How this works
Every movie has two scores on Rotten Tomatoes: what the critics think, and what the audience thinks. We slice the catalog two ways.
Pick a mood
Every film lands in one of three buckets, based on the ratio of audience score to critic score.
- 🧠 Smooth Brain — audience ÷ critics > 1.05. The popcorn movies critics couldn't quite embrace.
- 👍 Good A** Movie — 0.95 ≤ ratio ≤ 1.05. Both sides agreed; you won't fight about it.
- 🎬 CINEMA — audience ÷ critics < 0.95. The films you have to be in the mood for.
Set a quality floor
The average of the critic and audience scores must clear your selected minimum. So a film one side loved (e.g. 60 / 86) can still qualify if the average is high enough.
- 70+ — average ≥ 70. The default — casts the widest net.
- 80+ — average ≥ 80. Higher bar.
- 90+ — average ≥ 90. The rare films almost no one disagrees with.
The fine print
- RT critic count ≥ 20 reviews, audience count ≥ 1000 ratings.
- If we can't find an RT audience score, we fall back to
imdb_rating × 10and mark the card with a *. - Streaming providers shown are US-only (v1).
Data sources
Catalog from TMDB. RT critic + audience scores via a RapidAPI ratings endpoint. IMDb rating as proxy when RT audience is unavailable.