Do movie reviews sway how likely your are to watch a new movie?

In some way yes. But I’m generally not affected by reviews. There have been many occasions when my opinion is way too different from the reviews. I only use reviews to adjust my expectation to the movie, if the movie isn’t well-known or obvious to be good/bad (well, in the latter case I already know what to do).

If it’s a movie I really want to see,no .If I’m on the fence, sometimes.

Yes. Watching a movie at the cinema costs money, and reviews by trusted sources are crucial to decide whether I take that financial risk.

I’m more likely to watch a film if it gets bad reviews from top American critics.

I find most American cinema predictable and pandering to the lowest common denominator (whiz-bang action and text-message-level dialogue spoken by airbrushed, focus-group tested actors. Uuugh.) So when something gets a negative review, that usually means there’s something worth seeing.

@Seek I wonder what media you are reading. I find The New York Times, The New Yorker and rogerebert.com, while I might not always agree with them, definitely do not pander to the lowest common denominator.

And yes, the media which I follow do influence what I want to see.

Reviews are but one of several factors. They are practically never the sole factor in deciding whether to see a movie.

It depends on the reviewer.

I like Mick LaSalle in the San Francisco Chronicle, because he thinks the way I do, and has tastes similar to mine. I liked the late Roger Ebert too.

But I learned a long time ago to pay attention to who the reviewer is. I knew that if Gene Shalit recommended something, I would probably not like it all.

When choosing whether to see or not see a movie, my son will check Rotten Tomatoes. Sometimes, if we are split on our decision, that will be the tiebreaker.

The only reviewers I trust are the guys at Redlettermedia.

Reviews matter, but mostly for the synopsis of a film that I haven’t heard about. Unanimous rave reviews can sway me to see a movie in which I would otherwise have little interest. On the other hand, there are films that I will insist on seeing regardless of all the bad reviews possible.

Roger Ebert seems to have pinpoint accuracy in negatively reviewing every movie I’ve ever loved.

@Seek Ah – we must have completely different taste in movies then but that’s why it’s important to find a critic with your taste. Of course, now that he’s dead, i don’t follow his reviews. (And it was the print ones not the television ones that I listened to.)

Rarely. In my humble opinion (shared by friends who know my passion for and knowledge of movies) I’m the best movie critic I know. And it’s not just because I love movies and know a lot about them. More importantly, it’s because I don’t let anyone else tell me how to feel about them—that’s my job.

Fuck no, I trust my instincts better than the cockeyed judgement of some jumped up pantry boy

^ Upvote for the Smiths reference.

Let’s hang out.

I would go out tonight, but I haven’t got a stitch to wear ;-}

It depends on the reviewer and the review.

My dad used to tell me that when he was stationed in Adak, Alaska at the end of WW II there was one movie theater in town, and it never showed first run movies, and didn’t often change the ones that it did show. So when there was a new movie, there was a rush to see it among all the GIs stationed on the island.

He didn’t like crowds, and didn’t have a lot of friends in the barracks, so he wasn’t part of that rush. But he would listen to the guys talk about whatever movie it was when they got back, and there were a few “reviewers” he would listen to more closely than others. When they hated a movie, and said so loudly and often, then he knew it would be a good one.

He taught me a lot; I still miss him.

Nope. If it seems like it might be appealing based on what I’ve seen of the trailers, or if I like the cast, I’ll go. Movies are fun, I am happy to take the risk.

Nope, If something is oif interest to me I see it and draw my own conclusions. That’s the free spirit in me, I’ll make up my own mind thank you very much. I also don’t mind spoilers, I’m still going to watch the entire film and enjoy it, so I don’t care if I know what’s going to happen, doesn’t bother me a bit. My daughter and I get into it all the time, in a joking way, she refuses to tell me, even the tiniest little tidbit, about a movie and I then dog her for info. haha

Thinking about it, I use a variety of sources to decide what to see; trailers, friends recommendations, reviews and hunches. I’m at the movies all the time and have a pretty good sense of what I will and won’t like (except for The Lobster which I hated.)

Would you really ignore overwhelmingly bad reviews for a restaurant, or a product on Amazon?

