Welcome to the first week of A Little Over The Top, where we use data to help us discover great films across the vast landscape.
To go along with each week’s delivery you will have access to the A Little Over The Top companion app. This app is an interactive view of all the films analyzed in this newsletter. It will allow you to drill down in more detail as well as locate where specific titles are available to watch. Think of it as your weekly film menu.
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And now onto this week’s data theme.
As of right now, there are 374 titles (many are films, some are series) that hold a perfect 100% score on Rotten Tomatoes. We’re looking at titles that have at least 20 critic reviews on the site. This seemed to me like a big achievement in our ever-growing polarized world. So let’s take a closer look.
235 of the titles on this list are available to stream across 37 different platforms. Here’s a breakdown on where to find them.
Kanopy and Criterion’s substantial lead here is a badge of honor for those platforms and inspired some curiosity around the breakdown of the age of the titles across this list.
Something that immediately stands out is the disproportionate share that titles from the last 20 years have.
Here’s a closer look at it.
This is quite expected given the lifespan of the site as well as the fact that these metrics are based on, mostly contemporaneous, reviews. However given that Rotten Tomatoes has become one of, if not THE, market leader in film recommendation it would seem valuable to try to apply some of its methodologies across a wider swath of cinema history. It’s great that the older titles here have been highlighted, but I’m left wondering what other forgotten gems may be missing. In a future newsletter, we’ll dive further into alternative ways we could score (and thereby discover) lesser-known films from past decades.
But it’s not just the films themselves who can claim king of the hill status in RT-land. The humans who make and star in these things also have boasting rights.
Here is a breakdown of the individuals who appear most in this exclusive list.
Yes I know that Dickens and Hemingway didn’t write the scripts, but a win is a win. Shakespeare is only in the one timers club on this list (thanks to Kenneth Branagh).
There are probably folks on here you might expect. Others may be less obvious. Some may anger you (one or two in particular). Hey, nothing I can do, I’m just the data messenger.
I suppose the historical pendulum swings the other way too in this regard. Just as there is no way to accurately score older films by the same standards, there is also no practical way to apply more dynamic methods to better reflect our current cultural state of mind. Perhaps this level of objectivity is a good thing for our view of cinema history? Perhaps not?
Look, it’s my first email cut me a little slack. Here’s an idea, let me know what you think in the comments!
Moving on.
The last element I wanted to look at was the durability of some of these scores. E.g., the titles that possess the most reviews yet still managed to maintain the immaculate rating.
This is a round-up of the ten titles with the most reviews on the site.
Leave No Trace (2018) is the RT champion by about a mile.
We’ll return to this analysis in a future newsletter so we can continue to track how, and potentially maybe even why, this information changes.
For now, take a look at the full menu of 374 titles in the companion app and let me know any discoveries old or new you might encounter.
Until next time!
A lot of very interesting data here! Excited to see what else you've got in store for us.
I'm guessing the recency bias is due in part to the 20 critic reviews minimum, since most older movies tend to have far fewer reviews on there. I wonder if it's worth lowering that parameter for pre-2000 movies and seeing which titles get added then?
Another list of movies to look at for more chronological balance is Steven Jay Schneider's 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die (the actual number is well over that now, thanks to multiple editions/new movies being added). I think it has a pretty good mix of well-known classics, more obscure hidden gems, high-quality popcorn movies, and foreign films. Plus it has some polarizing films that inspire passionate love-hate reactions, which could never get 100% consensus on Rotten Tomatoes. You can find the list compiled here: https://1001films.fandom.com/wiki/The_List
Some more lists that could be interesting for comparison: IMDb Top 250, the "They Shoot Pictures Don't They" 1,000 Greatest Films, and all of the AFI 100 lists.