Rotten Tomatoes & Metacritic are no longer useful resources

I wouldn't say "corrupted", but a little skewed to what they want to like, no doubt. Then again, maybe they are corrupted a bit.

It's why shitbag shows like "Arrow", or "Agents Of Shield" are held in such high regard. Some shows can get away with going for the cheap pop. Even if they're remotely acceptable, they'll be put on a pedestal simply because of their brand association.

AoS got a lot better after its slow start. Arrow really went downhill, but it's on an upswing now, granted it didn't much to top last season.
 
I use this board mainly dragon's reviews. Its been pretty spot on
 
Subjectivity isn't the issue. A gross objective inflation of aggregated subjectivity is the issue, and a glaring tell.

I agree we live in a golden age of television, or at least we were in one, but I'm not sure what that has to do with the Paste Magazine shitshow that has infiltrated the ranks of surveyed critics. There are still critical surveys that are phenomenal like the Sight & Sound's once-a-decade poll for movies. So this is partially about the quality of the critics, and also their number (used to be hard to gain the esteem to be counted, and they even separated the "Cream of the Crop" for site-goers to see although they didn't count their scores differently). Too many bloggers are being counted, now. I blame Berardinelli. Everyone thought they could be him.

Furthermore, the methodology behind the Sight & Sound poll is entirely transparent. That's what I want, but I want it as an entertainment service, not an academic service to cinephiles delivered decennially.

That's the real problem: a lack of transparency in how everything is scored. Metacritic has been nailed in the VG section for artificially "weighting" certain critics, or at least so say them, but the truth is that like ESPN's advanced sports metrics, we don't know how they weight their Metascore anymore. That wasn't the way it always was:
http://www.metacritic.com/about-metascores

In other words, since they don't publish the methodology, the way IMDb publishes its precise weighting equations, we have absolutely no idea how they arrive at their scores. This means they can openly fudge numbers whenever they feel like (i.e. get paid for) it.

Clearly they're selling.

You should've added this plus more into your OP
 
You should've added this plus more into your OP
Then people would bitch about how much they have to read. I was already pushing it with the length of the OP.

The fact that everyone on this board agrees that @Dragonlordxxxxx is far more reliable than these meta-services is just evidence towards the truth. That's always been part of the game. You find critics you trust; those who are more likely to understand your perspective and share your interests, and who are passionate about films, and have a deep literacy in the industry. Even when surveying IMDb, Metacritic/RT, and the slew of film festivals out there, you still looked for this. But ultimately, individual critics, because we are all so idiosyncratic, shouldn't prove more reliable than the consensus of critics themselves, or consensus of populist vote. You can even study votes at IMDb by demographic, @Peteyandjia, which makes a sense of a lot of stupid ratings. For example, Girls 18 & Under give The Wire an average rating of 6.8 while no other demographic listed rates the show below an 8.9:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0306414/ratings
It's easier for me to make peace with its not ranking atop the TV list when I see stuff like that. Those girls love Breaking Bad and Game of Thrones. I do, too, but I'm not confused which of the three is king. The public's confusion about that stems from preteen girls. In the case TDK, it's males under 18 driving it up, and females over 45 who are least impressed:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0468569/ratings

Nowadays, why even waste your time with RT/MC? You have IMDb, and you find an indvidual critic or two that you trust. Done.

The MC services now exist only as part of the Hollywood marketing machine.
 
Nowadays, why even waste your time with RT/MC? You have IMDb, and you find an indvidual critic or two that you trust. Done.

Actually, I refuse to use or click on IMDB ever again, out of principle, because they recently deleted the entire forum & all of its users. An entire world of online opinions, reviews, & musings, dating back decades, wiped out with little warning and less care for its users. Fuck them. Same way I would never use the sherdog fight finder again if we were suddenly all erased here.
 
I only go to Youtube reviewers, like Double Toasted, and only after I've seen a movie myself.
 
If it's under 40% in RT, it sucks. Period. I pay closer attention to what the critics say, because even this place has proven that the bar has been effectively lowered for the public..

Rambo 4 has RT score of 37% and it's fucking badass.
IMDB score is more accurate at 7.1
 
Actually, I refuse to use or click on IMDB ever again, out of principle, because they recently deleted the entire forum & all of its users. An entire world of online opinions, reviews, & musings, dating back decades, wiped out with little warning and less care for its users. Fuck them. Same way I would never use the sherdog fight finder again if we were suddenly all erased here.
Agree. That was fucked up.
A lot of good insights into movies I like were posted by users on there, amidst the trash
 
Agree. That was fucked up.
A lot of good insights into movies I like were posted by users on there, amidst the trash

Well here's some good news for you then:

Some beautiful lunatics cloned the entire IMDB forums, right before it was nuked, and made a whole new forum out of it. You can talk movies there, and 95% or so of all the old IMDB threads are preserved.

https://moviechat.org/
 
Well here's some good news for you then:

Some beautiful lunatics cloned the entire IMDB forums, right before it was nuked, and made a whole new forum out of it. You can talk movies there, and 95% or so of all the old IMDB threads are preserved.

https://moviechat.org/
Can we be objective there & not be deemed as racist, misogynistic bigots?
 
I love RT. I think it's really accurate at rating the overall quality of films. But some movies may be lower quality while still being entertaining.
 
That's because S4 of BB is one, if not the, best seasons of TV ever.

RT and MC may have been hacked by corporations, but not based on BB being overhyped.

BB earned it's hype.

<JagsKiddingMe><{MindBrown}>

I thought it was pretty clear that's exactly the point Mick was making...
 
<JagsKiddingMe><{MindBrown}>

I thought it was pretty clear that's exactly the point Mick was making...

I thought meant this as a red flag..

was almost unfathomable how far ahead of even the other great shows and great seasons that was.

Saying S4 was great, but not THAT great.

@Madmick, if I misinterpreted your post, I'll happily edit mine.
 
I'll use RT just to make sure a movie is above 20% but that's about it. I have a handful of reviewers with similar tastes as myself that I'll frequent.
 
Stopped using RT a while back because of this.
 
Instead of depending on critics as a whole, why not just go to your list of critics that you view very highly? James Berardinelli and Peter Travers seem quite reasonable with their reviews. I don't use Roeper much because at times, he lets his personal view get in the way. I use to use Ebert but he had gone too soft in his reviews.

Also, metacritic and RT is not a bad thing. Movies that you would think that would end up being rotten actually turned up to be fresh. John Wick and Dredd are examples of such and because of the positive RT rating, I gave both those movies a chance and ended up loving them.
 
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