Am I wrong, or is the Rotten Tomatoes thing basically a thumbs-up/thumbs-down scale? Meaning, most of us here who've weighed in here would count in the 92% -- "not bad" translating to approval. The Metacritic thing measures intensity of approval, which is kind of important when it comes to choosing a best picture.Sabin wrote: It is worth noting that while King Richard and Licorice Pizza's Metacritic scores might be worlds apart, their Rotten Tomatoes score (while a far less telling metric but certainly a far more used industry one) are virtually the same at 92% and 94% respectively. And look, I might be wrong about Licorice Pizza. I think I'm currently the lowest star rating for it on Letterboxd with **1/2. I'm sure I'll like it more on a second viewing. I just rewatched Inherent Vice and liked it quite a bit more. But it's a weird one. Trust me.
I have to say, I'm fascinated to see Licorice Pizza for myself -- for many reasons, but keenly because, while there have been a flood of "it reminds me I love movies" tweets (and not just from the PTA hive; Anne Thompson, for Christ's sake, loved it), the dissenters (a minority, but they exist in some numbers) keep saying the movie is in Punchdrunk Love/Inherent Vice territory, which would be almost no one's favorite Anderson movies, and certainly the least Oscar-friendly. I won't get to the movie till a week or two after Thanksgiving, so I'm for now tantalized with trying to square that seeming contradiction.
Magilla, I don't recall anyone in 1969 talking about John Wayne having had cancer as part of the equation. What they said was, this huge-for-30-years star finally had a showcase role, and it was time for him to win an Oscar. Will Smith is 10 years younger today than Wayne was in '69, but Smith also became a star younger -- he was 27 when Independence Day made him box-office king (Wayne was 32 when Stagecoach lifted him from the obscurity of routine westerns). Smith has now been a star 25 years, which is within shouting distance of where Wayne was in 1969. Both men were far more recognized as audience favorites than as particularly gifted actors: Wayne appeared in a few more prestigious vehicles (mostly Stagecoach and The Quiet Man, though The Alamo somehow snagged a best picture nomination; such films as The Searchers and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance are revered now, but, pre-Cahierists, they were just seen as standard westerns); Smith, on the other hand, outranks him in previous nominations, 2 to 1. I see them as quite analogous.