Moviemaker Martin Scorsese has lashed out at popular film review website Rotten Tomatoes, insisting editors and contributors have negatively impacted the film industry.
In a guest column for The Hollywood Reporter, the legendary director has shared his disdain for the popular site, which assigns films a score based on random reviews.
Scorsese admits he has a problem with critics who reduce the quality of a film to a number grade, and claims modern cinema is often judged too harshly.
“These firms and aggregators have set a tone that is hostile to serious filmmakers – even the actual name Rotten Tomatoes is insulting,” he shares.
The Goodfellas visionary insists the quality of film criticism overall is on the decline, claiming the process has become more judgemental than insightful.
He adds, “As film criticism, written by passionately engaged people with actual knowledge of film history has gradually faded from the scene, it seems like there are more and more voices out there engaged in pure judgmentalism, people who seem to take pleasure in seeing films and filmmakers rejected, dismissed and, in some cases, ripped to shreds.”
