridors, airlocks and elevator shafts of the abandoned station, in various stages of disrepair, the movie makes enormous gains from creating multi-dimensional environments shrouded in unsettling lighting. — David Rooney, Hollywood Reporter

Dazzling visuals of the Corbelan ship traveling through cosmos are awe-inducing, best viewed in IMAX to overwhelm your senses… Cinematographer Galo Olivares’ work is impressive, not solely restaging iconic imagery, but blazing a new trail. — Courtney Howard, Fresh Fiction

(Photo by Murray Close/©20th Century Studios)

Are any of the new characters memorable?

It’s David Jonsson’s Andy who winds up stealing the film as the sweet, innocent synthetic whose sole directive is to protect Rain’s happiness and well-being. Once he boards the abandoned ship, his arc quickly becomes the most complex and fascinating of the film. — Meagan Navarro, Bloody Disgusting

Andy is the film’s heart and, ultimately, its hero, too. Alien: Romulus offers audiences a character to question and root for, offering depth and complexity to the story beyond what the rest of the ensemble offers. — Kate Sánchez, But Why Tho? A Geek Community

For a franchise that often lacks richly drawn characters, it receives two of its most fully realized ones yet in Rain and Andy, each fighting against natural and programmed survival instincts to stay loyal to each other. — Jake Cole, Slant Magazine

One significant lesson not learned from Scott’s original is the minimal time spent establishing these characters as distinct individuals. But since most of them won’t be around long enough to matter, perhaps that was the point. — David Rooney, Hollywood Reporter

Their personalities are flattened into pedestrian archetypes that are never all that compelling. These individuals feel like stock characters, empty vessels that are often seen in horror pictures that are only ever lifted from the page based on the strength of the performance attached. — Josh Parham, Next Best Picture

What about the performances?

Cailee Spaeny’s excellent… She scales every emotion and detail astutely, so that a reaction shot to something horrible feels, well, real, and not simply rote. — Michael Phillips, Chicago Tribune

Cailee Spaeny, with her clear eyes and serene resolve, makes her presence felt as Rain, the closest equivalent here to the fearless Ripley. — Owen Gleiberman, Variety

Spaeny proves to be a compelling lead, vulnerable and ruled by her emotions to a large extent, but also a technically savvy quick thinker with formidable survival instincts. — David Rooney, Hollywood Reporter

David Jonsson delivers a captivating performance that is constantly engaging to watch. — Josh Parham, Next Best Picture

Jonsson steals the film by adding a new level of emotion and context around Weyland-Yutani’s Synthetics. — Kate Sánchez, But Why Tho? A Geek Community

How is the score?

Benjamin Wallfisch’s score harkens back to Jerry Goldsmith’s memorable musical themes and helps set a suitably ominous mood. — Nick Schager, The Daily Beast

Benjamin Wallfisch’s atmospheric score contains elements of the past works of Jerry Goldsmith, James Horner and Harry Gregson-Williams. — James Croot, Stuff.co.nz

Benjamin Wallfisch’s riveting score… blends the late Jerry Goldsmith and James Horner from the respective first two movies while adding a unique, synthesiser-laden spin to his overall musical composition. — Casey Chong, Casey’s Movie Mania

Does it stick the landing?

The movie doesn’t quite stick the landing, piling on while lingering at the gate for an extra 10 minutes or so. — Michael Phillips, Chicago Tribune

Occasionally, the film must contend with the larger complications introduced into the Alien mythos by the prequels, and this leads to a final act that feels shaggy and overburdened compared to the preceding 90 minutes. — Jake Cole, Slant Magazine

A final-act development lurches into overblown and slightly daffy extreme sicko horror… The movie goes bigger but for my money not better. — David Rooney, Hollywood Reporter

The third act has its moment but doesn’t work out as great as I thought. — Casey Chong, Casey’s Movie Mania

The third act is where everything pays off. It’s the most unique of the film and allows Alvarez to leave his signature on the franchise. — Kate Sánchez, But Why Tho? A Geek Community

It’s the final act of Alien: Romulus that’s designed to get audience eyes popping… What’s best about it is simply the flair with which Álvarez stages a lone-woman-vs.-humanoid-alien showdown. It’s a sequence tense enough to grab you by the throat, if not the face. — Owen Gleiberman, Variety

Can we compare it to another franchise?

In many ways, at least one I dare not mention, Alien: Romulus feels like this series’ equivalent of Star Wars: Rogue One (with a bit of The Force Awakens thrown in). — James Croot, Stuff.co.nz

While Spaeny’s Rain feels at first like a wide-eyed take on Sigourney Weaver’s Ellen Ripley, her resilient ingenuity and tragic backstory makes her feel more like Alien’ s response to Rey from The Force Awakens . — Hoai-Tran Bui, Inverse

Alien: Romulus may feel like it’s “ Don’t Breathe in Space” with the Xenomorphs and Facehuggers substituting the blind old man while the scavengers replace the thieves. — Casey Chong, Casey’s Movie Mania

Does it offer fans hope for the future of the Alien movies?

There’s still plenty of acid-bloody life left in the franchise’s monstrous bones… In its homage-y closing notes, it also suggests a promisingly perilous path forward. — Nick Schager, The Daily Beast

Álvarez has course-corrected the franchise that it’s a positive step in the right direction compared to the last Alien movie seven years ago. — Casey Chong, Casey’s Movie Mania

Alien: Romulus shows a bright future for the franchise if Alvarez keeps at the helm. — Kate Sánchez, But Why Tho? A Geek Community

Thumbnail image by ©20th Century Studios On an Apple device? Follow Rotten Tomatoes on Apple News .

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‘after’: film review.

Josephine Langford and Hero Fiennes Tiffin play young lovers in the screen adapation of Anna Todd's popular fan-fiction novel 'After.'

By Frank Scheck

Frank Scheck

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In case you haven’t guessed from the byline or the fact that this review is appearing in a prominent publication and not as a YouTube video, let me state the obvious: I am not a teenage girl.

That biological reality theoretically makes me less than qualified to review the screen adaptation of Anna Todd’s novel, part of a series of fan-fiction books inspired by the band One Direction, and its member Harry Styles in particular. But I feel confident that even if I were to be magically transformed into the target demographic, I would still find After to be a cliched, mediocre affair. Come back, Twilight , all is forgiven.

Release date: Apr 12, 2019

An appealing Josephine Langford ( Wish Upon , Wolf Creek ) plays the central role of Tessa, a fresh-faced teen who at the story’s beginning is starting her first year at college. She’s dropped off by her overprotective mom (Selma Blair), who’s horrified upon meeting her daughter’s exotic, nose-ring wearing roommate (Khadijha Red Thunder). Also on hand to say goodbye is Tessa’s boyfriend Noah (Dylan Arnold), who’s still in high school and whose affable, innocent demeanor instantly signifies that he won’t be in Tessa’s life, or the film, much longer.