There is a petition to shut down Rotten Tomatoes because of collectiovely poor reviews of Suicide Squad.

@janbb Despite people leaving the theater early and others from the previous show telling us to not see it, I thought The Lobster was hilarious.

::eyeroll::

Popularity is the single worst thing to happen to geek culture ever.

@zenvelo Well, we’ll have something to talk about when we hike.

I never do, no. I feel like a lot of critics are snobs or, even if they aren’t, we don’t agree about movies anyway. I definitely don’t listen to what most people say, because I can’t stand typical box-office movies made for the masses. They’re the most unappealing movies made, in my opinion. Some of my favorite movies would be way too quirky for a lot of people.

It depends. Usually I decide based on the description and/or trailer. When I check reviews, I take into account the reviewer’s apparent slants and what they are saying, and compare to my own. Sometimes that makes a strong impression.

They might. It won’t sway how I actually feel about it, in the end.

Film reviews strongly influence what films I choose to watch at the cinema. They tell me what the film is about and who is in it. A review is the reviewers own opinion and a negative review doesn’t necessarily mean I won’t watch that film. A positive review doesn’t mean I will but all reviews help draw your attention to what is out there.

Well, you have to base your movie viewing on something, unless you see every movie ever made.
A commercial is going to give you an unfailingly positive perspective. At least a movie review has a perspective. One bad movie review wouldn’t make me not see a moviee, but it would make me seek out more reviews. If there were several bad reviews I’d go see something else, and wait for the movie to become a rental or download.

I will say this: The name of the director is more likely to sway my likelihood of seeing a film than the critical buzz.

Yes. I read film reviews and they help me to determine whether I will visit the cinema, wait for it to be available online or not bother to watch a film. If I have really wanted to watch a film, I might still go to the cinema to see it. Who wrote the review, where it’s published and whether it is consistent with other reviews I’ve read all play a role in how much weight I give the review.

For movies that are still in the theater, I rarely rely on reviews, at least not officially written reviews, because I don’t see them. It’s not that I avoid them, it’s just that I don’t see them or seek them out. If my brother or mom has already seen the movie, I will trust their judgement as to whether or not I will like it. It doesn’t matter whether or not they liked it, they know my taste and have been consistently accurate when it comes to movies I will like or not like.

For movies that are currently in the theater, it is usually the trailer that I saw on TV that gave me the idea that it looked good or interesting, not a written review.

There are some movies, that I would go to see, even if I never saw a trailer, read a review, or spoke to anyone about it, just because my brain is programmed to want to see certain movies, such as anything to do with Star Trek (which I just saw today : ) and anything with Judy Densch or Maggie Smith or Helen Mirren.

With movies on Netflix, unless it has an actor whom I absolutely adore (such as Martin Clunes or Benedict Cumberbatch for example) in which case I will watch it pretty much no matter what, I will read a handful of the reviews if I don’t feel like I’m getting enough information from the overview presented on the site. About half the time, the overview is enough for me to make the decision of whether or not to watch a particular movie.

If I see a lot of great reviews (on Netflix), it kind of depends upon what is actually said as to why the reviewers like it. Same goes for the opposite. If there are a lot of bad reviews, it will depend upon why they didn’t like it. I always laugh when I read the terms “slow” and “not a lot of diaglogue” and “takes a long time before anything happens” as a sign of something I am likely to love. I don’t care for typical shoot em up American-style movies, or movies that are geared to American males aged 14–40.

@zenvelo Actually whenever Rotten Tomatoes has really bad reviews, it makes me want to see the movie more lol

I’ll trust reviewers and reviews in publications that I trust and that may be tough critics, like The New York Times or The New Yorker. I’ll also look at the ads and see if it looks like my kind of movie. There are some I want to see no matter what the reviews, based on the subject matter (if it’s a documentary) or just because of the buzz about the movie or what a friend told me.

Nyet, I pay no attention to movie reviews. I practically always disagree with the critics. If they praise a movie highly, I am certain to hate it. What qualifies them to tell us what to think? I think for myself, so I do not need to read whatever “govno” dumb critics spout. The only value of reviews to me is to have an idea of the content of the movie.

Sometimes. However, apparently my opinion of a good movie is different from many others.