Rotten Tomatoes might just be a review aggregator, but its influence is significant — inordinate, you might say. The website that should give you a rough guide as to what critics think about a film has become the arbiter of whether a film is deemed good or not, or in RT parlance, “fresh” or “rotten.” This binary would be fine if RT wasn’t as influential as it is, but these days the Tomatometer’s reach is wide, and our adherence to its decrees often borders on unflinching. A green splat is enough to put most casual viewers off a film, which is a shame because that means hordes of people are overlooking unfairly-maligned classics like “The Comedy,” or worse, the delights of the seven John Travolta movies to achieve a 0% critic score on Rotten Tomatoes.
On the other end of the spectrum, there are a handful of movies that have garnered a rare 100% rating, many of which are, shall we say questionable at best. But some are actually deserving of such a designation. There might well be more than two perfect sci-fi movies, but if you’re going to give that honor to any films, “The Terminator” and Andrei Tarkovsky’s “Stalker” are surely worthy.
Interestingly enough, two appears to be the magic number when it comes to 100-percenters and grouping films by genre/director/actor. According to Rotten Tomatoes, not only are there two perfect sci-fi movies, but two perfect horror movies, two perfect Alfred Hitchcock films, two perfect Jack Nicholson movies, and two perfect “Toy Story” movies. Which makes it pretty easy to guess how many heist films have managed a similar feat. Yep, 17. No, it’s two.