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Sure enough, Tessa soon meets Hardin (Hero Fiennes Tiffin, the nephew of Ralph and Joseph, looking like he’s stepped out of a Teen Vogue ad), a pouty-faced, leather jacket-wearing classmate who should have “Bad Boy” stamped on his forehead. Not that he’s your typical bad boy, though, since he seems to have very literary tastes. Spotting a book on Tessa’s shelf, he comments, “ The Great Gatsby , that’s a good book.” He’s also able to quote from Wuthering Heights and engage in a spirited classroom argument with Tessa, about Pride and Prejudice , in which the subtext is inescapable.

Connecting over a party game of Truth or Dare, Tessa and Hardin soon get hot and heavy, at least in a PG-13 kind of way. They go swimming in a secluded lake, each of them maintaining a degree of modesty, but with Hardin shedding enough clothes to indicate a serious tattoo fixation. He also, not surprisingly, turns out to be a sensitive soul after all, opening up to Tessa about a tragic event in his past that provides a psychological explanation for his affected alienation.

When the virginal Tessa finally decides that she’s ready to take things to another level, the resulting encounter seems to have been scripted for a university sexual assault prevention program. “I want you!” Tessa breathlessly declares. “Are you sure?” Hardin carefully asks. He doesn’t take any chances. “Do you want me to stop?” he queries, before ripping open a condom wrapper. (If After doesn’t do well in theaters, at least Betsy DeVos can screen it for Congress.)

A potentially juicy subplot involving Hardin’s strained relationship with his university chancellor father (Peter Gallagher) gets short shrift, not to mention makes us wonder why Hardin speaks with a British accent and his dad doesn’t. It does provide the opportunity for a brief appearance by the always luminous Jennifer Beals as the father’s new bride, making viewers of a certain age nostalgic for the days when Blair, Gallagher and Beals would have played the young leads in a movie such as this.

Only the most naive audience members will find the climactic revelation about Tessa and Hardin’s relationship shocking, and only they will swoon at the inevitable happy ending. The melodramatic goings-on are accompanied by the sort of pop music seemingly designed less for a film soundtrack than a Spotify playlist. Director Jenny Gage, whose previous teenage girl-themed documentary All This Panic provided useful training for this assignment, lends a suitably glossy sheen to the proceedings.

Early in the film, shortly after Hardin and Tessa meet, he inquires about her high school boyfriend Noah and she describes him as “nice.” “Isn’t that just another word for boring?” Hardin asks. If that’s indeed the case, then let’s just say that After is a nice movie.

Production: Voltage Pictures, CalMaple Media, Diamond Film Productions, OffSpring Entertainment, Frayed Pages Entertainment, Wattpad Distributor: Aviron Pictures Cast: Josephine Langford, Hero Fiennes Tiffin, Inna Sarkis, Shane Paul McGhie, Pia Mia, Khadijha Red Thunder, Dylan Arnold, Samuel Larsen, Swen Temmel, Selma Blair, Peter Gallagher, Jennifer Beals, Meadow Williams Director: Jenny Gage Screenwriters: Susan McMartin, Tamar Chestna, Jenny Gage, Tom Betterton Producers: Jennifer Gibgot, Courtney Solomon, Mark Canton, Aron Levitz, Anna Todd, Meadow Williams, Dennis Pelino Executive producers: Swen Temmel, Adam Shankman, Brian Pitt, Scott Karol, Sarah Jorge Leon, Alastair Burlingham, Gary Raskin, Walliam Sadleir, David Dinerstein, Jason Resnick, Nicolas Chartier, Jonathan Deckter Directors of photography: Adam Silver, Tom Betterton Production designers: Lynne Mitchell, Rusty Smith Editor: Michelle Harrison Composer: Justin Brunett Costume designer: Alana Morshead

Rated PG-13, 106 minutes

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

Here are the best new movies to watch on Paramount Plus

Paramount Plus doesn't quite make the cut on our guide to the best streaming services but that doesn't mean it isn't worth subscribing to Paramount's streaming service. Every month, it adds tons of new shows and movies, including more than a few excellent ones.

This month, there are actually around a dozen movies that are new to Paramount Plus that also hold the distinction of having a 90% or higher rating on Rotten Tomatoes. These movies are the cream of the crop with near-universal acclaim and to add this many in a given month is no small accomplishment. 

But, that's also a lot of movies to watch at a time — perhaps too many. So I've narrowed it down to the seven best movies with 90% or higher on Rotten Tomatoes new to Paramount Plus this August. Here's what you need to be watching.

'Extra Ordinary' (2019)

Rose Dooley (Maeve Higgins) may seem like a simple driving instructor, but her father Vincent Dooley (Risteárd Cooper) trained her into a talented paranormal expert. His untimely demise caused Rose to shun her gifts, but a chance encounter with a Mr. Martin Martin (Barry Ward) and his possessed daughter Sarah (Emma Coleman) forces her to dance with the devil and stop one-hit-wonder rock star Christian Winter (Will Forte) from sacrificing Sarah to Satan.

I rarely find an acclaimed movie on these streaming services that I'm not at least casually aware of, but I'll admit I had never heard of "Extra Ordinary." After watching the trailer and laughing on more than one occasion, I'll almost certainly be watching it when it hits Paramount Plus later this month.

Genre: Comedic horror Rotten Tomatoes score: 98% Stream it on Paramount Plus with Showtime starting Aug. 24

'Airplane!' (1980)

"Airplane!" is one of the greatest comedies of all time. Period. The disaster comedy stars Robert Hays as former fighter pilot turned taxi driver Ted Striker. His girlfriend Elaine (Julie Hagerty) breaks up with Striker right as she's about to work as a flight attendant on a flight from Los Angeles to Chicago, and Ted gets a last-minute ticket to board the flight and win her back.

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Also starring Leslie Nielsen as Dr. Rumack alongside many other talented actors (including basketball legend Kareem Abdul-Jabbar), the plot of "Airplane!" is almost forgettable despite its brilliance. Instead, you'll remember iconic lines like "Don't call me Shirley," absurd moments like Ted depressing passengers to the point of suicide and so many other quotes and gags. This movie is a must-watch for anyone.

Genre: Comedy Rotten Tomatoes score: 97% Stream it on Paramount Plus with Showtime

'Invasion of the Body Snatchers' (1956)

If you thought this was the 1978 film starring Donald Sutherland, I wouldn't blame you. Both are excellent, acclaimed adaptations of the 1955 novel "The Body Snatchers" by Jack Finney. But while more people may now know the 1978 remake, it's the 1958 original that's arguably the most critically well-received version.

The original "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" stars Kevin McCarthy as Dr. Miles Bennett. The movie starts with him being held in custody in a Los Angeles hospital, recounting his hellish tale of alien imposters replacing the human residents of Santa Mira with soulless duplicates. Even if you've seen the remake, don't miss the original on Paramount Plus this month.

Genre: Science fiction Rotten Tomatoes score: 97% Stream it on Paramount Plus

'Once Upon a Time in the West' (1968)

When it comes to Western films, no actor, writer or director is more synonymous with the genre than Italian director Sergio Leone. His incredible camerawork and his classmate Ennio Morricone's iconic scores are responsible for the place the "Spaghetti Western" holds in cinema history. The soundtrack for this movie is still one of the best-selling original scores of all time.

"Once Upon a Time in the West" stars Charles Bronson as "Harmonica," a gunslinging hero who rolls into Flagstone on the hunt for the notorious gangster Frank (Henry Fonda). While initially unsuccessful, Harmonica eventually crosses paths with the fugitive "Cheyenne" (Jason Robards) and the former prostitute Jill (Claudia Cardinale), both of whom have scores to settle with the villainous Frank. Don't miss one of the greatest Westerns ever made while it's on Paramount Plus.

Genre: Western Rotten Tomatoes score: 96% Stream it on Paramount Plus  

'Face/Off' (1997)

Nicolas Cage was just announced to star in a John Madden biopic as the legendary coach turned announcer. While that movie may well ultimately be incredible, it will be tough for it to beat Cage's performance in "Face/Off." 

John Travolta stars alongside Cage as FBI special agent Sean Archer, a federal agent who has, for years, been chasing down the criminal Castor Troy (Cage). But after chasing down an elusive criminal turns into a mission for revenge, Archer discovers a revolutionary new technology that could give him the edge against Troy. 

By the end of this John Woo action thriller, both men fully immerse themselves into the other's being to try and gain victory. "Face/Off" is still a unique action movie to this day and is a must-watch for any action movie fan. I promise you, there’s nothing else out there quite like it.

Genre: Science fiction action thriller Rotten Tomatoes score: 93% Stream it on Paramount Plus

'An Inconvenient Truth' (2006)

While he never managed to become the "next President of the United States," Al Gore certainly managed to make waves with "An Inconvenient Truth." Following his failed, totally controversy-free bid to become the 43rd U.S. President, former Vice President Gore started doing public speaking engagements warning the world about the rapidly developing global warming crisis. In 2006, he and producer Laurie David took his PowerPoint presentation and turned it into an award-winning documentary. 

In the years since, much of what Gore discussed in "An Inconvenient Truth" is more common knowledge than in the early 2000s, in no small part due to the success of this documentary. But it's still as relevant as ever, and worth watching if you've never seen it.

Genre:  Documentary Rotten Tomatoes score:  93%   Stream it on  Paramount Plus

'Pulp Fiction' (1994)

"Pulp Fiction" follows three interconnected stories that are told out of chronological order, though the film starts and ends in the same scene at the same diner. Vincent Vega (John Travolta) and Jules Winnfield (Samuel L. Jackson) are a pair of hitmen tasked with hunting down the briefcase of their boss, the criminal Marsellus Wallace (Ving Rhames). Over the course of the movie, they cross paths with Marsellus' wife (Uma Thurman), a boxer named Butch (Bruce Willis), a "cleaner" named Winston Wolfe (Harvey Keitel) and a pair of thieves named Pumpkin (Tim Roth) and Honey Bunny (Amanda Plummer).

Looking back, you'd assume this was a major studio movie — but it wasn't. Many of the actors were either washed up or unknown, and this movie is why they're now household names. Made on a budget of just $8.5 million, Quentin Tarantino's indie film went on to gross $213.9 million en route to a Palme d'Or win and seven Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture, Best Actor, Best Supporting Actor, Best Supporting Actress and Best Original Screenplay, which Tarantino won.

Genre:  Crime Rotten Tomatoes score:  92%  Stream it on  Paramount Plus

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Malcolm McMillan is a senior writer for Tom's Guide, covering all the latest in streaming TV shows and movies. That means news, analysis, recommendations, reviews and more for just about anything you can watch, including sports! If it can be seen on a screen, he can write about it. Previously, Malcolm had been a staff writer for Tom's Guide for over a year, with a focus on artificial intelligence (AI), A/V tech and VR headsets.

Before writing for Tom's Guide, Malcolm worked as a fantasy football analyst writing for several sites and also had a brief stint working for Microsoft selling laptops, Xbox products and even the ill-fated Windows phone. He is passionate about video games and sports, though both cause him to yell at the TV frequently. He proudly sports many tattoos, including an Arsenal tattoo, in honor of the team that causes him to yell at the TV the most.

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Where To Watch Every Movie in the After Series in Order

Published on.

Rachel Ulatowski

Official JustWatch writer

The After film series is set to expand soon, with a prequel and fifth sequel reportedly in development. Based on the book series of the same name by Anna Todd, the movies have garnered attention for dramatically capturing a complicated modern college romance. For those interested in catching up on the series before the prequel, Before, releases, this guide will demonstrate where and how to watch every After movie in order.

After  premiered in 2019 and featured Josephine Langford in the lead role of Tessa Young. Hero Fiennes Tiffin, Ralph Fiennes's nephew, starred opposite Langford as Hardin Scott. Fiennes Tiffin had previously portrayed young Tom Riddle in the Harry Potter film series . After follows Tessa, an innocent freshman college student who finds her life upended by Hardin, the manipulative and selfish “bad boy” she finds herself inexplicably falling for.

The movie received mixed reviews, as it drew criticism for being a rather generic romance but was praised for its drama and beautiful cinematography. It was also a hit at the box office, earning nearly $70 million worldwide on a budget of just $14 million.

Hence, a sequel, After We Collided , soon arrived. Langford and Fiennes Tiffin reprise their roles as the young lovers who re-enter a tumultuous relationship after regretting their breakup. It received slightly more negative reviews than the first. Still, it was a comparable commercial success to the original, resulting in three more sequels: After We Fell , After Ever Happy , and After Everything .

However, critical and commercial reception continued to fall, with After We Fell and After Ever Happy receiving a score of 0% on Rotten Tomatoes and box office earnings dropping to around $20 million. Still, After Everything was greenlit. It was the first movie to boast an original story outside of Todd’s books and was advertised as the final film in the series. Although it received a limited theatrical release, it made $10 million at the box office and received relatively favorable audience reviews.

Soon, After Everything director Castille Landon confirmed the movie wasn’t the last chapter in the series, as a prequel was in development. Additionally, another untitled sequel is in development, inspired by the epilogue of the After Ever Happy book, which will focus on Hardin’s and Tessa’s children. It is believed the prequel and sequel will be the first movies without Langford or Fiennes Tiffin.

For those interested in catching up with the series before the prequel and sequel, here is where to watch the After movies in release date order.

Tessa Young is a dedicated student, dutiful daughter and loyal girlfriend to her high school sweetheart. Entering her first semester of college, Tessa's guarded world opens up when she meets Hardin Scott, a mysterious and brooding rebel who makes her question all she thought she knew about herself -- and what she wants out of life.

After We Collided

Based on the 2014 romance novel of the same name, this follows the love life of two young adults.

After We Fell

Just as Tessa's life begins to become unglued, nothing is what she thought it would be. Not her friends nor her family. The only person that she should be able to rely on is Hardin, who is furious when he discovers the massive secret that she's been keeping. Before Tessa makes the biggest decision of her life, everything changes because of revelations about her family.

After Ever Happy

As a shocking truth about a couple's families emerges, the two lovers discover they are not so different from each other.

After Everything

Besieged by writer’s block and the crushing breakup with Tessa, Hardin travels to Portugal in search of a woman he wronged in the past – and to find himself. Hoping to win back Tessa, he realizes he needs to change his ways before he can make the ultimate commitment.

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Alien: Romulus lands fresh Rotten Tomatoes rating after first reviews

It's the third highest-ranked film in the franchise.

The latest entry in the sci-fi franchise from writer-director Fede Álvarez , who previously helmed the 2013 grisly Evil Dead remake, currently sits at an 83% critics score on the review aggregator website.

This makes Romulus the third highest-ranking Alien film after the first two entries in the saga, Aliens (94%) and Alien (93%).

Set 20 years after the events of Alien , Alien: Romulus follows Rain ( Cailee Spaeny ) and other space colonists on a scavenging mission to a decommissioned station where they find themselves face to face with threatening lifeforms.

Related: Alien: Romulus cast tease traumatic scares in new Alien movie

Critics have praised Romulus ' loyalty to the first films in the series as well as Álvarez's flair for body horror, while also highlighting the new movie's lack of originality. In our three-star review , Digital Spy described Romulus as "faithful to its own detriment".

Let's take a look at what other critics made of the newest facehugger adventure below.

"[Álvarez] has triumphed with a clever, gripping and sometimes awe-inspiring sci-fi chiller, which takes the series back to its nerve-racking monster-movie roots while injecting it with some new blood – some new acid blood, you might say."

The Guardian

"A technically competent piece of work; but no matter how ingenious its references to the first film it has to be said that there’s a fundamental lack of originality here which makes it frustrating."

Rolling Stone

"What's onscreen is neither a haunted house nor a roller coaster, but a standard theme-park ride based on a movie — an Alien -flavored attraction that doubles as an overly respectful homage."

Related: Alien: Romulus title has a hidden meaning

London Evening Standard

"Alien groupies will be cock-a-hoop, as the metal-mouthed, acid-dribbling creature is as terrifying as it’s ever been. As will the gore-hounds... Álvarez does it all with mighty oomph and relentless, cold, hard menace."

"A gorehound whose tastes and talents are much better-suited to the Grand Guignol splatter of Evil Dead than they are to the suffocating dread of Alien , the director would rather torture his cast than develop their characters."

Entertainment Weekly

"Maintaining a low orbit makes this one of the best in the franchise in years."

Related: Best movie box sets to buy

Screen International

"An efficient addition to the 45-year-old franchise, Alien: Romulus draws on the strengths of the sci-fi/horror series without ever suggesting that the property's best days are ahead."

Bloody Disgusting

"Álvarez puts the horror first here, with exquisite craftmanship that immerses you in the insanity."

The Independent

" Alien: Romulus has the capacity for greatness. If you could somehow surgically extract its strongest sequences, you'd see that beautiful, blood-quivering harmony between old-school practical effects and modern horror verve."

Alien: Romulus is released in cinemas on August 16.

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Reporter, Digital Spy

Stefania is a freelance writer specialising in TV and movies. After graduating from City University, London, she covered LGBTQ+ news and pursued a career in entertainment journalism, with her work appearing in outlets including Little White Lies, The Skinny, Radio Times and Digital Spy . 

Her beats are horror films and period dramas, especially if fronted by queer women. She can argue why Scream is the best slasher in four languages (and a half). 

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11 Movies With a 100% Rotten Tomatoes Score on Max Right Now (August 2024)

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For most viewers these days, a good Rotten Tomatoes score is the first thing they look for when trying to find something new to watch. The score, which is calculated based on the number of positive reviews a movie or show has received from recognized critics, has faced its share of criticisms , but it is still a widely used tool that’s usually quite reliable. A 100% Rotten Tomatoes score is, therefore, a mark of honor equivalent to any major award. The streaming service Max is home to some of the best films made around the world, and, appropriately, they have a sizable collection of movies with that coveted 100% fresh rating. These movies range from epic cinematic masterpieces to cutting-edge documentaries to beautiful works of animation and everything in between. Read on to discover our list of the best movies with a 100% Rotten Tomatoes score that you can stream now on Max.

For more recommendations, check out our lists of the best movies on Max , the best shows on Max , and the best classic movies on Max .

‘Seven Samurai’ (1954)

Rotten tomatoes: 100% | imdb: 8.6/10.

Seven Samurai

Co-written, directed, and edited by Akira Kurosawa , Seven Samurai is a 1954 Japanese epic samurai action film. Set in 1586 in the Sengoku period of Japanese history, the movie follows a group of samurai who are hired by a village of desperate farmers to protect their crops from dangerous bandits. The film stars Takashi Shimura , Yoshio Inaba , Daisuke Katō , Seiji Miyaguchi , Minoru Chiaki , Isao Kimura , and Toshiro Mifune as the titular warriors. Seven Samurai is a landmark film both in terms of its production and its impact. At the time, it was the most expensive film made in Japan, and it went on to become a massive box-office success. In the decades since its release, the movie has been remade, referenced, and reworked by filmmakers around the world, especially in the Western genre. Now hailed as one of the greatest films ever made, Seven Samurai is widely regarded as Akira Kurosawa’s masterpiece. It’s an epic, entertaining adventure with brilliant action, well-crafted characters, and a thoroughly engaging story that may seem familiar to modern audiences, but only because it’s inspired so many other films over the years.

Watch on Max

‘Singin’ in the Rain’ (1952)

Rotten tomatoes: 100% | imdb: 8.3/10.

Singin' in the Rain

Directed and choreographed by Gene Kelly and Stanley Donen , Singin' in the Rain is a 1952 musical romantic produced by Arthur Freed , who came up with the film based on songs written by himself and Nacio Herb Brown during the transition from silent movies to the talkies. The film is set in the same period, following the production of a movie in late 1920s Hollywood that faces challenges when the producers decide to make it a musical. Besides co-directing, Gene Kelly also stars in the film, appearing alongside Donald O'Connor , Debbie Reynolds , Jean Hagen , Millard Mitchell , Rita Moreno , and Cyd Charisse . At the time of its release, Singin’ in the Rain received critical acclaim but only modest success at the box office. Over time, however, the movie has been hailed as one of the greatest films of all time and arguably the best musical produced in the Golden Age of Hollywood. Decades after its initial release, the movie continues to entertain audiences with its smart humor, satirical narrative, and, of course, great music.

‘The Tale of the Princess Kaguya’ (2013)

Rotten tomatoes: 100% | imdb: 8.0/10.

The Tale of the Princess Kaguya

Adapted from the 10th-century Japanese story The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter , The Tale of the Princess Kaguya was the final film directed and co-written by Isao Takahata before his death in 2018. Produced by Studio Ghibli , this Japanese animated historical fantasy film follows the story of Kaguya-Hime, a divine child discovered inside a bamboo stalk by a farmer and his wife who raise her to become a beautiful princess courted by five noblemen, who compete to win her hand. The Tale of the Princess Kaguya features an ensemble voice cast starring Aki Asakura , Kengo Kora , Takeo Chii , Nobuko Miyamoto , and Atsuko Takahata , with Chloë Grace Moretz , Darren Criss , James Caan , Mary Steenburgen , and Lucy Liu providing the voices for the English dub. At the time of its premiere, The Tale of the Princess Kaguya was the most expensive Japanese film made until that time. The film received universal critical acclaim and was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature. With its emotionally deep and rich narrative, combined with stunning visual art, The Tale of the Princess Kaguya is a timeless movie that’s moving, evocative, and undeniably beautiful.

‘Honeyland’ (2019)

Directed by Tamara Kotevska and Ljubomir Stefanov , Honeyland is a Macedonian documentary film that documents the life of Hatidže Muratova , one of the last keepers of wild bees in Europe. A Macedonian beekeeper of Turkish descent living in the village of Bekirlija, Hatidže tends to the wild bees from the surrounding mountains while navigating her relationship with her ailing mother and neighbors. Honeyland is a conservationist film that explores pressing environmental topics like climate change, loss of biodiversity, and exploitation of natural resources, focusing on the deteriorating ecosystem of bees and its impact on the ecological balance through Hatidže’s story. Honeyland also explores various filmmaking styles and has earned universal critical acclaim for its timely message and attention to detail on the part of the filmmakers. The documentary has earned several awards and nominations, including two nominations at the 92nd Academy Awards for Best International Feature Film and Best Documentary Feature, becoming the first documentary film to receive nominations in both categories.

‘Welcome to Chechnya’ (2020)

Rotten tomatoes: 100% | imdb: 7.9/10.

Welcome to Chechnya

Welcome to Chechnya is a 2020 documentary film by American reporter, author, and documentarian David France . The film documents the anti-gay purges in Chechnya in the late 2010s, following activists rescuing survivors of torture from the region. The documentary includes footage captured by LGBTQ+ Chechen refugees using hidden cameras, cell phones, GoPros, and handycams. Welcome to Chechnya had its world premiere at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival, where it won the U.S. Documentary Special Jury Award for Editing and was nominated for the U.S. Documentary Competition Grand Jury Prize. The movie went on to receive several more awards and universal critical acclaim. A moving and illuminating call to action, Welcome to Chechnya ’s production was as groundbreaking as its content is eye-opening. To protect the identities of interviewees, advanced AI-based techniques and visual effects technology were used in the film so that viewers could see real faces and real emotions without revealing the actual faces of the speakers. The film is a technical triumph that effectively documents the horrifying and all-too-recent atrocities committed against the LGBTQ+ community in Chechnya.

‘M’ (1931)

Directed and co-written by Fritz Lang with Thea von Harbou , M is a 1931 German mystery thriller that was Lang’s first sound film. Set in Berlin, the film tells the story of Hans Beckert, an insane serial killer who targets children, exploring how the city’s criminals join hands with the police to catch him. Following a manhunt for a wanted killer, the mystery thriller is also considered an early example of what we know as procedural dramas. The movie features the first major starring role of Peter Lorre , who would go on to star in 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea . Lorre plays the role of the killer protagonist, appearing alongside legendary German actors like Otto Wernicke and Gustaf Gründgens . M features several cinematic innovations, including unique camera angles and sound techniques, like using theme music throughout the film, which became major influences in crime, mystery, and thriller genres in the following decades . A classic mystery thriller and a landmark film, M was regarded by Lang himself as his magnum opus and it is widely considered one of the greatest films of the German Expressionist movement.

‘Only Yesterday’ (1999)

Rotten tomatoes: 100% | imdb: 7.6/10.

only yesterday

Directed by Isao Takahata , Only Yesterday was the filmmaker’s second Studio Ghibli directorial after Grave of the Fireflies . The animated film is based on the 1982 manga of the same title by Hotaru Okamoto and Yuko Tone and tells the story of a 27-year-old woman living in Tokyo, Taeko Okajima, who takes a vacation outside the city in order to visit her sister’s relatives in the countryside. The journey and the vacation make Taeko reminisce about her childhood, making her question her choices in life. The original Japanese voice cast includes Yōko Honna , Miki Imai , and Toshirō Yanagiba . An English dub version, voiced by Daisy Ridley , Dev Patel , Alison Fernandez , Laura Bailey , and Ashley Eckstein , was released in 2016. A nostalgic film about self-discovery and finding your inner child, Only Yesterday is a fun, simple, and sensitive movie. The film received praise for its empathetic reflection of women in Japanese society at the time. Featuring brilliant artwork, animation, and music, Only Yesterday was a huge success on its release, both critically and commercially, becoming the highest-grossing Japanese film of 1991.

‘Three Colors: Red’ (1994)

Rotten tomatoes: 100% | imdb: 8.1/10.

Three Colors: Red

Co-written, produced, and directed by Polish filmmaker Krzysztof Kieślowski , Three Colors: Red is the third and final installment in the popular Three Colors Trilogy , a film series that examines French Revolutionary ideals. The drama film follows part-time model and student Valentine, who meets Joseph Kern, a retired judge, after she runs over his dog. Valentine ends up forming an unlikely bond with Joseph when she finds out he spies on his neighbors. Irène Jacob and Jean-Louis Trintignant star as Valentine and Joseph, respectively, and earned Cesar Award nominations for their stellar performances. Three Colors: Red explores themes of human connection, fraternity, and the interconnectedness of human lives, where two characters form a connection despite little in common. On its release, the drama film earned universal acclaim and was nominated for three Academy Awards, including Best Director for Kieślowski. It is considered the best film of the trilogy and one of the greatest French-language films of all time.

‘Bright Lights: Starring Carrie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds’ (2016)

Bright Lights: Starring Carrie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds

Directed by Alexis Bloom and Fisher Stevens , Bright Lights: Starring Carrie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds is a documentary film that explores the relationship between actor-singer Debbie Reynolds and her daughter, the equally iconic actor-writer Carrie Fisher . The film is an intimate portrait of the mother-daughter relationship between the Star Wars star and the legendary entertainer in what would be their final years together. Reynolds’ son Todd Fisher and actor-filmmaker Griffin Dunne also appear in the film. Bright Lights marks the final film appearances of both Reynolds and Fisher before their deaths in 2016. The documentary features candid moments with both the actors, exploring stories of their family lives and respective careers through archival footage, home videos, and interviews with family and friends, all of it culminating at the 2015 Screen Actors Guild Awards, where Fisher presented her mother with the Life Achievement Award. Bright Lights: Starring Carrie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds has been greatly praised for its funny, charming, and poignant narrative on one of Hollywood’s most beloved families.

‘Tampopo’ (1985)

Written and directed by Juzo Itami , Tampopo is a 1985 Japanese comedy film that celebrates the love of food. Marketed as a “Ramen Western," the film follows a truck driver and his sidekick who stop at a roadside ramen shop, where they decide to help the proprietor improve her business. The movie stars Tsutomu Yamazaki , Nobuko Miyamoto , Kōji Yakusho , and Ken Watanabe . Tampopo received universal acclaim from critics around the world at the time of its release. The movie won two Japanese Academy Awards in the Best Editing and Best Sound categories. It also received nominations for the Independent Spirit Award for Best Foreign Film and the National Society of Film Critics Awards for Best Screenplay and Best Director. An offbeat, satirical film with the style of a Western but the content of a food comedy, Tampopo has had a lasting impact on Japanese culture and the wider global appreciation of Japanese cinema. It’s also a deliciously great time.

‘The Gold Rush’ (1925)

The Gold Rush

Written, produced, and directed by Charlie Chaplin , The Gold Rush is a 1925 American silent comedy film. Set during the Klondike Gold Rush of the 1890s, the film follows Chaplin in his Tramp persona as an unfortunate prospector who gets caught in a snowstorm, forms an uneasy alliance with a fugitive and a fellow gold-seeker, and eventually falls for a girl. Besides Chaplin in the lead role, the film also stars Georgia Hale , Mack Swain , Tom Murray , Henry Bergman , and Malcolm Waite . The Gold Rush was a critical darling when it was first released, with Chaplin himself calling it the film he most wanted to be remembered for. With a deft combination of slapstick comedy and real emotion, the movie is widely regarded as one of Chaplin’s best. Chaplin also released a sound version in 1942 (available on Max), which earned Academy Award nominations for Best Music Score and Best Sound Recording. The Gold Rush is a true masterpiece of Old Hollywood and one of the greatest comedies ever made.

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The ‘borderlands’ movie debuts with a 0% on rotten tomatoes (update).

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Borderlands

This post was published on 8/8 and republished on 8/10.

I’m not sure I knew of anyone, Borderlands fan or not, who believed that the movie adaptation of the game was going to be good, based on everything from casting to trailers. Now as reviews come in ahead of its release tomorrow, those fears have been validated. And then some.

As I write this, the Borderlands movie has a flat 0% on Rotten Tomatoes . No positive reviews whatsoever ( Update : A single positive review has come in raising it to a 3%), and the ones that are in are not just negative, but brutal . Here’s a sampling:

• Discussing Film: “The fans deserve a lot better than whatever director Eli Roth is trying to do with Borderlands. This is the video game movie curse at its worst.”
• Men’s Journal: “If Borderlands doesn't stop studio executives from salivating at the sight of every single IP that comes across their desks, nothing will.”
• Next Best Picture : “It’s impressive how Roth can elicit the poor quality of 2000s video game adaptation energy yet somehow forget the discernable sense of fun or style that made even those terrible movies stand out.”
• IGN : “Borderlands is an abysmal waste of a beloved franchise that takes a kooky band of murderous misfits and drains the life out of their first adventure together.”

It’s true there are not many reviews in yet, and the score may tick up, but everything I’ve seen outside of some video game influencers who attended premieres (or are literally extras in the movie) has been relentlessly negative, and I would be surprised to find more than a handful of positive reviews come in when all is said and done. If any.

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A 0% on Rotten Tomatoes is of course as low as you can go. If we are looking at the worst-scored video game movies ever made, that list would now be (Updated list with the 4%):

• Alone in the Dark (2005) – 1%
• Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li (2009) – 3%
• House of the Dead (2003) – 3%
• Borderlands (2024) – 3%
• In the Name of the King (2007) – 4%
• Bloodrayne (2005) – 4%
• Mortal Kombat Annihilation- 4%
• Silent Hill Revelation (2012) – 8%
• Hitman Agent: 47 (2015) – 8%
• Postal (2007) – 9%

I put the year there so you can see that most of these ultra-terrible ones are in a decade or so when making a good video game adaptation was borderline impossible and the only people trying were directors like Uwe Boll half the time. As of late, we have seen very solid live action video game adaptations on both film (Sonic) and TV (The Last of Us, Fallout), and Borderlands seems to be a 10-15 year step backward.

I do expect it to rise above a zero percent. There are so many critics on Rotten Tomatoes of questionable quality and taste that probably someone will like it and knock it above some of these (I am one of those critics, so no judgement), but that has not happened at the time of this writing.

Who saw this coming? Everyone. Everyone did. And here we are.

Update (8/10): We have 92 reviews in now, and Borderlands has gone from 0% to 3% to now settling at around 10%. This puts it outside much higher on the “worst video game adaptations ever” list, which would now look like

• Borderlands (2024) - 10%

Of course there is absolutely no pretending a 10% is good. I do agree, however, that it does not deserve to be quite as low as that terrible decade of Uwe Boll movies and a few other very poor ones. Like no, this is definitely not on par with Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li.

I have indeed now seen the movie myself, and a 10% is something I can get behind. My own negative review is now on Rotten Tomatoes, and here’s an excerpt:

“This is neither a good Borderlands movie or nor a good movie, period. It feels like Gearbox and Eli Roth tried to split the difference here, making a mass-appeal PG-13 action film but gesturing vaguely at the games to try to get that crowd to show up too.

But the end result is throwing the Borderlands games at a wall, watching them shatter, and gluing back together a handful of mildly recognizable pieces.”

I said in the piece that the casting of Kevin Hart and Cate Blanchett are big problems, as expected. Hart mostly acts like a barely toned-down version of his usual self, and is nothing like game Roland. Blanchett is of course normally a great actress but a 30 year or so age increase from Lilith is bizarre, and also makes no sense within the confines of the film as actresses close to her age appear to remember her as a child.

This is a franchise killer. Gearbox had big plans for a Borderlands cinematic universe that is clearly going nowhere after this. And given how this went, that is fully justified.

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Pick up my sci-fi novels the Herokiller series and The Earthborn Trilogy .

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‘The Union’ Review: Old Flames and Spy Games

When a mission goes pear-shaped, a covert operative (Halle Berry) turns to a secret weapon: her high school boyfriend (Mark Wahlberg).

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By Ben Kenigsberg

The “Mission: Impossible” series went missing in action this summer , but that’s no reason to settle for Netflix’s “The Union,” a depressing illustration of the wisdom that sometimes you shouldn’t buy — or stream — generic. The movie combines a catalog of elements from the Tom Cruise franchise (supersecret agents, exotic locales, stunts) with a high-concept twist so silly it might as well have been selected by A.I.: What if — hear this out — the lead operatives happened to be former high school sweethearts?

“The Union,” directed by Julian Farino, kicks off in Trieste, Italy, with a blatant retread of the first “M:I” installment: The agents are on a mission to retrieve a traitor with a stolen hard drive. Suddenly, violence breaks out, and almost the whole team is killed. A survivor from the group, Roxanne (Halle Berry), pitches her boss, Tom (J.K. Simmons), on who to turn to for help: “If he’s anything like that guy I remember,” she says, “he’s exactly who we need.”

“He” is her onetime boyfriend, Mike (Mark Wahlberg), now a construction worker in New Jersey who is hooking up with their seventh-grade English teacher (Dana Delany). Roxanne hasn’t seen him in 25 years when she approaches him in a bar. His credentials are that he is, in Roxanne’s words, “a nobody”: Because of the nature of the pilfered intelligence on the drive, she and Tom need someone who has left virtually no civic footprint.

Besides, their spy outfit, the Union — so covert that half the intelligence community doesn’t know it exists and the other half regrets finding out, Roxanne says, as if reciting a tagline — prefers blue-collar guys to Ivy League suits. They are, in theory, way more fun than the C.I.A. (Stephen Campbell Moore appears as a stiff from Langley.) Mike used to be a star athlete and is accustomed to spending all day on a sky-high beam. With that background, shouldn’t a three-and-half-minute training montage suffice?

The other Union members are defined largely by their specialties — physical force (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje), psychology (Alice Lee), computing (Jackie Earle Haley) — and the movie makes a few feeble feints at fish-out-of-water humor. (Mike may never have left the tristate area before, but does he really not know what side of the road the British drive on?)

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Screen Rant

Mark wahlberg & halle berry's new netflix spy movie continues both star's rough rotten tomatoes records.

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The Union Ending Explained

The union cast & character guide, luke skywalker's jedi temple on ossus was the key to palpatine's defeat after all.

• Netflix's The Union has earned 49% on Rotten Tomatoes.
• This continues negative Rotten Tomatoes streaks for stars Mark Wahlberg and Halle Berry.
• Both stars have upcoming projects that could potentially break their streaks.

The Union continues a negative Rotten Tomatoes streak for stars Mark Wahlberg and Halle Berry. The duo stars in the Netflix action-comedy from Entourage director Julian Farino as a construction worker and his former high school flame, who now works in the high-stakes world of espionage and drags him into a dangerous adventure. The Union cast also includes Mike Colter, Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, Alice Lee, Lorraine Bracco, Jackie Earle Haley, and J. K. Simmons.

Rotten Tomatoes has now aggregated an official score for The Union out of 39 different critics' reviews. Although the number could fluctuate as more reviews are added, at the time of writing, it has a firmly Rotten 49% score , which is 11% below the 60% threshold past which a movie can be considered Fresh. This continues a streak of Rotten movies for both lead actors, as Berry has only starred in two Fresh narrative movies in the past 10 years and Wahlberg has only starred in five.

Can Mark Wahlberg And Halle Berry Reverse Their Rotten Tomatoes Streaks?

Both have projects coming after the union that can help.

While the Union ending left the door open for a possible sequel, it seems that such a follow-up would not help either star with their ongoing grim Rotten Tomatoes streaks. While Wahlberg has made considerably more movies than Berry since 2014 (with 22 compared to her eight), the fact that he has only earned three more Fresh scores than she has shows how pernicious both stars' critical streaks are at the time of writing. Below, see a breakdown of their runs of narrative movies in the past 10 years , with all Fresh scores presented in bold:

However, it seems that both stars have at least one project that could help put their Rotten Tomatoes records back on track after The Union . While there are several upcoming Mark Wahlberg movies that are questionable as to whether they will strike a chord with critics including the Mel Gibson-helmed Flight Risk and the action-comedy Balls Up , one movie that may be the perfect opportunity for him to earn a Fresh score is the Donald E. Westlake adaptation Play Dirty . The movie was helmed by Shane Black, who has only ever earned one Rotten score as a director.

As for Berry, her first post- The Union movie is the Alexandre Aja horror title Never Let Go , which comes during a time when the French-Algerian director has had a run of Fresh hits beginning with Crawl in 2019 that could very well continue with this new project. It remains to be seen how her titles that come next - which include The Process and Maude v Maude - perform, but the genre project, which is due later in 2024, could help kickstart a new phase of her career.

Source: Rotten Tomatoes

The Union (2024)

The Union is an upcoming film that explores the intersecting lives of multiple characters as they navigate complex relationships, personal struggles, and social issues.

Movie reviews, Oscar predictions, and more!

‘Aftersun’ is a masterpiece of memory | review and analysis

Aftersun follows the childhood memory of a girl on vacation with her father to the turkish coast. but where there's sun there is also shadow..

Aftersun is one of the greatest depictions of depression and grief captured on film as it meditates on childhood, parenthood, and memory. Beautifully wrought with cinematography and score that play like a memory on loop. As the movie comes to its stunningly satisfying and emotional conclusion—perhaps one of the greatest final moments of a movie I've seen in some time—we're taught that opening that box might be a means to an end. A means to heal the burn that memories can leave.

You might also like: Past Lives , The Worst Person in the World

Do you know that lethargic feeling after sitting in the sun on a hot summer day? Or the melancholic daze that follows you home after a perfect vacation? Do you get blotches in your vision after looking into a bright light or staring up at the sun? All those sensations perfectly described Charlotte Wells' debut feature Aftersun , which feels like the perfect term to encapsulate each of those feelings. And that is what the whole movie is: a feeling. For its largely plotless 96-minute runtime nothing really happens in front of you. But rest assured, there's plenty happening in the shadows of the sunny father-daughter beach holiday at the center of the movie.

Wells presents Aftersun as a childhood memory flashing into the mind of a girl 20 years later—when she's the same age as her father at the time. But as with any memory, things look different in retrospect.

In the early 90s, young father Calum ( Normal People 's Paul Mescal ) brings his 11-year-old daughter Sophie (played as a child by Francesca Corio , a real festival breakout) on a sleepy summer vacation on the Turkish coast. Gregory Oke's dreamy cinematography simultaneously underlines the sunny haziness of a beachy summer and the soft edges of memory. In between days lounging at the pool, trips to the resort's restaurant, and interactions with the other guests, we see interstitial clips from home video of the trip filmed by either Sophie or Calum. It's in those clips—and interruptions often taking place at night while Sophie is asleep—that we sense there's more meaning and heaviness in this vacation for Calum.

Those feelings only come in waves though. We never see Calum being less than a devoted (and goofy) father to Sophie, almost a complete juxtaposition to the view we have of the usual young parent—sometimes he's even mistaken for her brother. Sophie, as a child, sees him as nothing less than an invincible infallible hero—how many of us see our parents. Her childlike wonder extends to the world around her as she becomes enamored with a group of older kids—a bit of a nod to the typical coming-of-age story, of which Aftersun is decidedly not. However, that wonder also leads to conflict when Sophie's frank questions lead to revealing that not all is great and perfect in the background of Calum's life. At the moment, she thinks nothing of them. However, when adult Sophie looks back at the same clips we're watching, they play very differently. Like videos taken before a coming disaster.

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Memories always have their blind spots. You remember the bright moments while blocking out the darker ones. It's not until you look back and unpack them as an adult that you see their profundity.

31-year-old Sophie ( Celia Rowlson-Hall ), who we cut to for short moments throughout the movie, is the same age as her father when they went on that vacation. As she remembers the bright spots—the late night karaoke, her first kiss, her dad clumsily juggling bread rolls at dinner—the darker ones slip in as well. Or, at the very least, she fills them in—her dad crying in the middle of the night, his quiet swaying while smoking a cigarette on the balcony, his muffled contentious phone calls back home. However, the movie never lingers on those moments—like adult Sophie is trying to keep them out of her perfect vision of that summer vacation. The same way that we exclude the awkward pauses at an otherwise lovely dinner or the arguments heard through walls late at night after you went to bed in our memories. You keep the good and avoid the bad until you can no longer stand the weight of the past.

It's difficult to describe Aftersun because nothing and everything is happening at the same time. Though what's happening on screen may seem mundane, it's drenched in subtext. For those that aren't looking in the right places, the movie might be tedious to get through.

Aftersun is about many things, but at its core it's about the blindspots of our memories and traumas—and how we fill them in to make them whole again.

Our parents try to create the best childhood for us. Short of that, they at least try to create the best version of those memories for you, whether intentionally or unintentionally. It's why nostalgia exists and why some memories float to the surface while others burrow themselves deep into our psyches. Charlotte Wells uses Aftersun to show us what it's like to unlock that box that we all keep away in a hidden dark corner of our minds. What it's like to admit that our perfect childhood memories are just afterimages of the brightest moments. As the movie comes to its stunningly satisfying and emotional conclusion fittingly underscored by Queen's “Under Pressure”—perhaps one of the greatest final moments of a movie I've seen in some time—we're taught that opening that box might be a means to an end. A means to heal the burn that memories can leave.

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Karl Delossantos

Hey, I'm Karl, founder and film critic at Smash Cut. I started Smash Cut in 2014 to share my love of movies and give a perspective I haven't yet seen represented. I'm also an editor at The New York Times, a Rotten Tomatoes-approved critic, and a member of the Online Film Critics Society.

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Rotten Tomatoes, explained

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

by Alissa Wilkinson

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.

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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.”

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.

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:

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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The Coen brothers' "Burn After Reading" is a screwball comedy that occasionally becomes something more. The characters are zany, the plot coils upon itself with dizzy zeal, and the roles seem like a perfect fit for the actors -- yes, even Brad Pitt , as Chad, a gum-chewing, fuzzy-headed physical fitness instructor. I've always thought of him as a fine actor, but here he reveals a dimension that, shall I say, we haven't seen before.

What do I mean about "something more"? There is a poignance in the roles played by Frances McDormand and George Clooney , both looking for love in all the wrong places. She plays Linda Litzke, one of Chad's fellow instructors, and is looking for her perfect match on the Web. This despite her conviction that she's far from perfect. In a scene of astonishing frankness (using a body double, I think), she submits to a merciless going over by a plastic surgeon and decides to have some work done on her thighs, abdomen, breasts, underarms and eyes. "I've gotten about as far as this body can take me," she decides.

Clooney is a happily married man named Harry Pfarrer. (It's one of those Jack Lemmony kind of names that sounds like a cough, but I don't remember anyone saying it in the movie, just as nobody said "Chigurh" in " No Country for Old Men ." Those boys, what kidders.) Harry also looks for dates on the Web, and, in general terms, will happily date anyone. He and Linda meet, and seem to like each other, and then Linda and Chad find a computer disc at the gym. They read it and find it belongs to a CIA man named Osborne Cox ( John Malkovich ), who has just been fired for alcoholism. Cox is married to Katie ( Tilda Swinton ), who is also having an affair with Harry. You see how it goes.

No need to describe the plot. It goes around and around and comes out here, there, everywhere. All nicely put together, of course, but as an exercise, not an imperative. The movie's success depends on the characters and the dialogue. Linda and Chad, who remind me a little of Rupert and Masha in "King of Comedy," try to peddle their disc to the Russian Embassy. Anything to raise money for that plastic surgery. The CIA, baffled, gets involved. A gung-ho officer ( David Rasche ), confused but determined, reports to his CIA boss (J.K. Simmons, the dad in " Juno "). The boss doesn't have much dialogue, but every line is a punch line.

The Malkovich character is a right proper SOB, one of those drunks who thinks he's not an alcoholic because he prudently watches the second hand on the clock until it's precisely 5 o'clock. He's a snarky, shaved-head, bow-tie-wearing misanthrope who would be utterly amazed if he knew how his files got into the hands of two peons at a gym. As for Clooney, in one movie he's the improbably handsome, super-intelligent hero, and in the next, he's the forlorn doofus. You wouldn't believe what he's constructing in his basement. The Coens say that this film completes their "idiot trilogy" with Clooney, after " O Brother, Where Art Thou? " (2000) and " Intolerable Cruelty " (2003). Clooney as an idiot? As to the manner born.

Frances McDormand is wonderful. Here she channels a little of the go-getter determination of her state trooper in " Fargo ." She's innocent of deep thoughts, but nothing can stop her. From the first time I noticed her, in a great scene with Gene Hackman in " Mississippi Burning ," she has had that rare ability to seem correctly cast in every role.

This is not a great Coen brothers' film. Nor is it one of their bewildering excursions off the deep end. It's funny, sometimes delightful, sometimes a little sad, with dialogue that sounds perfectly logical until you listen a little more carefully and realize all of these people are mad. The movie is only 96 minutes long. That's long enough for a movie, but this time, I dunno, I thought the end felt like it arrived a little arbitrarily. I must be wrong, because I can't figure out what could have followed next. Not even the device in the basement would have been around for another chapter.

Roger Ebert

Roger Ebert was the film critic of the Chicago Sun-Times from 1967 until his death in 2013. In 1975, he won the Pulitzer Prize for distinguished criticism.

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Burn After Reading (2008)

Rated R for pervasive language, some sexual content and violence

Tilda Swinton as Katie Cox

J.K. Simmons as CIA boss

David Rasche as CIA officer

George Clooney as Harry Pfarrer

John Malkovich as Osborne Cox

Richard Jenkins as Tad Treffon

Frances McDormand as Linda Litzke

Brad Pitt as Chad Feldheimer

Written and directed by

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